Brown Attends Fundraiser For Republican D.A. In San Bernardino

There's a way to sort of excuse Jerry Brown for joining the partisan witch hunt and investigating ACORN, on the grounds that he is also looking into whether the two wingnut-welfare dress-up clowns who filmed the employees broke the law by taping without mutual consent. It's somewhat harder to spin away Brown's attendance at a fundraiser for Republican District Attorney Mike Ramos.

California Attorney General Edmund Brown, Jr. was the guest of honor and introduced District Attorney Mike Ramos at his campaign fundraiser tonight in Ontario. In introducing Ramos, Attorney General Brown said, “Mike Ramos is one of the best prosecutors in California, we served on the statewide Gang and Violent Crime Task Force together … he’s a real fighter.”

It is actually against the bylaws of the Democratic State Central Committee to endorse a Republican in a partisan race. Some members of the DSCC who want to support Republicans actually resign from the party. I'm trying without success to determine whether the DA race in San Bernardino County is a non-partisan race; typically, that is the case.

But there are lots of other reasons that a Democrat running in a primary would not necessarily want to endorse a Republican like Mike Ramos. Beyond the obvious reasons, Ramos has been accused of sexual harrassment by a woman who works in the DA's office. Ramos has called it an effort to derail a series of investigations against public officials in the county. Ramos has also received $30,000 in donations over the years from the business of Mark Leggio, who was indicted on charges of laundering over-the-limit campaign donations to various other candidates for office. Ramos recused himself from the investigation. Leggio pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months in prison. There's quite a bit of smoke here.

Between this and partying with the Lincoln Club of San Diego, the point is that Jerry Brown has started to run the general election, appealing to the center-right electorate that he feels wins elections. That may have been true in 1978, but maybe not so much now, given the demographic changes in the state. What's more, it's incredibly disrespectful to a Democratic primary electorate that is really being told they have nowhere else to go.

Debates? Bring It!

Gavin Newsom did what people commonly expect someone behind in the polls in a campaign to do - challenge the front-runner to a series of debates. From his press release:

“Our state is in need of real reform—we have a broken system that must be fixed,” said Newsom. “And now that there are two candidates for governor, we owe the Democratic voters of California an opportunity to compare our visions and platforms side-by-side.”

Mayor Newsom faxed a letter to the Brown campaign with a list of suggested ground rules. The memo suggests 11 debates in total—one in each media market in California. Ten debates would focus on one specific issue each, while the final debate would be open to all relevant issues. Newsom for California also made the following format suggestions:

• 90 minutes in length
• Opening and closing statements
• Moderated, town hall-style debates with direct audience participation
• Segments with moderator questions, public questions, and candidate-to-candidate questions
• An opportunity for candidates to respond directly to any assertions made about their record

I'm sure the hard-bitten cynics in the dwindling press corps will see this as a transparent ploy for attention from a trailing candidate. Nevertheless, my immediate reaction was: "A series of debates. Wouldn't that be nice?"

Phil Angelides and Steve Westly held a series of joint appearances and debates in the 2006 primary, and while that primary was in no way a model, it did help to clarify the positions of the candidates on various issues. The same for the nearly endless series of debates around the 2008 Presidential primary. I wouldn't call them all helpful, depending on the peccadilloes of the moderators and the laziness of the questioning. But in a large state predicated on TV ads and soundbites, 90-minute forums can at least offer a glimpse into the thinking of Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown.

By contrast, our recent statewide gubernatorial elections have been characterized by almost no debates between the major candidates. In 2006, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Phil Angelides held only one debate. During the recall, Arnold deigned to attend one debate during the recall, despite the other candidates holding several, and he neglected to debate Gray Davis, who asked for debates in the final weeks. One could hardly sympathize with Davis, as he only held one debate with Bill Simon during their general election in 2002. As California's political media has shrunk, so have the opportunities for gubernatorial candidates to offer an unfiltered perspective on their plans for the state.

So while there are political reasons behind this, why not? I know I have some curiosity about how Brown and Newsom see their roles and what kind of leadership they can offer, and so should everyone. Fortunately, Brown has responded favorably if enigmatically to this request: "If Attorney General Brown decides to declare his candidacy for Governor, I'm sure he would support the notion of holding debates under terms to be mutually agreed upon by the candidates."

