On February 26, conservative Marco Rubio, former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, will be in Southern California for a series of fundraisers in San Diego, Orange County, and Los Angeles.

Speaker Rubio has become a national cause for conservatives, as well as Tea Party activists, in what has been characterized as a battle for the future of the GOP. His Republican primary opponent is Governor Charlie Crist, who after leading in polls by as much as 37% after his announcement, now trails Rubio by 14%.

Rubio was written off early and his fundraising, as a candidate opposing a popular sitting governor, was shaky. However, Marco remained focused and started winning county GOP straw polls by wide margins and the MSM took notice that all was not well with Gov. Crist’s standing with the base of the party. Fundraising started to… Read More

There has been a lot of discussion about whether or not there will be a GOP Gubernatorial debate at the upcoming California Republican Party Convention. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that there has been a lot of debate about whether the CRP should formally invite the candidates to debate at the convention. I think, based on the posturing of Meg Whitman’s campaign, that she is unlikely to accept a CRP debate invitation — but, hey, stranger things have happened.

That said, it is worthy of note that there is a potential GOP Gubernatorial debate taking place a couple of days later in front of the New Majority, a major GOP donor group ($10k/year to join). Meg Whitman has already and long ago agreed to participate in a debate at that event — but like with all events, I suppose the devil is in the details.

Apparently the Poizner campaign is worried about the details of that event, as Poizner’s Campaign Manager, Jim Bognet, has fired off a letter to the leadership of the New Majority going to into the details of the debate format.

To excerpt part of the letter where they start by calling for a high-profile, non-biased… Read More

Saturday mid-day I sent an email out to fellow California Republican Party Central Committee Members, inquiring if they would like to see the GOP candidates for Governor, Attorney General, and U.S. Senate invited to debate at next month’s State GOP Convention in Santa Clara.

You can see the e-mail that I sent out here.

I have not sent out any follow up emails (not wanting to be a pest). Still, I’ve been impressed that over a holiday weekend I have heard back from around one out of every five Central Committee members.

In that e-mail, I said that I would keep folks up to speed on the results of my informal survey… Read More

This year the Republican Party is poised to make major gains in congress and those of us in California should be proud that one of our own, Congressman Kevin McCarthy, is right in the thick of it.

I had the great pleasure to work with Kevin when he served in the Assembly and I was in the Senate. I respect his skills and count him as afriend.

The Daily Beast blog just did a feature on Kevin and what he’s been doing on our behalf. You can read it here – or just below. The Right’s New Rock Star

With expectations through the roof, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the GOP’s top talent scout, is recruiting the candidates he hopes will win back the House.

Yesterday mid-day I sent an email out to fellow California Republican Party Central Committee Members, inquiring if they would like to see the GOP candidates for Governor, Attorney General, and U.S. Senate invited to debate at next month’s State GOP Convention in Santa Clara.

You can see the e-mail that I sent out here.

In that e-mail, I said that I would keep folks up to speed on the results of my informal survey periodically. So below is the first update. NUMBER OF CRP MEMBERS RESPONDING SO FAR: 211 (Roughly 15% Of All… Read More

Yesterday we carried a column on the FlashReport from longtime FR friend Villa Park Councilwoman Deb Pauly that was extremely critical of GOP Gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman on the issue of paycheck protection.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of attention to detail on the part of the team here, that piece did not indicate that it was submitted to the FlashReport by the Poizner for Governor campaign, or that Deb was a backer of Poizner.

We here at the FlashReport take our business very seriously, and felt that this oversight needed to be corrected (the column if you go back to it is now correctly annotated) and a formal statement placed here on the blog.

Look for plenty of more pieces on this website that are hard hitting, that’s the nature of politics. But look for us to do a better job of letting you know from where the hit is coming.

Our apologies.

Jon Fleischman Publisher, The FlashReport… Read More

Usually when I take the time to write a more in-depth piece about someone, I put up their photo so that you can see what he or she looks like. Except in the case of Robert Stryk I couldn’t find a photo anywhere online. So instead of looking at Stryk’s photo, you have to allow me to paint you a picture of a young, single 34 year old Washington, D.C., lobbyist with a transient and questionable background, who one day decided he would throw his hat into the ring to be the next Mayor of the small Napa County town of Yountville, population approximately 3,000.

Those who have spent time reading my columns over the years know that second to politics, my second passion in life is wine. I’ve been a “wine enthusiast” for many years, and love when I can to visit the Bay Area wine regions, and often times stay at a favorite… Read More

On July 2nd, 2009 in a special session of the Legislature dealing with the budget, abill was introduced to mandate new reporting and filing requirements for tens of thousands of California businesses thatpreviously never had to deal with the Board of Equalization.The bill passedand was chaptered on July 28 without any of the usualpublic outreach or amnesty period.

Forbes.com has the story this morning. http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/11/california-internet-sales-tax-personal-finance-small-business-delay.html… Read More