The 67th Assembly District campaign has been pretty sleepy with OC Supervisor Jim Silva as the presumed winner. Diane Harman (wife of sitting Assemblyman Tom Harman) is also in the race as is Cypress city councilman Mike McGill.

The OC Blog reports that McGill was the strongest fund raiser this period. This is a big surprise since Silva is a sitting county supervisor with the ability to raise BIG money, but apparently hasn’t.

Silva does have more than double the cash on hand of either one of his opponents.

Silva has excellent name ID having served on the city council in Huntington Beach (the largest city in the District) and now on the Board of Supervisors for more than 10 years. Diane Harman has never stood for office and I have never seen her at anything GOP in Orange County, she is trading largely on her husbands name. McGill has been on the Cypress council since 1998. He gained some notoriety for voting with the majority to, well I will let Steve Greenhut of the OC Register explain:

(from back in June 2002) On Tuesday night, in a… Read More

Yesterday morning, in the State Capitol, Speaker Fabian Nunez (pictured) approached Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, furiously waving a printout of the Assemblyman column which was featured yesterday in the FlashReport…he uttered profanities at Spitzer, telling him he had gone to far. The issue brought to the fore in Spitzer’s column was that the Democratic majority on the Assembly Public Safety Committee, hand picked by Speaker Nunez, is "pro-criminal" – regularly voting down common-sense tough-on-crime measures on a party-line vote. Of course, the Speaker has stacked this committee with some of the most left-wing members of his caucus! This confrontation was a precurser to the Assembly floor session later where the lower house of the legislature was debating the passage of a crime bill package (Assembly Bill 50) that represented a significant watering down of the tough-on-crime elements introduced as… Read More

Yesterday morning, in the State Capitol, Speaker Fabian Nunez (pictured) approached Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, furiously waving a printout of the Assemblyman column which was featured yesterday in the FlashReport…he uttered profanities at Spitzer, telling him he had gone to far. The issue brought to the fore in Spitzer’s column was that the Democratic majority on the Assembly Public Safety Committee, hand picked by Speaker Nunez, is "pro-criminal" – regularly voting down common-sense tough-on-crime measures on a party-line vote. Of course, the Speaker has stacked this committee with some of the most left-wing members of his caucus! This confrontation was a precurser to the Assembly floor session later where the lower house of the legislature was debating the passage of a crime bill package (Assembly Bill 50) that represented a significant watering down of the tough-on-crime elements introduced as… Read More

I had been meaning to draw the attention of FlashReport readers to a post by FR friend Matt Rexroad over at the Cal-Races website. I thought it an interesting analysis couched in terms of Congressman Richard Pombo’s re-election challenge, but is really Matt’s assessment that those on the right who are attacking the Governor for his recent shift from a "Live Within Our Means" theme to a "Bond it, build it" theme.

Matt’s post begins like this:

Senator Dianne Feinstein has reported $5.7 million cash-on-hand as of the end of last year. In the last reporting period, she raised the better part of a million bucks. Of course, this says nothing for her vast personal wealth.

On the GOP side, conservative former State Senator Dick Mountjoy had not entered the race before the 12/31/05 cut-off. Mountjoy, popular among the GOP right, has a strong grassroots network, but is not known for his fundraising prowess.

If there is a political handicapper anywhere in the country who doesn’t have at least 100-1 odds on a reelect for DiFi, I would be surprised.

It’s too bad, given that Feinstein (despite her lack of ‘stridency’ compared to her colleague, Barbara Boxer) is easily to the left of most California voters.… Read More

Steve Maviglio, spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, sent this item over to me in response to the Spitzer piece and my commentary today:

There’s a reason the Attorney General, California Police Chiefs Association, and the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault supported AB 50 – and strongly opposed the unanimous decision by Assembly Republicans to remove $23 million for GPS surveillance of high-risk sex offenders and SAFE teams to monitor sex offenders.

• The Runner legislation says an offender cannot live within 2000 ft. of a school. It does nothing to stop offenders from trespassing… Read More

There they were. My guys. Congressmen George Radanovich and Devin Nunes. Our Central Valley dream team. On TV, State of the Union. The President has just said this: “We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the economy – even though this economy could not function without them”, and my two Congressmen were on their feet, standing and clapping.

Don’t get me wrong. I love these guys. You’ll see my name on their FEC reports. But I realized at that moment how badly big ag is beating them up. I mean, I’ve not ever heard any complaint about immigrants. So I don’t know what the heck the President was talking about. But illegal immigrants are a different story. The GOP base as well as the rest of America have a legitimate complaint about this issue, for reasons of Homeland Security alone. And what the farmers really don’t want to happen is the flow of illegal immigrants to stop because labor shortages are MURDER right now in the ag industry. So, George and Devin, if the issue is illegal, not legal, immigration, exactly what were you clapping about anyway?… Read More

I have written a little about the 59th AD. (You can see the post with the links to past posts here.) The conventional wisdom was that Anthony Adams has hustled himself to unstoppablefront runner status. Today’s reporting shows Adams with Cash on Hand of a little over $108,000. That’s what happens when you hire top-notch political help. You have to pay for it.

Lancaster shows over $150,000 COH counting a $100,000loan from himself.

The geography of this district makes it an interesting race. Especially, if both have the same type of money. Lancaster has the most in the LA part of the district and Adams the San Bernardino part of the district. Wild cards include Barry Hartz, a desert transplant from the SGV. How much will he raise and spend? How far will the Mountjoy political operationgo for him? Susan Slater from the Desert is running too.

Interestingly, when you search Anthony Adams in the Political Reform Division’s reporting system there is a PAC called Committee to Oppose Anthony Adams.… Read More