Will The Spotlight Ever Fall On Jerry Brown's Ideas, Not His Image?

With the Rasmussen poll numbers filtering through the traditional media, the idea of Jerry Brown being the favorite at this moment to return to the Governor's mansion is taking hold outside of California. Talking Points Memo has a piece marveling at how strange it is to see the "colorful" Brown back in this position, recalling the time-worn stories about Linda Ronstadt and "Governor Moonbeam," although they do acknowledge that "this all contributed to a somewhat inaccurate caricature of him as a left-winger." Indeed, the TPM profile notes that Brown was a fiscal conservative in office and ran on the flat tax in 1992. Clearly, the author was informed by Joe Mathews' cover story in this month's American Prospect, which delves further into Brown's un-campaign for Governor and the puzzling question of what in the heck he's planning to do once he gets there:

But a little talk about the big picture is in order. Outside Brown's news conferences, California is coming undone. This summer, unemployment reached 11.9 percent. Tens of billions of dollars have been cut from the budget in the past year. Thousands of teachers have been laid off. State offices are now closed three Fridays a month. University tuition has been hiked. Thousands of elderly and disabled people are losing their state-provided health insurance.

The crisis is so profound that it may present an opportunity for California to fix its badly broken government. Coalitions on the left and in the center (the right is sitting on the sidelines, enjoying the Armageddon) are drafting plans to change the way the state is governed. They hope to get several measures on the 2010 ballot that would reshape the state budget, call a state constitutional convention, and perhaps unwind much of Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that severely limited the government's ability to raise taxes -- a major contributing factor to the budget hole California finds itself in today.

If any candidate should be talking about this, it's Jerry Brown. After all, Prop. 13 passed during his governorship. But Brown has yet to engage the would-be reformers. In the rare moments when he's asked how the state might be fixed, he talks vaguely of the need to forge compromise and invokes older, better times in California, when he and his father, former Gov. Pat Brown, were in power. "We can talk about 'restoring the dream,'" he told a union conference in Palo Alto during an explicitly political appearance this summer. "Well, I was around when the dream was here."

This is a dodge -- not only of the present questions about what he might do as governor but also of lasting concerns about Brown's own role in diminishing the California dream. Pat Brown was a great builder of the highways and waterways and schools that made the state prosperous, but his son Jerry announced "an era of limits." Since that declaration 33 years ago, the state's population has grown from 22 million to more than 38 million. The state government has not kept up. If Brown has specific ideas on what to do about all of this, he is keeping them to himself.

Brown clearly has a blueprint for winning the election - say as little as humanly possible about the problems that grip the state, and hope that tangerine dreams of the halcyon 70s push him to victory. You cannot blame him - it's a winning formula. With a pathetically thin state political media, it's fairly difficult to run on any issues to begin with, at least ones beyond the bumper-sticker variety. Arnold Schwarzenegger got elected by saying pretty much nothing that wouldn't fit as a movie slogan, and a celebrity-obsessed media let him get away with it. So I don't begrudge Brown the lack of specifics. That's the way the game has been played in recent years.

Indeed, I don't worry about what we don't know about Brown, but what we do know.

Progressives, both then and now, argue that Brown's brand of anti-government liberalism fueled the Prop. 13 fire. If government isn't all that important, what does it matter if you cut taxes? Brown had frozen highway construction, criticized funding for adult education and food stamps, and slashed social services. "I am going to starve the schools financially until I get some educational reforms," he said in one encounter with reporters.

What reforms, governor?

"I don't know yet." [...]

Brown, in the midst of running for re-election, called himself a "born-again tax cutter" and immediately reinvented himself as Prop. 13's champion. (He maintains now that he had to support 13 after its victory because of his oath to defend the state constitution.) Brown went so far as to befriend the legislation's co-sponsor, the anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis. "It seemed like he went over to Jarvis' house frequently," says Joel Fox, who would later serve as an aide to Jarvis. "Mrs. Jarvis would tell stories about serving lunch to the governor with Howard in his pajamas. Howard voted for him for re-election because Jerry convinced him he would implement Prop. 13 in the right spirit."

