Orange County is a hothouses of political races this year, and at the behest of my publisher, I’ll post a series of overviews.

Today, the 4th Supervisor District.

Incumbent Chris Norby is running for re-election to a second term. The libertarian Republican was first elected to the Board of Supervisors in Orange County’s biggest political upset in a generation, defeating Supervisor Cynthia Coad (unnecessary full disclosure: the Coads are old family friends, and her husband was my dentist). Prior to that, Norby had served on the Fullerton City Council since 1984.

Norby has quickly become Orange County conservatives’ favorite supervisor. He is a state leader in redevelopment reform and the bane of the public employee unions. His re-election campaign is being run by former Sen. John Lewis and Matt Holder, who ran his first supervisor campaign and are fresh from running the resoundingly successful No on Measure D campaign (full disclosure: I served as Lewis’ press secretary from 1991-94, and mentored Holder when… Read More

It didn’t make any of our local media, but Governor Schwarzenegger paid a quiet visit to the proposed alignment for 241 tollway completion this past Saturday. Governor "I Say Build It!" toured the San Mateo Campground and Trestles Beach. No word on whether the surfers yelled "locals only!" at him.

The Governor was accompanied by the TCA’s chief engineer James Brown, local parks superintendent Rich Rozelle and Director of State Parks Ruth Coleman. Coleman is a die-hard opponent of completing the 241 — or building any road on any state park land — period. Lobbying by Coleman and the Governor’s brother-in-law Bobby Shriver are the proximate cause of the Administration request that TCA’s wait another 30 days before approving the project EIR.

The Governator blah-blahed some comments about building more roads to strengthen our economy, but didn’t say one way or another whether he’ll support or oppose the 241 completion.

A few columns ago, I called upon the Governor to visit the site and see for himself if this iffy overflow campground, nearly-always-dry creekbed, and popular surfing spot… Read More

Susan Hartley and John Witt are amazing. I don’t even know them, and since 95% of FR readers don’t hail from San Diego County, you probably don’t either. As a matter of fact, if you are from San Diego, you might not know that these are two GOP members of the County Board of Education. That said, they have, at best, betrayed their own political party by voting with a Democrat colleague to install a Democrat onto the County Board of Education. At worst, they may have violated state law in doing so… Let me explain…

I received a phone call last night from San Diego FR correspondent Barry Jantz just before 6 p.m. saying that current La Mesa-Spring Valley School Trustee Sharon Jones would be appointed to the vacancy on the San Diego County Board of Education. (As you know, Jantz has been covering the vacancy created by Ernie Dronenburg’s resignation extensively on the FR.) He indicated that the vote would be 3-1, that Bob Watkins would be in the minority, and that if he were wrong, he would eat his hat, take a photo of him doing so, and post it here.

About an hour and a half later, at… Read More

My day-job is in media relations for the Sheriff’s Department in Orange County. I was working very late last night at our county’s Emergency Operations Center as we are battling some large wildfires in the eastern canyons of our county. Hence the late update of the homepage this morning.

You can read more about the fires here.

That said, I don’t have time to pen a commentary today, though I will give a quick ‘shout out’ to Republican State Senator Bob Dutton. He and I were speaking recently, and he was expressing his extreme frustration with the proposal to hike by $1 and hour the minimum wage mandate on California businesses. After our discussion, he sent me a column he has written on the subject, which is featured on the… Read More

When I moved to the Bay Area in 2000, I was amused to have Governor Moonbeam as my mayor. At election time, I was suprised to find myself voting for the guy because Jerry Brown actually was the more mainstream of the two candidates (that’s mainstream for the Bay Area–both candidates loudly proclaimed their vegetarianism during the 2002 race).

With Brown termed out of office, it looked like City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente was going to be elected Oakland’s new mayor in 2006. De La Fuente has been madly holding neighborhood coffee klatches around the city and many people I know, even the few Republicans around here, have given him good marks after meeting him. The multiple rape charges against his grown son do pose a problem, but it is likely that voters may not hold the father accountable for the son’s sins.

But De La Fuente’s easy mayoral race got tougher when former… Read More

My day-job is in media relations for the Sheriff’s Department in Orange County. I was working very late last night at our county’s Emergency Operations Center as we are battling some large wildfires in the eastern canyons of our county. Hence the late update of the homepage this morning.

You can read more about the fires here.

That said, I don’t have time to pen a commentary today, though I will give a quick ‘shout out’ to Republican State Senator Bob Dutton. He and I were speaking recently, and he was expressing his extreme frustration with the proposal to hike by $1 and hour the minimum wage mandate on California businesses. After our discussion, he sent me a column he has written on the subject, which is featured on the… Read More

Got you with my headline.

This post isn’t about the global chess match between Kevin McCarthy and Fabian Nunez to pick up Assembly seats. It’s about Placer County Supervisor Ted Gaines — he will walk into termed out Assemblyman Tim Leslie’s (pictured at right) Assembly seat this November.

For those not familiar with the district, the 4th Assembly District includes, Roseville, Rocklin, South Lake Tahoe, Auburn, Lincoln, Markleeville, Placerville and Loomis.

With Registration at 47 Republican to 31 Democrat, this is a safe Republican seat and so far Gaines has been able to keep his GOP primary field clear. He’s done it by securing the big endorsements early from Congressmen Doolittle and Lungren and the the overlapping State Senator Dave Cox. Gaines’ hired fundraiser extraordinaire Wendy Warfield to help him raise money and he raked it in last year —… Read More

Well known is LA Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa’s attempt to take control of the Los Angeles Unified School District. His ambition is shown by his response to the State of the Union.That is not enough.

The La Mayor has four appointments on the all-powerful, semi-public Metropolitan Water District. If you want to control water politics control the MWD. The Mayor campaign to choose Democratic Assemblyman and lobbyist Richard Katz to head the agency is making waves. Read about it here.or is this really linked to Katz, Anonio trying to help a aplan to takewater from the Mojave Desert. See it here. Will the rest of the MWD board resist?… Read More