Greetings once again from the beautiful Big Island of Hawaii. I am here for a week of R&R with my mom and dad, and enjoying every minute of it. Today by the pool, I ran into some folks from San Francisco, who had been here almost a week. I asked them if they had voted in the special election. Their response was a very cynical, "We didn’t think our vote would matter." We all agreed that it was a good thing for all of those darned political tv commericals to be off of the air…

Tonight we had drinks at the beautiful Mauna Kea Hotel before enjoying a nice dinner. Here is a photo of the three of us! "FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE, SOCIALLY MODERATE" IS A MYTH I keep hearing over and over again from folks that the GOP, especially in California, can only win if we present a fiscally conservative, but socially moderate face to the… 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

In the spirit of Jon Fleischman, our illustrious FRFL (Flash Report Fearless Leader), here’s my election list of San Diego’s Winners and Losers:

Mayor-Elect Jerry Sanders – THE BIG WINNER

Duh. A no brainer. Not a conservative by any stretch of the imagination, yet over several weeks Sanders went from the guy who didn’t even request the County Party endorsement in the primary, to the anything-is-better-than-Donna-Frye Party-endorsed candidate a few days later, all the way to apparent GOP darling and ultimate winner. That had much more to do with the local Party closing ranks than Jerry making strides toward a strong GOP philosophy. Sanders proves that nice guys can win. Interestingly enough, former Mayor Dick Murphy was viewed as too nice. Sanders effectively cast aside any comparisons with Murphy by combining decisiveness and effectiveness with a nice-guy image.

Tax Increases – LOSER… Read More

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

Orange County did as it always does, came through on the right side of just about every contest. See a .pdf run-down of the OC numbers here.

Chairman Scott Baugh is a clear winner tonight, having overseen an impressive county party run precinct operation. The OC GOP won each of the measures it endorsed, plus Steve Knoblock for San Clemente City Council (consultants Janice and Paul Glaab utilized well the county party endorsement there).

Measure D, a move by the firefighters to re-allocate some of the Prop. 172 monies from OC Sheriff and the DA to the OC Fire Authority lost big. The was a lot of wound licking and cheering in the respective two camps, this fight was the OC Sheriff’s Deputies Union with help from Sheriff Mike Carona and DA Rackauckas vs. the Firefighters Union with help from various local electeds who sit on the Fire Authority Board. The bottom-line analysis shows that if there is a pot of money, someone is… Read More

Funny how not standing for anything in particular until your consultant tells you what to stand for comes back to bite you–sooner than later.

Cassie DeYoung, a councilwoman in Laguna Niguel is running against former Assemblywoman Pat Bates for Orange County’s 5th Sup. Dist. Presumably at the urging of her consultants, she is pushing an anti-tunnel agenda. A tunnel proposal would link Orange County with the Inland Empire, reducing traffic and pollution on the 91 Freeway and spur economic opportunities between these growing communities.

What is funny and the reason I suggest hers is a consultant driven life, is that it turns out our handy local editorial writer for the Orange County Register, Steve Greenhut discovered that DeYoung voted FOR the tunnel, before she voted against it.

Greenhut writes yesterday in the Orange Punch Blog:

Cassie DeYoung voted to support tunnel in 2003… Read More