As it happens, the only thing worse than Prop. 13 itself was its implementation. Brown and the legislature bailed out cities and counties that lost revenues under the law -- and thus established the dysfunctional system of budgeting that plagues California to this day. Tax and spending decisions once made by city councils and school boards were centralized in Sacramento. The state Capitol became a giant piggy bank, with interests on the right and left using lobbying muscle -- and the initiative process -- to carve out special protections for their funds, leaving less for broad public investments. At the rare moments when Democrats tried to make such investments, Prop. 13's two-thirds requirement for taxes allowed Republicans, even when they were in the minority, to block them.

Indeed, the Jerry Brown of recent public comments shows no sign of understanding the present state of the state. He has supported the current Governor in various accounting tricks and tough-on-crime stances that have blown a hole in the deficit. He has stated an unwillingness to take a leadership position on any even remotely controversial issue. He hasn't strayed from that "born-again tax-cutter" mantra. As our own Robert Cruickshank says in this very good article:

"The problem with Brown is that I'm not convinced he's moved past 1978," says Robert Cruickshank, who works for the progressive 700,000-member network Courage Campaign and is a frequent contributor to the blog Calitics. "The lesson he drew from that is that he has to adapt to a more conservative reality. ... I'm concerned that it's not going to be the kind of governorship where you see significant changes in the way California operates."

If this is the Jerry Brown we can expect to "lead" in 2010, I know that progressives will have far better outlets for their advocacy, be it the Lakoff Initiative or the Constitutional convention. As I've said many times, you could elect Noam Chomsky governor and he would still be constrained by the same structural factors that resist true democracy and responsible governance. And Jerry Brown is most certainly no Noam Chomsky.

Walking Backwards In Indian Wells

In 2006, the Schwarzenegger campaign uncorked an ad almost immediately after the primaries showing Phil Angelides walking backwards, the assumption being that he would take the state backwards as well. One of the ads liberally quoted Angelides' rival for the Democratic nomination, Steve Westly, using the bruising primary against the winner. “What if Steve Westly was right?” the announcer says, after citing Westly's rhetoric in claiming that Angelides favored $10 billion in new taxes. Steve Westly wrote most of Arnold Schwarzenegger's early strategy and even his campaign spots, as Angelides was defined by his opponent swiftly.

Steve Poizner basically bestowed the same gift on eMeg Whitman over the weekend. The ads about Whitman's failure to register to vote for 28 years write themselves, but Poizner took the liberty of making the ad. If Republicans know how to do one thing well, it's go hard negative, and this ad will probably be very effective to the GOP primary audience. It will also be effective as a "here's what Republicans say about Meg Whitman" ad next year, should see prevail in the primary. Poizner actually reiterated his call for Whitman to drop out of the race "for the good of the party" over the weekend at the Republican convention in Indian Wells. The issue received major pickup throughout the media.



And Whitman did herself no favors at all with some of the worst damage control you'll see in politics, as she repeated like a mantra this line about how "there is no excuse for my voting record," completely avoiding any specifics about why. If she manages to win the primary, expect to hear this audio right through to next November. It's cringe-worthy.

I'm guessing the Republican Governor's Association just tried to pull back their invitation to Meg Whitman to come to any of their gala events.

This is terrible crisis management, of course. And it suggests that the general election would be no kinder on eMeg. But it's not like the split in the US Senate race, with serial non-voter Carlyfornia going up against wingnut conservative Chuck DeVore (The LA Times gets this wrong by trying to impose a blanket comparison). The Yacht Party grassroots has figured out that they have no candidate in the Republican primary, and regardless of who wins they probably won't be all that excited to work for the top of the ticket.

For activists such as Mike Spence, past president of the conservative California Republican Assembly, such centrist talk inspires unease following what they said was Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's betrayal of the Republican base.

Spence called the Republican governor a failure and blasted him for breaking his promises to conservatives by, among other things, approving the biggest tax increase in state history earlier this year. Schwarzenegger has also championed traditionally liberal causes such as Assembly Bill 32, which requires the state to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by about 25 percent by 2020.

"After the governor, people are cautious about who they support," Spence said.

