Author: John Wildermuth

Here’s a reminder for the seven Assembly members who didn’t bother to cast a vote Thursday on GOP state Sen. Abel Maldonado’s nomination as lieutenant governor:

The green button on your desk is for “aye” and the red button is for “nay.” But you’ve got to pick one of them. There’s no button in the middle for “both ways.”

The final tally was 35 Assembly members in favor of the nomination and 37 opposed. Since the “no” votes were a plurality, Democrats argue that Maldonado loses and the LG’s office stays vacant.

Not so fast, says GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who made the nomination in the first place. Since there weren’t 41 votes against Maldonado, his argument is that since the nomination wasn’t turned down by a majority of the Assembly, Maldonado is the new lieutenant governor.

It’s $6.5 million and counting for PG&E as the giant utility stockpiles cash for its effort to strangle the public power movement in California with a June ballot initiative.

In the other corner, packing an anemic bankroll of $10,000, is TURN, a utility reform group, and other public power advocates.

The $10,000 contribution, which was reported this week, is actually good news for the group. On Dec. 31, the war chest to oppose the PG&E juggernaut was a snappy $98.17.

Think of it as David versus Goliath, only this time Goliath is facing the shepherd’s sling with tanks and armored cars, along with plenty of cash to upgrade the weaponry.

The initiative, Prop. 16 on the June ballot, would require local governments to get two-thirds support from voters before providing power to any new customers. Since new local power customers would be the old PG&E customers, just figure the multi-million-dollar campaign as an insurance policy for the company to protect its revenues. If it wins, that is.

Republican state Sen. Abel Maldonado may be hanging on to his day job for a while longer.

While Assembly Democrats are playing coy about whether they’ll vote to approve the Santa Maria lawmaker as California’s next lieutenant governor, a news conference Monday was a pretty good indication that the fix is in.

Democratic Assembly members Pedro Nava, Jose Solorio and Tony Mendoza all showed up to announce that they wouldn’t be voting for Maldonado when his nomination comes before the full Assembly later this week.

Normally, it’s no big deal when a trio of Democratic backbenchers complains about an appointment made by a Republican governor. But it’s no coincidence that it was three Latino Democrats making the argument that a Latino Republican shouldn’t be appointed to what – in theory anyway – is the number two office in state government.

The $39 million in personal money Meg Whitman has poured into her campaign for governor gets the headlines, but the cash that didn’t come from her own checkbook may be even more important in the 2010 campaign.

Take all the personal money out of the various gubernatorial campaigns and Whitman still leads the money race. The $10.4 million the former eBay CEO raised from contributors in 2009 is more than the $8.5 million Democrat Jerry Brown took in last year and far more than the $2.1 million fellow Republican Steve Poizner collected from donors.

You might want to put an asterisk by Brown’s number, since he’s got another $4 million in the bank that he raised before 2009, when he was stockpiling cash for his re-election as attorney general.

To get an idea of how tough it is to raise the type of money Whitman’s taken in, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had collected $2.3 million in 2009 when he decided to bail out of the Democratic primary because the fund-raising wasn’t there to challenge Brown. And on the GOP side, Tom Campbell shifted his flag to the Senate race when he realized that less than $1 million in contributions wasn’t going to cut it in the Republican race for governor.

Carly Fiorina’s new anti-Tom Campbell video may be one of the most bizarre (baaa-zare?) campaign hit pieces the state has ever seen, but since it has people talking about the GOP Senate race, it’s mission at least partially accomplished for the former Hewlett-Packard CEO.

But behind the low-end effects, the ovine-metaphor overkill, and the cheesiest red-eyed sheep suit in history, there’s a real gamble taking place, one that could decide who will challenge Democrat Barbara Boxer in November.

Fiorina and her team are betting just about everything on their conviction that California Republicans are so vehemently anti-tax that even a hint of support for new levies spells doom for a GOP candidate.

That’s why the tough-talking three-minute-long video, available on Fiorina’s new website, FCINO.COM, depicts Campbell as “Taxin’ Tom,” a liberal-leaning career politician whose only solution to California’s fiscal problems is more taxes.

That was a short campaign.

Less than a week after leaking a private poll that showed her trouncing a crowded field of Democrats in the primary for attorney general, Jackie Speier has decided to hang on to her congressional seat.

That’s bad news for the legion of Bay Area Democrats yearning for that rare chance to run for an open, non-term-limited congressional seat in a district Abe Lincoln couldn’t win for the Republicans.

“She’s going to remain in Congress where she can focus on issues that she cares about,” said Nathan Ballard, a former spokesman for S.F. Mayor Gavin Newsom who’s now working for Speier.

The decision came as a surprise to many political junkies, since officeholders who announce that they’re “considering” a run for another office typically already have the campaign signs painted.

When Mike Murphy, a heavy-hitter strategist for Meg Whitman, asked if there was anything that could be done to get the state insurance commissioner to drop out of the GOP governor’s race, Steve Poizner could have just said no.

But where’s the fun in that?

Instead, Poizner called a news conference Monday to announce that he was sending letters to the FBI, the attorney general, the secretary of state, assorted U.S. attorneys, the Fair Political Practices Commission and just about everyone this side of the Alpine County sheriff, accusing Murphy and the Whitman campaign of trying to force him out of the governor’s race.

“Meg Whitman does not have the right to prevent a legal election process through threats and intimidation” that would deny Republican voters a chance to choose their nominee, Poizner thundered.

Stirring stuff. Cynical, political and way over the top, but stirring.

The new PPIC poll numbers on the Senate race have Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore in full spin mode as they try to explain why it’s a really good thing to be running second and third in a three-person race.

The survey by the Public Policy Institute of California found Tom Campbell, the newcomer to the Senate race, with 27 percent support, followed by Fiorina at 16 percent and DeVore at 8 percent.

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer beat each of the Republicans in head-to-head match-ups, leading by four percentage points against Campbell and eight over both Fiorina and DeVore.

But those numbers mean very different things to the different candidates.

Meg Whitman’s growing lead in the Republican primary for governor is worse news for Jerry Brown than it is for Steve Poizner.

The former eBay CEO has jumped out to a huge 41 percent to 11 percent lead over Poizner, the state insurance commissioner, in a poll released last night by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The survey gives Brown an increasingly narrow 41 percent to 36 percent lead over Whitman in a November match-up, but those numbers aren’t nearly as worrisome to the attorney general as Poizner’s weak showing.

Whitman has spent around $20 million, much of it going for months of radio advertising. She’s already put $39 million of her own money into the campaign and is primed to spend more.