The California Report

Just a few things I want to talk about in the Golden State:

• The Governor will begin his second term the way he ended the first: with pay to play.

Reelection is behind him, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is keeping his fundraising operation at full throttle, asking donors to pay for a stylish inauguration and seeing to it that he continues to fly private jets and stage public appearances worthy of a Hollywood celebrity.

The governor's political team has approached Chevron Corp., PG&E, Blue Cross of California, AT&T and other businesses, asking for tens of thousands of dollars to pay for a two-day celebration surrounding his Jan. 5 inauguration [...]

A copy of the invitation shows that for $50,000, donors can purchase a "gold" sponsorship that includes 10 tickets to a reception Jan. 4, four reserved seats for the inaugural ceremony the next day and a table for 10 at a legislative luncheon.

"Silver" sponsorship is $15,000 and buys a pair of tickets to the reception, two for the swearing-in and two for the luncheon, among other perks.

The money goes to a nonprofit committee that can take donations of any size.

You know, maybe this is for the future (though he cannot raise for a reelection fund, he can call in chits for future races), or maybe this is a slush fund for later initiative campaigns, or maybe he just wants to live in the style to which he is accustomed and he wants others to underwrite it. But really, I think this is about intimidation. If big business wants favorable legislation, they need to butter up the Governor.

• Now that our future has been mortgaged for infrastructure improvements (some of them needed), the horse trading begins. This $42 billion in bonds is the porkbarrel to end all porkbarrels. Every legislator in Sacramento is going to want a piece of it for their districts. There's almost no chance that the final number on spending gets held to $42 billion. None.

• I'm concerned by this report:

Debra Bowen, California's next secretary of state, was accused during the recently ended campaign of hanging too closely with opponents of electronic voting who believe the boxes can be tampered with to rig the results of an election [...]

Now, with her victory over incumbent Bruce McPherson secured (and undisputed, as far we know), Bowen will be California's chief elections officer in January and instantly become perhaps the nation's most prominent and influential skeptic of the technology. Or will she?

I spoke with Bowen last week as she was preparing to leave the state Senate for a month's hiatus from government before she is sworn in as secretary of state. She said she has not made any decisions yet about how to approach the issue of electronic voting. But she did say she doesn't intend to push to return California to a more paper-oriented system, or to encourage the universal use of optical scan technology, which allows voters to make their choices on paper ballots that are then counted by computers.

Instead, Bowen said she will likely focus on making the new voting technology more user-friendly.

There are legitimate practical problems with voting that need to be addressed. But for Bowen to leave aside the question of mandating a paper ballot seems almost like a betrayal to me. Bowen got elected by being the strongest voice in the nation on election matters. Now she's getting cold feet? I still think she'll eventually do the right thing, and California already has a voter-verifiable paper trail and random 1% audits. But she needs to be a strong advocate for the whole country on this issue.

• While the initial thought was that health care would be at the top of the legislative agenda, for the time being it appears to be redistricting reform. The Governor has unveiled a proposal not substantially different from the one which voters shot down in 2005. Actually, voters have rejected redistricting plans over ten times in the last several decades. For the record, I didn't support the plan in 2005, and if it has the same problems that one did, I won't support this one. I believe in nonpartisan redistricting, but that proposal was bad policy. Dan Walters at the Sacramento Bee has more. I am not optimistic that this will pass this year, and I feel it should be a major issue in the 2010 gubernatorial election. I don't believe in the spoils of victory. Furthermore, what people don't recognize is that Americans have largely gerrymandered themselves over the last few decades. I don't think a geographical redistricting will actually have much of an impact on party ID levels.

• I'm not a Villaraigosa fan, but this was a good maneuver, to recognize Los Angeles' sins of the past, and give back water to the Owens Valley from which they stole for so many years.

• There's a little bit of talk about netroots Democrats being angry with the California Democratic Party. I will say that I am not happy with how the election was conducted, with their level of voter contacts, with the way they parachute in for a few weeks every two years and never stick around to do the hard work of party building, with the near-total lack of contact with rural communities in the interior of the state. I am looking very closely at the elections for the Democratic State Central Committee coming up in January. There is a dire need to take back the party and at least try to make it work. Here's some information on how to run for the DSCC and become a delegate to the state party convention. This also has listings of the various election sites (it's done by assembly district) in case you would like to participate by voting. It is vital that we get true progressives in the CDP. There will also be some additional online resources that are forthcoming, I'll let you know.