Yesterday, Iwas attending a meeting in Sacramento. While there, Eric Hogue, atalk show host in Sacramento was lamenting the lack of turnout in conservative parts of California. You can read his blog here.

Below are some hints at motivating conservatives. Feel free to pass the on to whatever consultants the Governor is still listening too. It is clear to me they and others don’t know how to motivate conservatives.

Before I start, CRA and myself were committed to the four initiatives. I went out an debated 74, 76 wherever I could. That said. Here is the primer:

1. Fight. Conservatives love to fight. They will follow people who fight. Conservatives supported big spending, amnesty wanting Bush in 2004 because he was fighting the left.

The Gov. didn’t start fighting for these Propositions until September. Months after the war had begun. Nothing demoralizes conservatives than seeing someone get beat up and not willing to fight.

Another strain of this thought is that conservatives don’t like talk of compromise or negotiations.… Read More

This just in this afternoon….resigned Councilman Michael Zucchet acquitted by Judge of "stripper-gate" charges….retrial ordered on two counts only. Read it here.

Interestingly enough, if Zucchet is found not guilty in a new trial, he never needed to resign from the council in the first place. As trial sentencing was pending, the resignation was by his choice.

As noted this morning in SD Winners & Losers, Republican Kevin Faulconer led the field on Tuesday in the primary to fill Democrat Zucchet’s vacancy. Irony of ironies, Zucchet beat out Faulconer in the run-off when originally winning the seat.

Now it’s Faulconer’s for the taking, pending a huge battle in the January run-off election. If you wait by the river long enough, the body of your enemy will float by.… Read More

Commentary from Paradise: Day 2 on the Big Island (note photo!)

One of my favorite columnists to read is former Reagan speechwriter, Peggy Noonan. She has a regularly featured column in the Wall Street Journal each Thursday (which you can always access under the ‘Columns’ menu at the top of the FlashReport).

In her column, entitled "To Boldly Go…A peppery peep at the postelection players," Noonan references California’s elections (as part of a very lengthy column):

O.K., time to stick a fork in this one. Tuesday’s results in San Bernardino County were a mixed grill of (mostly) road-kill. The GOP performed on par with other counties in terms of support for the propositions compared with Republican registration. The County supported Prop. 73 (58%) and Prop. 75 (50.37%). The rest of the initiatives were defeated. Low turnout didn’t work in the GOP’s favor this time around, with a 36% total turnout and an unusually low 9.97% absentee voter turnout. In local races, with the notable exception of the City of San Bernardino (where Republican Chas Kelley missed getting into the runoff), a majority of the Party’s local endorsed candidates won.

Perspective? Well, you know how sometimes you see a carcass on the highway that’s been so thoroughly flattened you can’t even tell what it was when it walked the earth? If it’s deader than dead, what’s the point of asking what killed it? In a way, that’s how I feel about putting this election into perspective. But I’ll give it a try. We all know that if the people of California… Read More

San Diego City Republican Mayoral Jerry Sanders firmly defeated Democrat Donna Frye last night, beating her 53.87 to 46.13 (a 7.74 point spread). At this point in the game, Frye’s loss is not a huge surprise. None of the several citywide polls I had access to ever showed that Frye could expand beyond the mid 40’s. And the reality is if she had stayed the same "liberal surfer Democrat" Frye that had originally been elected to City Council she probably would never have hit the high 30’s in what is still a center right city.

Instead, Frye spent the last two years playing the part of the "outside reformer" tapping the discontent and disgust that voters of all stripes have with a government they view is venal, corrupt, incompetent, and tied to shadowy lobbyists and special interests. This allowed her to vastly increase her numbers among voters who were disgusted with city government and who might not otherwise have considered voting for a Democrat candidate. And as long as she stayed the course and ran… Read More

I want to be wrong. I want to be wrong! But my gut feeling about 2006 is very, very negative. And its not just an emotional reaction about tonight’s election results.

First, I have to disagree with my colleague Dan Schnur about the Governor’s re-election chances for next year. Having been swept tonight by California’s voters, an already uphill fight next year, in my mind, is essentially decided. I mean, how can a political team that took him from a 73% approval rating to 37% be trusted to reverse course next year in the face of the same intense opposition? Unless there is a total housecleaning in the political shop, there is minimal chance of re-election. How much money will it take to buy Arnold’s approval rating back up to 50%, drive unknown quantities Westly or Angelides negatives to over 50%, and talk about issues? Me thinks more than Arnold can raise. I want to be wrong, but its probably not a stretch to say that his fundraising capabilities have just taken a beating for next year along with the initiatives tonight.

Second, I think a case can be made, in a cruel way, that the Governor’s early successes hurt him in… Read More

Dan Schnur does mention illegal immigration in his analysis of why the Governor won the recall and what enable him to reach out to more voters.

What he doesn’t mention is that the Governor had a chance to help get an initiative on the ballot that would have dealt with this issue. The Save Our License Initiativepromoted by CRA was in circulationuntil Feb. of this year.

It would have stopped licenses and other public benefits from going to illegal aliensexcept emergency medical and K-12 education.Despite great grassroots support, there wasn’t the money to qualify it.

The Governor’s consultants were all approached about this issue. They wouldn’t listen.Why? Because the Governor still talks of giving licenses to illegals under the "right" conditions.

Last month I saw a focus group of Democrats that voted for Arnold. In this key group they had turned on the Governor and his propositions. But, they were with us on illegal immigration.

HadArnold supported this on the ballot, the talk wouldn’t have been about Arnold destroying teachers and nurses , it would have been about… Read More

“Never has so much resulted in so little change.” Paul Pfingst, the former D.A. and now a local KUSI-TV news analyst, said it about the San Diego mayoral election, in which Democrat Donna Frye could barely muster a higher percentage (46%) than she did in the primary. Yet, the comment would about hit the mark for the statewide special election as well. Over $200 million spent, significantly more when everything is analyzed, and status quo has been achieved.

If someone is looking for the bright side, while grasping at straws, they could say that the statewide unions were forced to spend a third of that money to get exactly what they have now, nothing more. But, of course, nothing more is pretty much political control of the state.

It’s not over until it’s over, a great baseball philosopher once said. This one was over the day the election was called. Plenty of other pundits will get into an in-depth analysis of all the “whys”. Aside from money spent, low turnout, voter fatigue, mixed messages, another special election, yadda, yadda, yadda … lastly, Republicans had no… Read More