Well respected political analyst Charlie Cook has issued his latest assessment of which U.S. Senate and House races are in play.

In the Senate he places Boxer in the "Leans Democrat" column.

For California House races, most of the seats are either "Safe Democrat" or "Safe Republican."

Here is a breakdown of those in-between (seven seats "in play" – 4D, 3R):

Likely Democrat Cardoza (CA-18) Costa (CA-20) Sanchez (CA-47)

Lean Democrat McNerney (CA-11)

Lean Republican Lungren (CA-3) Calvert (CA-44)

Likely Republican Mary Bono Mack (CA-45)… Read More

[Cross-posted from RedCounty.com]

Former Anaheim Councilman Tom Tait’s campaign for Mayor is metastasizing into a freight train of momentum.

Current Mayor Curt Pringle, who is close friends with Tom (whose last two years on the council overlapped with Curt’s first two as mayor) organized a kick-off Tait fundraiser at The White House in Anaheim that was monstrously successfully, raising $190,000 for Tom’s campaign.

You heard that right:$190,000.

There are candidates who have been running for legislative offices for more than a year who haven’t raised that much money. For a city council candidate to raise that much is practically unheard of. Curt Pringle raised more than $300,000 at a single event for his 2006 re-election drive.

In this case, the candidate has ben out of elected office for almost six years. The massive haul is testament not only to Curt Pringle fundraising prowess, but to Tom Tait’s popularity, which cuts across… Read More

November 19, 2009

It’s a Tax, stupid.

by Acquanetta Warren

Halloween is over, but the fright is just beginning. At a time when taxpayers are struggling with a faltering economy, plummeting home values, declining retirement investments and education savings, salary cuts or job losses, and reduced public safety services, the state is there to help by adding to the burden. Talk about dumb.

It shouldn’t be allowed to happen, but it is – and at the worst possible time.

I’m talking… Read More

Noting our publisher’s self-congratulations on predicting Tuesday morning the essentials of the Norby win in the 72nd AD special election that same day, I’ll do the same here, because my own poll, first published here a month ago, showed the victory in the making weeks before Jon’s prediction. My poll, taken Oct, 22-25, showed Norby’s positives at about 38% and Linda Ackerman’s as 19%. Though limited to Republicans, these figures are startlingly close to the actual vote results in the race. In addition, while my poll showed overall Republican voter support as 27% for Norby and 17% for Ackerman (underpredicting Norby’s election day strength a little but pretty much nailing Ackerman’s vote) the cross-tabs for the absentee vote almost exactly mirror the actual result of the election on November 17. Adam Probolsky attempted to sully my poll in this publication by calling the survey “funny numbers” in a post. He was wrong. The actual results strongly support the credibility of my poll results and I certainly don’t mind pointing that out to FR readers.… Read More

Meg Whitman’s credibility with voters in the Central Valley was destroyed today by yet another revelation about her effort to protect the Delta smelt over the needs of our farmers in the Central Valley. To make matters worse for Whitman’s candidacy, she is proudly standing by her past donations to defend the Delta smelt.

This morning, the San Jose Mercury News reported that after contributing $100,000 to the EDF in 2007, Meg Whitman contributed an additional $200,000 to the Environmental Defense Fund’s efforts to protect the Delta smelt as recently as a year ago in 2008.

… Read More

We received the following volley from longtime FR friend Bob Haueter. Bob is the Chairman of the Meg Whitman for Governor Campaign in Los Angeles County…

Californians know well that our state is in a fiscal meltdown, with new budget deficit projections running as high as $25 billion.

Each of us is feeling the pain of the failure of Sacramento politicians to rein in spending and make state government live within its means.

Between budget years 1998-99 and 2007-2008, state general fund spending grew an astonishing 80 percent, from $58 billion to $103 billion. And in the past few years, while Californians faced layoffs, home foreclosures and higher taxes, state government continued to hire.

This must stop.

We need real leadership in Sacramento. We need someone who will watch out for Californians. And we… Read More

This video of Stephen Colbert interviewing California Congresswoman Jackie Speier is awesome. It is totally a must-watch video. Thank to Torey over at the SacBee for hipping me to it.

The exchanges on gay marriage are… priceless. And Colbert’s razzing of Speier’s proposal to allow 14 year olds to vote… A must watch…

Today the Governor announced that he is promoting Fred Aguiar to be Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor. At the same time, he has tapped Aguiar’s long-time protege and trusted right-hand Scott Reid to be Cabinet Secretary (the primary liaison between the Governor’s Executive Office and the various Agency heads).

Aguiar has served in the Schwarzenegger Administration in a variety of capacities from Agency Secretary to Cabinet Secretary, to Commission appointee. Aguiar has served on the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors (during what now seems like the good old days) and served in the State Assembly.

I have known Aguiar for many years and know him to be a calm, collected and pretty conservative guy. We applaud Governor Schwarzenegger for elevating Aguiar’s role in his administration.

That said, Fred, your job will certainly be a tough one. The seeming inability of the Governor to apply any consistency in his governing philosophy (except his now record-long… Read More