First and foremost, thank you for being a ‘customer’ of the FlashReport website on California politics! While starting as an e-newsletter, it has now been almost three full months since we made the shift to being a web-based publication. The response has been overwhelming, and I just wanted to say THANK YOU on behalf of myself, and the team of folks who are contributors to the site!

THE MAIN PAGE, COMMENTARY PAGE and E-MAIL NOTICE features of this site will be DOWN until Tuesday, January 3rd. It has been an annual tradition since the FR started in 2001 for the Publisher (me) to take this time off. However, the FLASHREPORT WEBLOG WILL BE UP AND RUNNING throughout the holidays, where many of our contributors will still be posting tidbits and thoughts. I’ll be pitching in my ten cents, too.

While the main part of the site is down, we’ll be working on some changes that I hope you will enjoy. We are hopefully going to be bringing you a couple of new exciting contributors to the site, and we are also working on having all of the changes in place for 1/3 to allow for you, FR readers, to be able to post… Read More

So I’m on my last dash to the mall …it’s perfect Northern California weather for this boy from Michigan….drizzle….low dark clouds….and I’m surfing the radio…and I head toward the UC Davis radio station KDVS – 90.3 FM in hopes they were playing alternative college radio music….but not this morning…I was turned into “Guerilla Radio”…not the great song by the defunct militant leftist band Rage Against the Machine…but a real radical talk radio program – Making Contact.

Listening to Making Contact made the job of titling this post easy…but I knew I was dead on when I went to the home page of the… Read More

Historically, the California Republican Assembly has opposed pre-primary partisan endorsements by the Republican Party. This opposition doesn’t change because our friends may be endorsed. Ron Nehring, the current Vice-Chairman of the State GOP has put forth a proposal that would retain the Schwarzenegger endorsement for Governor coupled with an endorsement of Tom McClintock for Lieutenant Governor.

I need to point out that while Mr. Nehring was chairing the County Chairman’s Association while they endorsed Schwarzenegger over McClintock, the CRA PAC I headed raised and spent several hundred thousands of dollars supporting McClintock in the recall. So obviously weare pro-McClintock.

The reason CRA members like McClintock is he is principled. CRA will stand on principle on this pre-primary endorsement issue as well.

Mr. Nehring travels the state telling volunteers that the party has a responsibility to register voters, walk precincts etc…

Now it looks like the party will start choosing the nominee.

In 1998, the State Party made a pre-primary endorsement of Dan Lungren for Governor. Please… Read More

In my commentary today, I talk about an effort being spearheaded by State GOP Vice-Chairman Ron Nehring to change Party rules to facilitate a pre-primary endorsement for McClintock, establishing a Schwrzenegger/ McClintock “ticket” for ’06.

In there, I said I didn’t remember whether the State GOP had already endorsed appointed Secretary of State Bruce McPherson when they endorsed the Governor for re-election.

FR contributor Mike Spence reminded me this morning that at the time, McPherson had not yet been confirmed by the State Senate. So the GOP passed a resolution urging that he be confirmed.

That isn’t to say that McPherson, Poochigian, Leslie and others might not try to get on the “pre-primary endorsement band wagon” – we’ll see how this develops!… Read More

A new study released today by Election Data Services, a political consulting firm specializing in analyzing census data shows five states would gain a seat in the House of Representatives if reapportionment were done using data from the July 1, 2005 census estimates.

The winners — Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Texas and Utah.

The losers — Iowa, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

This is purely hypothetical at this point, the real deal doesn’t happen until after the 2010 census, but interesting to watch the shifts.

A Complete copy of their analysis is attached.… Read More

A QUICK REMINDER THAT TOMORROW WILL BE THE LAST DAY THAT THE NEWS (HOME) PAGE OF THIS SITE OR THIS COMMENTARY PAGE WILL BE UPDATED UNTIL TUESDAY, JANUARY 3RD. I WILL BE TAKING A VACATION BETWEEN THE CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEARS HOLIDAYS! THE WEBLOG ON CALIFORNIA POLITICS WILL REMAIN ACTIVE DURING THIS TIME, SO BE SURE TO CHECK IN DAILY TO KEEP UP WITH OUR FR BLOG TEAM!

STATE GOP VICE CHAIRMAN CALLS FOR MCCLINTOCK ENDORSEMENT AT FEBRUARY CONVENTION This week, California Republican Party Vice Chairman and San Diego County GOP Chairman Ron Nehring sent a memo to his 57 colleagues, the Chairmen of the various County Central Committees around the state. The subject of the memo – encouraging them to all join in an effort to change the bylaws of the State GOP and grant a rare pre-primary endorsement to State Senator Tom McClintock in his bid for the Republican nomination for… Read More

In his first interview to the press, former State Senator Dick Mounjoy outlined the conditions and reasons for running for United States Senate. See the story by political reporter Mike Sprague in the Whittier Daily News here.. You can read my quick analysis here and FR contributer Phil Paule’s ishere.… Read More

John Myers is the State Capitol Correspondent for KQED public broadcasting in northern California. Myers operates his own blog, Capitol Notes. Myers produces the Capitol Report for his radio station, and often has interesting items on his site (you can always check it via my Blog Roll above).

Today, Myers has a post concerning Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s calendar, which the Governor started making available to public scrutiny last year. Myers takes not that despite the making public of the calendar, there are a surprisingly high number of meetings that are marked ‘private’ with no details about them. Myers goes on to note: