Tales of the bizarre — I just got an email from State Senate hopeful moderate Jeff Stone who in a contest with conservative Assemblyman (and front runner) Joel Anderson to succeed Dennis Hollingsworth, who is term-limited out of office. The note appears to be some sort of "pre-innoculation" piece designed to warn the greater political community of impending attacks against him.

The interesting part is that this note goes well beyond the normal generalizations that you would expect, "My opponents will seek to paint me in a bad light — but don’t you believe them!"

Instead, check out this paragraph: In the final days of the campaign one of my opponents, well known for his dirty campaigning, will sling a bunch of outrageous charges against me. He will probably call me a drug dealer; he will tell you that I harm my patients; that I don’t pay my taxes or that I voted to hike your taxes; he will probably say I belong to an extremist Religious group and he will claim I have violated the public trust while an elected… Read More

Steve Poizner has launched a new television spot — and has put conservative icon Tom McClintock front and center. Tom is the "gold standard" endorsement for California Republicans, and expect to see a LOT of this ad through June 8th…

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Two pieces. FIORINA FOR US SENATE “Clear Choice”. Quite a bit of reading: the Palin endorsement I think is the important part. YES ON 16 “Don’t Write the Politicians a Blank Check”.… Read More

The campaign of State Senator Tom Harman, who is running for the GOP nomination for Attorney General, has released this web ad slamming one of his opponents, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, for being soft on the state’s 3-Strikes law…

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DATE: 5/25/10 TO: DEMOCRAT LEADERS IN D.C. AND SACRAMENTO FROM: JON FLEISCHMAN, CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN PARTY RE: KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

As the saying goes, “adversity creates opportunity.”

Your opportunity as Democrats who are supposed to be in charge, given the fiscal crisis facing California state government, would be to put aside your left-wing, socialistic passions, roll up your sleeves, and deal with the fact that we are going to have to make do with less – a lot less – as has been… Read More

My Red County colleague published this post today about the U.S. Senate race — a must read for those deciding whether to cast their ballot for Chuck DeVore or Carly Fiorina.

Chip’s post includes an op-ed Fiorina co-bylined in 2000 in support of Prop. 26 — which would have have weakened Prop. 13 by reducing the threshold fro passing local school bonds from two-thirds to a simple majority.

Click here to read it. It’s substantive food for thought for those trying to parse through the competing claims of who the conservative in the race is.… Read More

Mike Murphy of the Meg Whitman campaign shared a brief memo from their campaign pollsters with me. I pass it along to you. It is attached below. Upshot – internal poll shows Whitman up by 26% (53% to 27%).… Read More

Okay. You’re a State Senator that voted for two horrific budgets in a row, raising the spending baselines to unsustainable levels, in effect creating the fiscal crisis we have in California today. On top of that, you cast the deciding vote to put Proposition 14 on the ballot when you thought you were running Statewide, enabling one of the biggest RINOS in the history of California, Abel Maldenado, to cut HIS budget deal to raise our taxes and further bankrupt California.

Your reward?

An endorsement in one of the most hotly contested Congressional primaries in California, from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. Yep, you read it. State Senator Jeff Denham is the endorsed candidate of HJTA in the 19th Congressional District primary.

To be sure, taxpayer advocates and Lincoln Club members fell out of their chairs today all over Central California. Nobody on the HJTA board bothered to check with any of us, I guess. We actually vetted all the candidates, did the research, and came up with a dual endorsement of Pombo and Patterson. There were NO, and I mean NO, votes for Jeff Denham for an endorsement. I guess we just pay too much… Read More