Author: John Wildermuth

If you ever wonder why the Legislature’s popularity with California voters is at 16 percent and falling, you only have to know that state Sen. Mark Leno has reintroduced a plan to bring single-payer health care to the state.

Here’s all anyone needs to know about the chances of passing single-payer health insurance in California this year:

1. A Senate analysis of the bill, SB 810, found that it would cost the state $200 billion the first year.

2. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed nearly identical measures twice before and promises to do it again.

It says something about the gloomy mood of the state when California voters are looking back wistfully to those good old days when Gray Davis was in office.

A Field Poll released Sunday showed that 59 percent of the state’s voters – including more than half the Republicans – are convinced that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will leave the state in worse condition than it was when he took office.

Consider that breathtaking statistic for a minute. Schwarzenegger was elected in October 2003, after 55 percent of the state’s voters decided Davis was doing such a lousy job that he should be the first governor in the history of California to be ousted from office.

Heck, Davis was the first governor anywhere in the country to be recalled since North Dakota voters bounced their governor in 1921.

It’s $39 million and counting for Republican Meg Whitman.

And people thought Jerry Brown was exaggerating when he told a San Francisco radio show last week that the former eBay CEO was planning “the paid takeover of the airwaves of California.”

Whitman’s decision to drop another $20 million into her campaign for governor puts her in rarified company. Four years ago, state Controller Steve Westly, who also got rich at eBay, spent $35 million in the race for governor, while in 1998 airline tycoon Al Checchi wrote about $40 million in checks in an effort to become California’s governor.

Of course neither Westly nor Checchi made it out of the Democratic primary, which might be a warning to Whitman that money doesn’t always equal votes.

Any campaign press release typically should be read with many grains of salt readily available, but the latest blast from Republican Carly Fiorina’s Senate effort also should include a couple of asterisks.

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer’s campaign fired out a release Tuesday, patting themselves on the back for raising more than $1.8 million in the quarter ending Dec. 31, their best showing of the election cycle.

Californians are writing those checks “because they understand we are fighting for the future of our state,” the senator said in the release.

Not so fast, said Team Fiorina. Those fund-raising numbers, combined with new poll numbers actually “spell storm clouds” for Boxer’s campaign.

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.

Let’s imagine, for a moment, that the major candidates for governor were asked to answer a single question: How would you deal with California’s budget problems?

Republican Steve Poizner: “Cut taxes and freeze spending.”

Republican Meg Whitman: “Rein in state spending and fire 40,000 government workers.”

Democrat Jerry Brown: “Well, since I’m not an official candidate for governor at this point …”

That answer’s getting old. There’s no one in the state, including the guy sitting in the attorney general’s office in Oakland, who isn’t convinced that Jerry Brown is running for governor.

Sure, the campaign account in the secretary of state’s office is called “Brown for Governor 2010 Exploratory Committee,” but any “exploratory” questions about a run for governor were answered long before Brown set up that committee last September. He told KGO radio in San Francisco Thursday that he has about $12.5 million in the bank for the race, which is a mighty official sounding pile of cash.

Bad as California’s budget numbers are, they’re likely to get worse.

Along with the continuing commotion over whether California will get the $6.9 billion it needs from the federal government to help close the budget deficit (Note to gamblers: take the under, the way under), state Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor warned Tuesday that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger might have been a teensy bit optimistic when his budget folk estimated next year’s revenues. About $3.1 billion optimistic, that is.

In Taylor’s words, the governor’s budget is realistic, but “there’s a downside risk on revenues.” Taylor’s main concern is that the governor’s financial team is counting on a faster, more robust economic recovery than he sees as likely.

It’s important to remember that both Taylor and the governor are dealing with best guess estimates of what the upcoming year will bring and there’s a lot of “potato/po-tah-to” arguing that goes on among the green-eyeshade crowd.

If you’re looking for a clue about whether Republican Tom Campbell is giving up his long-shot run for governor to switch to the Senate race, it may be what Sherlock Holmes called “the dog that didn’t bark.”

It’s been four days since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger released his new budget and Campbell has been MIA, with nary a speech, blog post or white board presentation. That’s not like the economics professor who takes pride in being a government finance geek.

Campbell hasn’t said a word about any change in plans, but there’s lots of evidence out there for a political CSI team.

On Campbell’s campaign web site, you’ll find plenty on “Tom Campbell in the News,” but not a single piece speculating about the possible political switcheroo. It’s not that they’re hard to find, since you can see them here, here and here, just for starters.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has figured out a way to jumpstart the budget debate by pumping out the fiscal smoke and setting up the financial mirrors at the beginning of the process instead of at the end.

As state law requires, the governor produced a balanced budget last Friday. But to make those numbers work, Schwarzenegger and his financial team were forced to work more magic than the faculty of Hogwarts School.

Let’s take the big stuff first. After the governor added in some new revenue and subtracted some cuts, the budget was still out of balance.

But if you just figure that the federal government owes the state some $6.9 billion –and will actually pay it – then abracadabra, the budget’s in balance.