Today there were more changes made at the senior-most levels within the Administration. Governor Schwarzenegger, presumably with the advice and sign off of his Chief of Staff, controversial Democrat Susan Kennedy, moved Fred Aguiar (pictured to the right) from his post old post of Secretary of California’s State and Consumer Protection Agency to the position of Cabinet Secretary, displacing Terry Tamminen who will now be a senior advisor (read: still in the Governor’s office, but in a lower-profile role). Also, Dan Dunmoyer (pictured below, to the right) comes onboard as a Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor for Policy Development.

Aguair and Dunmoyer have… Read More

Ed Laning is the California Republican Party’s Vice -Chairman Inland Region. Last year he ran for Congress against Joe Baca in a horrible district.

This is the text of an email he sent the CRP Board of Directors on 12/4/05

As of midnight tonight, it looks like the CRP’s Board meeting with the Governor on the 15th will be short one. It looks like no clemency for Laning.

[Publisher’s note — I just got off of the phone with a very concerned and demoralized Ed Laning. He did confirm for me that if Susan Kennedy is still the Governor’s Chief of Staff today at 5 p.m., he plans on resigning his elected post as Vice Chairman of the California Republican Party for the Inland Empire. This is the most high profile and startling turn of events in this saga… Read More

Today. Governor Schwarzenegger named Justice Carol Corrigan to the Supreme Court of California. Corrigan is currently a Justice on the First District Court of Appeal. Among other things, the Governor’s says this about his appointee: "Justice Corrigan is conservative, thoughtful and a brilliant jurist. She believes that the law belongs to the people, not to judges and has a proven record of being supportive of victims’ rights."

Over the coming days, the FlashReport will be bringing some analysis of this pick and what it means. Our political law correspondent, Michael Houston, will weigh in, and I have already reached out the the FlashReport newtwork of lawyers who study things like the rulings of Judges (I am more focused on the rulings of NBA referees).

The Governor’s office issued a Press Release that starts out:… Read More

If you read the newspapers these days in the Bay Area, you’d think that the liquor store owners in West Oakland were responsible for Oakland’s crime problem. City leaders, who believe that liquor stores are magnets for the bad elements of the city, are leaning on store owners to change their inventory from cheap wine to broccoli. When you drive through West Oakland, there are many, many small independent markets and a noticeable absence of large chain supermarkets. There is no doubt that the amount of liquor being purchased and consumed in Oakland’s troubled neighborhoods is a problem, but it is the shop owners’ problem or the customer’s problems? In a typical Bay Area nanny-government approach to social problems, the government and community groups answer to the problem is to lean on the shop owners and, in some instances, shut… Read More

CRA TAKES BOLD STEP The California Republican Assembly is the State’s oldest Republican volunteer organization. Earlier this week, that groups Executive Committee voted 27-0 to support a resolution demanding the the Governor ‘terminate’ Democrat Susan Kennedy as his Chief of Staff, else they would support withdrawal of the Governors GOP pre-primary endorsement at the State GOP convention this February in the Bay Area. You can read more about this on the main page. Yours truly served as State President of the CRA from 1995-97, and I am still tired from the work (unpaid). But I fondly recall that as an organization, we registered well over 100,000 new Republicans (more than any other GOP group that cycle, including the Womens Fed), our pack donated hundreds of thousands to great candidates, our volunteers walked countless thousands of precicts, and we crowned off the term presenting the coveted Ronald Reagan Freedomfighter award to… Read More

GOP State Board of Equalization Member and "Friend of the FlashReport" Bill Leonard has submitted a mini-column in response to a recent column by FR Blog-Team member Dan Schnur that ran in the Los Angeles Times.

You can read Schnur’s column here. Leonard’s thoughts on the column are below:

The GOP seems to be spending a lot of time weeping and gnashing our teeth over Susan Kennedy. As a committed conservative, and supporter of the Governor, I understand the symbolic issues here. Her presence on his staff is a tough one to digest. But I have a suggestion, once we get over this issue – let’s deal with our REAL political problem. How do we defeat teachers, nurses, firemen, prison guards and cops, politically speaking? I don’t care who the chief of staff is, if we don’t deal with this challenge, none of our candidates can win. As a matter of fact, unless we come up with a realistic strategy soon, we shouldn’t even field candidates for Statewide office. Why put donors, volunteers and candidates through another losing political season? Sure, the Kennedy appointment depresses the GOP base. But even an energized base faces defeat every time against our well regarded adversaries. Not the Democrats. They aren’t well regarded. It’s the teachers, nurses, firemen, prison guards and cops. Any time spent apart from developing a strategy to neutralize and defeat them is a waste of time. My ideas will follow. I would love to… Read More

Conventional wisdom is that the major issues facing the Congress leading up to the 2006 elections will be immigration, the deficit, and the war in Iraq. From where the Republicans sit today, we are in big trouble with less than a year to go, but a year in politics is three lifetimes. The GOP has a real opportunity to show improvement on all three defining issues in that year.

Today, the House Judiciary Committee will mark-up immigration reform legislation. This legislation, a Judiciary-Homeland Security Committee bill, will deal with border security and law enforcement and will likely sail through the House. The Senate could take up immigration reform in the next few weeks but likely won’t deal with it until next year (I know, it’s shocking that the Senate is moving too slow, but hey, they had to take this week off). Expect to see a bill signed by the President by spring at the latest, with a Senate-sponsored guest-worker program.

With modest deficit reduction ($50 billion over 5 years) working its way through Congress and a humming economy, the deficit is going to drop further. In fact we could see impressive… Read More