Of course, this could be true of the Democratic grassroots as well, depending on circumstances. I think the only certainty in next year's elections will be the low turnout, as a slice of both sides stay home for their own reasons. But the Yacht Party's cast of characters look particularly uninspiring.

CA-Gov: No Antonio

Mayor Villaraigosa made it official by declining to jump into the narrowing field for the California Governor's race.

I'd been predicting this for months. He really shot himself in the foot with a first term that failed to live up to expectations. Some of that is bad timing with his re-election coinciding with a severe downturn, and some of that is simple overselling of what he would do.

But it was pretty clear that he had no interest in this for quite a while.

After a rumored cattle call that had upwards of a dozen candidates, it really looks like the Governor's race here will feature two - Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown. This sets up that future vs. past battle Newsom certainly wants, but Brown probably benefits from a narrower field and the lack of a Hispanic candidate taking a bloc of votes.

There, it's a horse race post, am I a real live journalist now?

Obligatory Brown/Newsom Past/Future Race To The Governor's Mansion Post

I've been pretty up front in questioning whether or not the next Governor matters compared to the structural reforms needed to get California back on a sustainable course. Nevertheless, the off-year CDP convention in Sacramento does traditionally kick off the following year's gubernatorial race, and this year was no different. Given what we know right now, I think it's highly probable, actually, that the Democratic primary will feature only two candidates. Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom were the only two with any visibility whatsoever in Sacramento, and while Antonio Villaraigosa may still feel he can jump in late and capture a healthy share of the Latino vote in any primary, his awkward exit from the festivities does not lead me to believe that he will bother with the race.

If that is the case, we have a virtual mirror-image of the 2008 national Democratic primary, with a candidate positioning himself as looking to the future against a candidate firmly implanted in the past. That's the general belief, anyway, and there's quite a bit of truth to that. Clearly, Mayor Newsom's convention speech continually framed the choice for voters as "whether we’re going to move forward in a new direction or whether we’re going to look back." Clearly, each candidate has a profile that fits that general mold. And the general mood of each candidate's signature event, with Brown lolling at the old Governor's Mansion with his 1974 blue Plymouth in the driveway, literally an historical set piece, while Newsom closed off a street and held a block party featuring Wyclef Jean (and got what amounts to an endorsement from Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson when he introduced Newsom as "the next Governor of California"), could not have been more different.

And yet Jerry Brown has always been something of a political futurist, someone who was mocked in his time for being unrealistic and silly, on issues which are now firmly in the mainstream of the American political debate. And as CalBuzz points out, Brown's presentation to the convention may be closer to the zeitgeist than Newsom's right now:

While Newsom (a Hillary supporter, BTW) spent the weekend trying to position himself as Obama to Brown’s Clinton, General Jerry delivered a Jim Hightower-like jeremiad to the convention, filled with rips and roars at financial insiders and white collar criminals. In tone and substance it seemed closer to tapping the populist zeitgeist of these financially troubled times than did Newsom's effort to fight the last war.

Voters fed up with Governor Arnold's shattered promises to “blow up boxes” and sweep clean the mess in Sacramento may well be in the mood for less “change” and more common sense, which happens to be Brown’s political meme du jour.

Ultimately, I don't cotton much to these popularity-based views of major elections, preferring to judge on substance. The primary electorate is older, but that means there's more potential for increasing turnout among youth, so we'll see where that leads. But ultimately, I'm going to judge on the basis of substance, particularly with respect to structural reform. And while Brown gave a fairly nice speech, highlighting his high-profile work as Attorney General suing the likes of Wells Fargo, in essence he left unanswered the charges that he is an apostle for fantasyland in thinking he can just bring Democrats and Republicans in a room together and get them to work everything out. On the other hand, Newsom, in a meet and greet with bloggers, came out once again in favor of a Constitutional convention to put all of these contradictory and hobbling budget and governing ideas on the chopping block and work from scratch to figure out a way to organize the state that makes sense. You can ague with his somewhat rosy picture of his record - as I have - but you cannot argue that he has a forward-looking view of how to finally blow up this insanely dysfunctional structure.

