I don’t have much time, so I am going to make this quick. I just wanted to say it before New Hampshire.

The California primary will be irrelevant–again. The nominees, whoever they happen to be, will have sown up their respective nominations before the Presidential primary election. The desparate hopes of the politicians of this state to be relevant will once again be dashed, and the California primary election, except for the propositions, will once again be a meaningless exercise.

So, this is my plea to the California Legislature. Please, Please, Please change the Presidential primary back to June. Let’s help restore sanity, deliberation, and reflection to this process by stopping the race to be first, or even relevant, and accept that the only real way for California to be relevant is to extend out the process, so that all candidates have a chance to win, and it takes longer for any one candidate to get the nomination. That might even make it so that no candidate has a majority of the delegates until the primary in California, and everyone will campaign here for two or three weeks before the first Tuesday in June.

Just a… Read More

Democrat Jim Dantona has declared that he is out of the 19th State Senate primary against former Assemblywoman Hannah Beth-Jackson. Former Assemblyman Tony Strickland is the probable GOP nominee for the seat, currently held by conservative icon Tom McClintock.

With no Democrat Primary to bloody the water look for the race to bloody the Democrat nominee, look for a more hotly contested general election. Republicans currently hold a slight voter registration edge (187,000) over Democrats (169,000) with some 110,000 ‘other’ party members or decline to state voters.… Read More

Selecting our FlashReport State Senator of the year for 2007 was not an easy task. There are a great group of conservatives in the California State Senate, and many of those are deserving of much praise. When we look back at 2007, there was one most-defining event for the State Senate – the budget battle of last summer. Senate Republicans demonstrated solidarity in holding out on voting for a bloated budget, with their actions ultimately, predictably, and unfortunately having been proven to have been right on the mark. Ultimately, Senate Republicans should have held out for more extensive and meaningful spending reductions – but, hind sight is 20/20. During the budget standoff, I had the opportunity to dialogue directly with many of the Senate Republicans, and as such have what I believe is a pretty accurate of the machinations that take place “behind closed doors” during that kind of stressful and epic showdown.

While the budget situation last year was perhaps the pinnacle moment for conservatives in the Senate to show their commitment, we also look for a Senator who maintains a solid record against bills that grow the size and scope of state… Read More

The No on Prop. 93 campaign has starting their television advertising campaign, exposing “The Big Lie” initiative for what it is… Check out the spots below – they are VERY hard hitting…

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Is The East County Californian, the local weekly (and formerly daily) newspaper of record since 1892, trying to change its left-leaning tilt with the hiring of longtime local news hound Greg Eichelberger as editor? One might have hoped.

The paper’s 12/27/07 “A year in review: 2007,” by Nick Pellegrino, noted as one of the year’s top stories the announcement by perennial-office-seeker Vickie Butcher that she would now seek the Democratic nomination for the 52nd Congressional District. Good for her, making the list of the year’s most significant stories.

Yet, nowhere in the yearly recap was any mention of the similar announcements by Republicans Duncan D. Hunter, Brian Jones, Ken King or Bob Watkins. It speaks loads that the declaration by one that has run unsuccessfully multiple times for city council is deemed more noteworthy than that of, say, Councilman Jones, or School Board Trustee Watkins, or even Hunter, son-of-the-current-congressman. Apparently, from a news standpoint, such titles are of the chopped liver variety.

Maybe it’s not because the writer deemed none of those announcements newsworthy… Read More

Tomorrow the State Legislature will reconvene. Despite the fact that California has a massive mega-billion dollar operating deficit, Democrats will once again start to introduce more bills to spend even more money. There must be a ten-step program for their addiction to spending other people’s money.

Less people participate in the obscure Iowa Caucus system than vote in many individual California counties. It’s clear that our Presidential nomination process is flawed when so much attention is paid to so few voters. Although this Iowa-thing probably is great for the obscure and heavily taxpayer subsidized ethanol industry.

After all is said and done, it looks like John McCain’s chances of pulling off an upset to get the GOP nomination will be cooked if he cannot pull off a win in New Hampshire’s primary next week. Too bad the McCain-Feingold legislation is making it so hard for him to raise money. There’s some irony there.

Speaking of the New Hampshire primary. It turns out that it falls on the same day (this Tuesday) that Governor Schwarzenegger is scheduled to give his State of the State Address. Historically, Governor’s… Read More

Ray Haynes was the author, in 1999, of the change in the California Republican Party Bylaws that has brought us the current system of Republican National Convention delegates being selected based on local results in each Congressional District. He pens this commentary in response to a criticism of this method that appeared Saturday in the San Diego Union Tribune.

California has screwed up the entire presidential primary system, simply to satisfy the political ambitions of its politicians, who really wanted to extend term limits, and what does the San Diego Union Tribune criticize? The Republican method of choosing its presidential delegates, a system which, by the way, is used by a majority of the states in this country.

It used to take six months to choose a presidential candidate, and those candidates who didn’t start out well funded or frontrunners had a chance to build momentum and create a… Read More

Tomorrow the State Legislature will reconvene. Despite the fact that California has a massive mega-billion dollar operating deficit, Democrats will once again start to introduce more bills to spend even more money. There must be a ten-step program for their addiction to spending other people’s money.

Less people participate in the obscure Iowa Caucus system than vote in many individual California counties. It’s clear that our Presidential nomination process is flawed when so much attention is paid to so few voters. Although this Iowa-thing probably is great for the obscure and heavily taxpayer subsidized ethanol industry.

After all is said and done, it looks like John McCain’s chances of pulling off an upset to get the GOP nomination will be cooked if he cannot pull off a win in New Hampshire’s primary next week. Too bad the McCain-Feingold legislation is making it so hard for him to raise money. There’s some irony there.

Speaking of the New Hampshire primary. It turns out that it falls on the same day (this Tuesday) that Governor Schwarzenegger is scheduled to give his State of the State Address. Historically, Governor’s… Read More