Perhaps never before has the economic health of our state been so important to voters as in this election season. Just last week, I announced the launch of CalChamber2010.com, a new website designed to educate voters about the candidates’ stance on issues critical to job growth and renewed prosperity in our state. Now, more than ever, voters understand the role that a vibrant economy plays in enhancing quality of life for California’s working families. I suspect that many more voters this year will be looking at the candidates’ track records to determine how they will cast their ballot.

We developed CalChamber2010.com to be the go-to site for information on California’s Gubernatorial candidates. This resource provides first-of-its-kind comparisons of the three candidates. The site doesn’t deal with social issues, rather it focuses on issues of critical importance to the state’s economy and job climate. CalChamber2010.com focuses on nine areas: Budget and Spending; Jobs and the Economy; Taxes; Education; Health Care; Environment and Energy; Water; Public Safety; and Housing and Transportation. By highlighting these issues that are so important to the voters, the candidates will need to make them their highest priority!

Well that cleared everything up.

Marty Wilson, a top aide to GOP Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina, denied he ever called Tom Campbell an anti-Semite, but he had no problem suggesting that the rival Senate candidate hobnobs with terrorists.

“Tom Campbell has a record that is decidedly anti-Israel and has some very questionable associations,” Wilson told reporters on a conference call Thursday. “The voters of California will decide whether he’s sympathetic to terrorism.”

Of course Team Fiorina will be doing all it can to help voters make that decision as the GOP Senate race goes nuclear.

The hastily called phone conference came after Bruce McPherson, former California secretary of state, told the Los Angeles Times that Wilson had urged him in a call not to support Campbell because “he’s an anti-Semite.”

What if Proposition 14 was already the law and all candidates in the June primary could receive the votes of any voter? At Datamar Surveys we decided to ask that question in relation to the governor’s race.

We asked 794 high propensity voters which gubernatorial candidate they would vote for in the June primary and offered the three major candidates, telling the respondents they could vote for anyone they chose.

The results: Meg Whitman 29.1%; Jerry Brown 25.1%; Steve Poizner 20.5%. Undecided was right in the mix at 25.4%.

There are a large number of Democrats and Liberals who are expressing a choice for Steve Poizner. We attribute this to two factors. First, Jerry Brown thus far appears to have employed a wait-and-see strategy and is content to let Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner battle for the Republican nomination. Second, we believe that Democrats and Liberals are expressing a sentiment not for any candidate in particular but against Meg Whitman.

If you think California governing system is badly broken, how should you vote in the governor’s race?

The likely nominees of each party, Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman, haven’t even bothered to offer an answer. (And for the record, Steve Poizner, despite being more specific about his policies than his rivals, has dodged this big question too).

Neither has spoken at any length about the state’s deep structural and constitutional problems, much less committed to addressing them.

At best, a vote for either Brown or Whitman is a wild guess. At worst, a vote for either is a waste of time. Without a mandate for broader change, the next governor, whether it’s Brown or Whitman, will be lucky to muddle through four years with more of the budget gimmicks and debt we’ve used for too long in California.

Is there a better option?

Well, leaving the ballot blank might be the better option.

Tom Campbell has opened up a lead over Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore in the U.S. Senate race according to the M4Strategies poll for the Small Business Action Committee.

In a survey of 427 high-propensity Republican voters conducted last week, Campbell received 32% of the vote to Fiorina’s 18.5% and DeVore’s 11%.

Campbell jumped from the gubernatorial race to the senate race only two months ago, but has held the top spot in every poll since his entry into the race with the gap widening over time.

Of course, unlike the governor’s campaign, there have been no widespread campaign ads or independent expenditure campaigns launched either for or against any of the candidates. Once the ads start, these poll numbers can change quickly.

From time to time, small business owners must wonder about those whom they have elected to serve in the Capitol. Do our legislators understand the effect their actions have on small businesses around the state? Are they able to put themselves in the shoes of small business owners when voting on legislation that increases taxes, creates new regulations or adds mandates? Most small business owners would be honest and say that not enough legislators have those thoughts when voting.

On a regular basis, NFIB/California tracks the voting records of each member of the state
Assembly and Senate. The Voting Record provides a critically important evaluation of a
legislator’s attitude toward small business. The NFIB/California Voting Record is
developed by selecting key bills proposed by the legislature that affect small businesses.
The votes on those bills are then recorded and a percentage is determined for each
member of the Assembly and Senate.

High-propensity Republican voters split on the idea of a top-two primary system according to the poll conducted by M4 Strategies and released by the Small Business Action Committee today.

The top-two primary concept, incorporated in Proposition 14 on the June ballot, received 43.5% Yes and 36.3% No with nearly 20% undecided. Sometimes called the Open Primary, the measure would allow all voters to vote for any candidate in a primary election with the top two finishers facing-off in the general election regardless of their party affiliation.

Usually a measure that scores under fifty percent months before Election Day is doomed to failure. However, this poll reflects only Republican voter attitudes. The measure will undoubtedly be popular with independent voters who make up 20% of the electorate and who often determine the outcome of many elections in California.

Janice Hahn and Gavin Newsom already have scored a surprise political victory. They’ve convinced California newspapers to actually write about the lieutenant governor’s race.

Here’s hoping they enjoy it because the moment won’t last for long.

What you have here is Newsom, the San Francisco mayor, doing his very public Hamlet imitation: To run or not to run, that is the question.

In the other corner you have Hahn, the Los Angeles councilwoman, treating Newsom as if he’s the political equivalent of King Kong and her top job is to shoot him off the Empire State Building.

The fun started earlier this month when a San Francisco pollster released a survey that showed Newsom running well ahead of Hahn and Central Valley state Sen. Dean Florez in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor.

The special session called to deal with the State’s fiscal emergency expired on Monday, and what has been the Legislature’s response? Business as usual.

Facing a two-year, $20 billion budget deficit, and urged by the Governor to implement more than $8 billion in spending cuts and revenue transfers this month, the Legislature is threatening to revert to form: raising taxes and using one-time solutions to pay for ongoing programs. (The “X8” below refers to the Legislature’s Eight Extraordinary Session.)

Item: Senate Bill X8 6 is awaiting final action on the Senate floor. It comprises an elaborate exchange of raising gasoline excise taxes and repealing the state sales tax on gasoline that would free up hundreds of millions of dollars in General Fund spending authority. But wait … there’s more. It would also – for one year – suspend some business tax incentives that would especially affect firms hard hit by the recession. The complicated transaction to raise some taxes and cut another ostensibly allows the Legislature to approve the measure with only a majority vote, since it is “revenue neutral.” But since thousands of income taxpayers would actually see their taxes increase, this is in fact a sham.