On the near-term issue of the special election, Brown has appeared on stage with Arnold Schwarzenegger to tout the Yes side on all measures, while Newsom has not. In fact, he expressed his opposition to Props. 1C, 1D and 1E, saying "I can't get my arms around balancing the budget with lottery money" and that 1D and 1E would raid successful and cost-effective programs. Now, what I can't get MY arms around is Newsom's support for 1A, particularly because he explained that his first instinct was to oppose, but that he "had to be responsible" and look at the impact on city budgets. However, 1A would provide no budgetary relief for two years, while 1C, 1D and 1E, which he opposes, would. In clarifying this, Newsom spokesman Eric Jaye explained that the impact on city budgets could be made worse by the bond markets seeing the failure of 1A and raising their interest rates, but there's definitely a tension there. Perhaps Newsom thinks that he can fix whatever damage is done by a constitutional convention, but a voter-approved spending cap would be hard to cancel out within a the space of a year or two.

(More on the Newsom blogger meetup in a later post.)

I think there's room to be critical of both candidates, as well as room to be praiseworthy. But rather than framing this election along cultural or generational lines, I think it's necessary to frame it along the policies they would both bring to Sacramento and whether they make sense for progressives to get behind. So it's not past vs. future for me so much as success vs. FAIL.

CA-Gov: A Look At Mayor Villaraigosa

We've had less than glowing reviews of the public comments of potential gubernatorial candidates Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom, but there has been somewhat less talk about the other leading potential candidate, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. His re-election performance was uninspired and listless, but that's not a description of his policies.

I have said in the past that the enduring image of Villaraigosa's leadership is a crane in front of a half-finished building. Now we are seeing him tested in a time of crisis. Los Angeles has a close to $1 billion dollar deficit, and he is trying to balance cuts with continued support for labor, and the results have not been pretty. While Villaraigosa led the effort to add a penny to the sales tax for public transit, he has vowed not to raise local taxes to cover the deficit, and as a result, the mayor will cut salaries for city workers almost across the board by 10%, and LA Unified will lay off 5,000 teachers this year.

Los Angeles school district officials moved forward Tuesday with plans to lay off more than 5,000 teachers, counselors, custodians, clerks and other employees, but the battle over funding will rage on for weeks -- affecting who goes, who stays and what schools and classrooms will look like for students next year.

The Board of Education's 4-3 vote, after more than four hours of pleading and debate, closed most of a $596.1-million deficit for next year in the nation's second-largest school system.

"Anger is appropriate and outrage is appropriate," said school board President Monica Garcia, who voted with the majority. "Nobody wants to do these layoffs."

While the board, which Villaraigosa effectively bought after a series of election cycles, did spare 1,900 elementary school teachers, the layoffs will be deeply felt, particularly in those ten schools the Mayor personally controls.

In his State of the City speech last week, Villaraigosa denounced Sacramento lawmakers, yet he supports the same failed propositions that will not address the structural problems with state government, and he did nothing, of course, to move forward on any of those while Speaker of the Assembly. However, he did spend a lot of time in his speech talking about his innovative environmental policies in Los Angeles, which have had an impact.

Villaraigosa denounced the "politics of no" as he called for a green technology hub along the west side of the Los Angeles River to attract new jobs and start-up companies.

"We need to build a future in which clean technology is as synonymous with Los Angeles as motion pictures or aerospace," said the mayor, appearing at the Harbor City factory of Balqon Corp., which manufactures electric big-rigs for use at the city's ports [...]

As a centerpiece of his speech, Villaraigosa reintroduced his plan for a "green" industry corridor just east of downtown that would serve as a spawning ground for environmentally conscious businesses. The speech echoed Villaraigosa's message during his recent reelection campaign, when he promised to make Los Angeles "the greenest big city in America."

Over the last four years, Villaraigosa has pushed the Port of Los Angeles to replace up to 17,000 diesel trucks with cleaner-burning models. And at the Department of Water and Power, he has pressed officials to expand the utility's reliance on renewable sources of energy -- primarily wind, solar and geothermal power.

And that agenda could be scaled up to offer a new economic future for California. Villaraigosa selected longtime green activist David Freeman as his environmental deputy, and as a result you'll probably see some form of solar initiative along the lines of Measure B, which was defeated in March, come into law.

