The California Republican Party’s state convention is now in the rear-view mirror and the election is upon us. Millions of absentee ballots are being mailed out today and Californians will start voting later this week.

There are a lot of observations to be made about the weekend confab — but out the gate I am going to name the clear big winner of the convention – businessman Cole Harris, who is running for Lt. Governor of California — and who is now the officially endorsed candidate of the State GOP.

Harris wins the FlashReport Winner of the Convention honors for two reasons. The first was his ability to run a… Read More

Following the Assembly vote in July on the Governor’s bill extending the California Cap and Trade program, Assembly Republican Leader Chad Mayes participated in a “bipartisan” press conference with Governor Brown and Democrats. During his time at the podium, he announced his pleasure at being there since Republicans don’t get many chances to stand with the Governor in his press room.

In response to questions about why he and his fellow Republicans “jumped ship” to give the Governor his needed 2/3rds vote, thereby protecting Cap and Trade from further legal challenges, Leader Mayes reportedly said, “California Republicans are different than national Republicans.”

While Mr. Mayes may have had a point at that moment in time, it wasn’t long until Republicans in Washington proved that turning into useful idiots of the Democrats was far from just a “California thing.” A couple of weeks after Mayes serenaded a third of his caucus over the regulatory/taxation cliff in support of an unelected bureaucracy, Republicans in the U.S. Senate voting on Obamacare repeal also proved to be as feckless as the Mayes posse in California.

These events,… Read More

People who frequent this website know that it is our general rule (with occasional exception) to only support attributed blogging and commenting. I can think of a handful of times over the years when we have featured, or linked to, anonymous content.

That having been said, anonymous speech certainly has its place in politics, and here in America its foundations are rooted in our beginnings. The federalist papers, as they were drafted, first appeared in pamphlets around the colonies under the pseudonym Publius — and Benjamin Franklin himself wrote on more than one occasion under the pen name of… Read More

Much has been said about the defeat of Proposition 32 in California. Much of that has focused on the GOTV operation of the labor unions, the Democrats and the Obama campaign. Not sure the difference between the but they trulydid a stupendous job. It was do or die and they did it.

The Proposition 32 campaign lost the election over year ago when a decision was made not the place a referendum on the ballot challenging Governor Brown’s signing of Senate Bill 202. SB 202 moved all initiatives to November ballot. As a side note it broke a previous budget deal with Republican squishes and moved a “rainy day” fund measure to 2014.

Clearly, if you look at the results of the June primary it was a much more conservative electorate.

Duh! That’s why the Democrats wanted to move all initiatives to November.

Had the referendum qualified In June we would have voted on Proposition 32 language, of course a different number.

The better turnout model would have arguably given the Proposition 32 folks had … Read More

I was on hand back in the early 1990’s when the a schism occurred within the Young Republicans in this state. Rather than suffer the loss of control of the California Young Republicans, then Congressman Bill Thomas, his protégé Kevin McCarthy (who would go on to take Thomas’ seat in Congress over a decade later), and their allies cheated and thusly a larger number of activists fled the CYR’s to start their own organization, the Young Republican Federation of California. And so for fifteen years there were two YR groups in California — the Thomas/McCarthy controlled CYR’s that stayed small and was controlled from the top-down, and the YRFC which continued through the entire “split” to demonstrate themselves as the “real deal” — a bottom-up activist group that made it’s mark through walking precincts, registering voters and electing conservatives to office. From time to time, the feud between the two groups would bubble up to the California Republican Party Conventions.

… Read More

Abram Wilson recently sent an email about the California Republican Party Platform and the current proposal to eliminate important parts of the platform that appeal to conservatives.

First let me say the Abram Wilson is a decent man. He ran twice in an Assembly District that had been previously represented by Republicans. Unfortunately despite the investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars he lost both times. And while Wilson REFUSED to fill out a pro-life questionnaire during those elections and his website never mentioned Proposition 8 nor the Second Amendment and he defended banks during the fiscal crises in 2010, I’m sure he would have been a better legislator that Assemblywoman Buchanan is.

I admire Wilson for realizing after his two losses the need for a conservative platform. In the email he asks people to read a draft different from the actual approved drafting committee version and “note its strong conservative ideals that are pro-life, pro-family, pro-second amendment, and anti-tax while focusing on the issues that will be most important to Californians such as jobs, the economy and education. “

But this is my question that has… Read More

[Publisher’s Note: One would be hard pressed to find two constitutional and election law attorneys who are more well versed and well respected on the Republican side of the aisle than the co-authors of this important guest column. I commend you to take the time to full read this column, which is a bit longer than we normally feature in this space. But it is important — Flash] The Constitutional Role of Partisans in the Redistricting Process By Professor John C. Eastman and Charles H. Bell, Jr.

Summary: The Citizens Redistricting Commission process has gone seriously awry, hijacked by covert Democrat and leftist partisans who have violated open meeting, public records and conflict of interest laws, playing a “shell game” with draft district maps that likely will cement Democrat 2/3ds control of the State Legislature when finalized. Proposition 11 provided a remedy – Republican commissioners can defeat the final district maps if three Republican commissioners simply vote no. Then, redistricting… Read More

Six weeks ago the California Republican Convention met to among other things debate rules changes pertaining to the endorsement process since passage of Proposition 14.

The media was relentless. Headlines featured words like “tension’ and “clash”. My favorite came from the lefty blog Calbuzz that asked “Will the Stalinistas strike a blow for authoritarianism?”

All this centered around the fight between two proposals that would let either the state board decide endorsements or a caucus of state and local central committee members. Both plans contained exceptions that specifically protected incumbents. Insiders choosing is the worst possible way to get the candidates we need and don’t get me started on incumbent protection. Ultimately, I wrote an alternative plan supported by Congressman Tom McClintock that rejected both approaches and would lead to pre-primary mail in balloting by Republicans was adopted. (The chairman is announcing something soon, so I won’t steal his thunder or hair gel on this one.) So … Read More