Author: John Wildermuth

Next November’s election for governor and senator may have to take a back seat to a chance to legalize the sale and use of marijuana in California.

Hey, you can always vote for governor and senator, but the chance to open the market for bud …

Richard Lee, co-author of the legalization initiative, announced Wednesday that his group has collected more than 680,000 signatures, far more than the 433,971 needed to put the measure on the ballot. He plans to submit the signatures next month.

Collecting the signatures was no problem, Lee told Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle.

“People were eager to sign,” he said. “We heard they were ripping the petitions out of people’s hands to do it.”

Well, Steve Poizner’s in the governor’s race to stay.

The state insurance commissioner said Sunday that he’s putting $15 million of his own cash into his GOP campaign for governor, upping his personal contribution to about $19 million or roughly the same former eBay CEO Meg Whitman has given to her effort.

The money puts paid to the rumors that:

1. Poizner really didn’t really have millions to spend on his campaign.
2. Even if he had the money, the insurance commissioner really wasn’t serious about a 2010 run for governor.

Poizner said in a statement to supporters that he’s going to use the money to tell voters about his plan to close the state’s budget problems by slashing taxes, making the supply-side economic argument that lower taxes will stimulate growth and bring in even more tax revenue.

Congratulations, I guess.

After a messy in-house squabble, Assemblyman John Perez of Los Angeles was anointed Thursday as the next speaker by his fellow Democrats. Although the formal vote on the Assembly floor isn’t anticipated until January, it’s expected to be a mere formality, with no Republican votes needed

So Perez, who’s been in office less than a year, now gets to step into what historically has been one of the most important posts in California after a landmark win for a young politician.

He should be careful what he wishes for. Just ask Karen Bass.

Bass, who’s also from Los Angeles, was sworn in as speaker in May 2008. During her first two terms, Bass pushed hard to make life better for California foster children, provide health insurance for California young people and make improvements in her district.

Political consultants, both Republicans and Democrats, likely breathed deep sighs of relief last week when a federal appeals court blocked efforts to force Prop. 8 supporters to turn over private campaign strategy records to supporters of gay marriage.

It wasn’t the politics of the case that put the usually dueling opponents on the same side, since the Democratic consultants generally support same-sex marriage, while many of their GOP counterparts oppose it. No, this one was strictly business.

If political enemies – or even friends – could subpoena the private and often uninhibited musings that consultants put out during a hard-fought campaign, a new day was going to be looming for campaign work. And it wouldn’t be fun.

In an amicus filing in the case, the ACLU of Northern California, a longtime backer of same-sex marriage, argued that opening campaign documents for legal fishing expeditions would have a “chilling effect” on political campaigns.

With Jerry Brown moving inexorably toward a profoundly boring walkover win in the Democratic primary for governor, desperate political reporters are making the rounds of would-be candidates, shouting their traditional war cry:

“Why don’t you and him fight?”

The latest plea comes from Dan Weintraub of the New York Times, a former Sacramento Bee columnist who should know better. He’s pumping up former state Controller Steve Westly as someone with “a forward looking centrist background” who might be the Democrat “best positioned for a general election campaign.”

Not only that, the story added, Westly could “combine money, experience, high-tech roots and relative youth” into a package that could keep the 71-year-old Brown out of the November election.

Good news for all those Steve Poizner fans that may have been wondering why his campaign for governor seems to have disappeared from the political landscape.

“As of today, we are on target … Poizner has the campaign, message and resources necessary to succeed. And he will.”

That’s from a letter to the “campaign grassroots team” from Jim Bognet, Poizner’s campaign manager. And if you can’t trust the campaign manager to tell the truth about the race …

Fact is, though, the letter reads like a hasty attempt to soothe nervous supporters, combined with a hint of whistling past the graveyard.

Carly Fiorina has officially been in the Senate race for almost a month and the kindest possible take on her campaign is that she’s still got a long way to go.

Fiorina served a decades-long business apprenticeship before she took over as CEO at Hewlett-Packard, but she’s now looking to move to the top of the state’s political ladder without the benefit of any real experience in California politics.

It shows.

Last week, for example, she brushed off Irvine Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, her GOP primary opponent, by arguing at a Washington breakfast that he wouldn’t have a prayer against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer because he’s, well, a white guy.

While Fiorina insisted that some of her best friends were white guys, she said they just can’t win against Boxer because “she knows how to beat them. She’s done it over and over and over.”

California politicos might want to include a chill pill with their Thanksgiving turkey.

The state’s political rhetoric, never especially high-minded, has become even hotter and snippier in recent days as more and more political types begin to realize that the 2010 elections really aren’t that far away.

Take, for example, the kafluffle following Governor Arnold’s announcement that he really, truly wants a Latino like Republican state Sen. Abel Maldonado as his lieutenant governor. You could tell the governor means it because he made this announcement Tuesday at Ruben Salazar Park in the heart of East Los Angeles, which is about 160 miles away from Maldonado’s home town of Santa Maria.

But Democrat Darrell Steinberg, the boss of the state Senate, said that wouldn’t do because the special election to replace Maldonado would be just too darn expensive in these tough economic times.