So there are glimmers here. But I will personally never forget Villaraigosa leaving town in 2006 for an 18-day Asian trip in the middle of the Schwarzenegger-Angelides race, and neglecting to even endorse Angelides until late in the campaign (and even then, not in Los Angeles). The Mayor has a few good ideas, has been less successful with the follow-through, and on the big structural issues has offered no vision of reform.

We still have no movement candidate in this race.

An Apostle For Fantasyland

Jerry Brown's long interview with Roberts and Trounstine at CalBuzz sums up so much of what is wrong with establishment Sacramento Democrats, I hardly know where to begin. Essentially he values the need for "practical management" instead of "new ideas" at a time when the old ideas and the old ways of doing business have led us to the worst sustained budget crisis in the state's history and an unmatched crisis of confidence among the state's citizens. But Brown, adopting the high Broderist tone that has failed the state so often of late, thinks that the real problems in Sacramento can be solved through good hard common sense.

We wanted to interview Brown to ask his views on seven key questions we posed to all the candidates in one of our first posts. In his own fashion, he addressed most of them. However, Brown staunchly refused to specify what combination of cuts and tax hikes he would support to deal with chronic deficits, beyond stressing his view that California is a “very high tax” state and dismissing as politically impractical the proposal to amend Proposition 13 by taxing commercial and industrial property at higher rates than residential property.

“Anyone who answers that (tax and cuts question) will never have a chance to be governor,” he said. “It’s very hard to discuss with particularity anything that can be turned into (campaign) fodder.”

Moreover, he added, “dictating from the corner office does not work . . . If eliminating the structural problems in the California budget were easy, Wilson, Davis and Schwarzenegger would have done it.”

How would he deal with fiercely ideological legislators on the left and the right?

“I’m going to become an apostle of common sense,” he said. “I will disabuse them of their ill-conceived predilections.”

“There’s an embedded partisanship that has to become disembedded,” he said. “In my bones, I’m not that partisan. I’m an independent thinker. That’s my tradition. I’ve been wary of ideology since I left the Sacred Heart Novitiate (in 1960).”

So the guy who wants to lead the state thinks that he can show that leadership by avoiding specifics for two years. Granted, this worked for the current occupant of the Governor's office, but it's deeply cynical and the opposite of courage. In this defensive crouch, Brown shows his fear of the dwindling anti-tax forces in California, and how he still views the state from the lens of Prop. 13 in 1978. The statement that Pete Wilson, Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger would have eliminated the structural problems in the budget if they could, because they're such a bold crew of reformers, is self-evidently ridiculous. And I don't even know what to say about the "apostle of common sense" comment. He must have shut his eyes for the past decade as the Yacht Party grew more and more ideologically rigid and oriented themselves like a crime family of hijackers and loansharks instead of a political party. Appeals to common sense to a group that actually favored letting the state fall into bankruptcy makes no sense at all. Brown huffed that such a "kind of subversive attitude is unacceptable." You hear? Unacceptable! Or no tea for anyone!

Then there's this incredible passage:

We asked Brown this key question: What do you want to do as governor?

He quickly ticked off four key concerns with specific ideas in each area: Renewable energy; prison reform; education reform; water policy (we’ll report details on these in future posts).

Prison reform???!? Jerry Brown has been the poster child for furthering the tough on crime pose in Sacramento, trying to throw out the federal receiver who has been guaranteeing the constitutional right of prisoners to receive health care. He opposed Prop. 5 last year at the behest of the prison guards who didn't want to see the nonviolent offenders who overflow our prisons re-routed into treatment. This post tells you everything you need to know about where Jerry Brown stands on "prison reform."

Since I am a co-author of Prop. 5, Jerry contacted me a couple of weeks back. Said he wanted to talk about Proposition 5. He called me on my cell phone while I was participating in a panel discussion about California's prison crisis sponsored by U.C. Berkeley. I decided to duck out of the symposium. Months earlier, I had reached out to Jerry to discuss the details of Prop. 5, but those calls went unreturned. I figured that, if Jerry Brown was now ready to talk about Prop. 5, that would be a good use of my time.

