Campbell Defends Fiscal Record as he Campaigns for U.S. Senate
Tom Campbell launched his campaign for United States Senate arguing that the fiscal deficit is the number one issue in Washington and that his background of fiscal conservatism makes him the perfect candidate to deal with the problem. One of Campbell’s rivals for the nomination, Carly Fiorina, immediately challenged Campbell’s fiscal credentials.
The Fiorina campaign put out a broadside declaring Campbell’s fiscally conservative credentials expired long ago. In his recent run for governor Campbell supported a temporary gas tax increase to help balance the state budget.
I asked Campbell about that at his Friday news conference.
Campbell said his proposal for a temporary tax increase was a pragmatic, responsible approach to California’s budget problem. He said his overall proposal for the state budget was to cut three dollars of spending for every dollar of tax increase.
Redistricting Could Be Aimed at Lungren
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee last week tagged Rep. Dan Lungren as one of its prime targets in November, but the former GOP candidate for governor probably has more to fear from the state Legislature than from the voters in the Third Congressional District.
If Lungren does survive the election, look for the Democrat-controlled Legislature to paint a bulls-eye on his back in the redistricting that will follow this year’s census, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi looking on approvingly.
Complaints – along with outright threats – from Pelosi and other California congressional leaders convinced backers of the Prop. 11 redistricting reform measure in 2008 to leave the congressional seats out of the initiative.
That means that while a pointedly non-political citizens’ commission will draw the new district lines for state legislators, it’s back to the same partisan drawing board when it comes to Congress.
Worried About Judge Walker
U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker, a Republican appointee who is presiding over the trial in the federal legal challenge to Prop 8, has been asking lawyers and witnesses versions of the same question, over and over again. Why is the state involved in sanctioning marriages anyway?
These queries, which seem to spring from a libertarian perspective, might seem harmless, and suggest the judge is sympathetic to the cause of marriage equality. But the judge’s questions should make supporters of same-sex marriage nervous.
It’s because the judge is trumpeting one of the most frivolous – and thus dangerous – ideas in the debate over same-sex marriage. Let’s just take the government out of the marriage business.
This is a bad idea for two reasons. First, marriage is both a private and a public institution, with a long history. It’s a tradition at the center of family life, and thus a lot of law. Upending that would create change and turmoil that goes far beyond same-sex marriage. As such, to decouple the government from marriage is a radical notion. Legalizing same-sex marriage, in contrast, isn’t particularly radical at all. It extends marriage, with all history and traditions, to a small percentage of the population.