"OK," I say, "let's talk." Turns out, Jerry doesn't want to chat about public policy. He wants to vent. He lectures me for five minutes about how, when he's governor, he'll solve the state's decades-old prison crisis in his first month in office. He neglects to mention that the roots of the prison crisis date back to his first stint as governor.

Jerry pounces: "Prop. 5 is anti-democratic," he complains. I tell him that that's an odd attack, particularly when Prop. 5 creates an independent citizen's oversight commission, appointed by the legislature and governor, to bring transparency and change to the state's prison system. And what could be more democratic than a voter initiative?

Jerry switches tack. He argues that Prop. 5 deprives him -- and by "him" it is clear Jerry means the next governor of California -- of too much power over prisons. I ask him whether he's actually read Prop. 5. No response. I note that Prop. 5 in fact allows the governor to appoint two officials to head up the state's prison and parole agency, not just the one allowed under current law. The governor also gets to appoint more than half the members of new oversight panels that, in turn, must run public hearings, take public comment and publish audits and reports on their activities. These panels provide new levels of transparency and accountability for prisons and for treatment programs statewide [...]

Jerry wants off the phone. "Okay. Listen. This thing is complicated," he says. "I need you to walk me through Prop. 5, line by line, so I can understand what you are doing here."

Then Abramson, the co-author of Prop. 5, tried to call Brown every day for months with no response.

Here's Jerry Brown on the reform that would make the greatest difference in Sacramento, the one that would allow elected lawmakers to do their job:

While not a fan of the two-thirds majority vote needed to pass budgets, Brown said he doesn’t think there is a “mechanical” cure to structural financial problems.

Sounding most unlike an old-school Jerry Brown Democrat, he argued repeatedly that regulations making California less competitive than surrounding states must be challenged. “We have to make sure that regulation does not curtail business,” he said, echoing the Chamber of Commerce more than the Sierra Club.

I cannot express enough how wrong it would be to put the fragile state of affairs of California into the hands of someone this afflicted with bipartisan fetishism, and so enamored of himself that he thinks he can bridge partisan divides without fixing the structural problems that exist to wall off those divides. Jerry Brown is a duplicitous fantasist, simply put.

More Fear From Establishment Special Election Supporters

Jerry Brown has become the last potential gubernatorial candidate to make a view on one of the propositions on May 19, which is part of a pattern, as Brown has studiously tried to avoid giving any legitimate opinion whatsoever throughout the winter and spring. He supports Prop. 1A, not because he can advocate for its substance, but because it represented a compromise:

The 2010 contender for governor was tepid in his endorsement of the measure, but credited Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders for their effort in crafting a compromise: “The budget thing is complicated and it is daunting,” he said. “They tried . . . and did the best they could to come up with something.”

“You can’t make the perfect the enemy of the possible,” Brown told calbuzz.

It's a ringing endorsement. And I'm thrilled that the leading candidate for Governor finds the budget "daunting" - very reassuring. In addition, he declined to take a position on the other 5 measures because "I have to read them.” And let's be clear that only John Garamendi, among Democratic hopefuls, opposes Prop. 1A. Maybe he read it.

The League of Conservation Voters, similiarly, endorsed the special election ballot measures without telling voters what the propositions would do, but with a healthy amount of fear.

Failure of these measures would open up a gaping hole in the budget and leave critical protections for our health, safety, and prosperous future at great risk [...] The measures are not perfect, but they are our best option to protect critical funding for essential environmental, public health, and education services [...] We need all of these props to pass, or California will lose more than $23 billion over the next four fiscal years–forcing billions upon billions in deeper cuts to education and other popular services [...] When the state was near a complete shutdown this February, a small minority of legislators tried to use the budget meltdown to extract policy concessions on some of California’s most fundamental environmental protections in exchange for budget votes. Thanks to your help, we were able to fight back and defeat the most significant proposed rollbacks. If the Propositions fail in May, the budget deficit for next year will add an additional $6 billion dollars in cuts to essential programs to an already impossible budget.

That's not even true on the merits. The Governor and the Yacht Party GOT those concessions on environmental protections, exacting delays in regulating diesel pollution, to use just one example of the many concessions. The CLCV is shading the truth and appealing to fear.

Calitics will have their special election ballot endorsements early this week.

Campaign Update: CA-Sen, CA-Gov, CA-10

A few campaign items that will hopefully tickle your fancy this morning.

• CA-Sen: According to the San Jose Mercury News, former HP CEO Carly Fiorina is "seriously considering challenging" Barbara Boxer for the US Senate. Yeah, that would be challenging, wouldn't it? What a fearsome figure she casts, as a failed corporate CEO who got a $25 million dollar golden parachute while laying off half her company! Who was 20 points down to Boxer in the last poll! "Corporate CEO who got giant bonus for bad work" doesn't seem to me to be the profile of a political challenger anytime soon.

I'm still holding out the possibility that this is an April Fool's Day joke.

• CA-Gov: When you are having major staff problems 14 months before the primary, I'd say your gubernatorial campaign is in trouble.

Lt. Gov. John Garamendi is saying goodbye to his senior adviser today. And whether he likes it or not, he is saying hello to speculation his upstart gubernatorial bid is struggling.

Senior campaign adviser Jude Barry, who formerly managed the 2006 gubernatorial campaign of then-state controller Steve Westly, let his new boss know that he would resign to pursue other opportunities on March 31.

On his Facebook page, Barry thanked Garamendi but didn't exactly offer an upbeat assessment of the campaign.

"I like John Garamendi and appreciate the opportunity to have worked with him and many other good people on his team, both on the campaign and in the lieutenant governor's office," he wrote. "But at this point, I've done all I can to help him. It doesn't feel right to just hang around the campaign. I wish John and the campaign good luck."

According to CalBuzz, Garamendi has yet to find campaign co-chairs or finance co-chairs, and we all know that winning statewide costs a ridiculous amount of money and essentially a two-year campaign, if not longer. I'm toying with the idea that California ought to have a slate of regional gubernatorial primaries, to encourage retail campaigning and keep costs down in the near term, to allow a greater multiplicity of views. Otherwise we will keep getting the same old hacks and rich people running for these seats. The state is big enough so that it makes a decent amount of sense.

• CA-10: Mark DeSaulnier continues to marshal institutional support for his presumed run for Congress replacing Ellen Tauscher, earning the endorsement of Senate leader Darrell Steinberg. Though he hasn't formally announced, DeSaulnier announced plans to walk districts as early as this week. That's probably a good idea, because a new poll shows that nobody has a decent name ID in the district.

A poll commissioned by potential Democratic congressional candidate and former BART Director Dan Richard shows state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier in statistical dead heat with Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan (15 and 13 percent respectively) and Richard trailing at 7 percent.

The poll showed DeSaulnier with a 19 percent favorable approval rating compared with a 9 percent unfavorable while 23 percent did not know. The remaining 49 percent said they had never heard of him. Ouch.

Buchanan received similar numbers: 16 percent favorable approval, 8 percent unfavorable, 29 percent didn’t know and 47 percent had never heard of her.

We just saw a special election in upstate New York where over 150,000 people voted. This special election, like most in California, will be lucky to get half that many.

Does The Next California Governor Matter?

Several weeks back, during the deepest throes of the budget crisis, I wrote that the problems of the state are not a matter of personality but process, and you can reason that out to understand that a change in the personalities without a concurrent change in process will accomplish absolutely nothing on reforming the state and getting a functional government again in California. This thought occurred to me again last night, as I sat in the press section during Gavin Newsom's "conversation with California" as part of his tour of the southern part of the state. Newsom's description of the challenges the state faces - and his solutions - gear more to the idea that a different person, dedicated to solving the same problems in a new way, can overcome any obstacle, rather than the reality that no individual under the current system of rules could possibly thrive. And while the San Francisco Mayor shows a recognition of the structural impossibility of California, his relative nonchalance about how to reform it shows he believes for more in himself to overcome the rules than the demonstrable history of the rules overcoming everyone in their path.

First, let's be clear that Newsom is running with someone else's platform. The first policy mentioned last night as a reflection of his record is the Healthy San Francisco effort toward universal care for the uninsured in his city. That is not his plan to tout, and the simultaneous description of it as a savior for the state's residents while cutting $100 million dollars from the city's Department of Public Health and programs aimed at the needy is nothing short of troubling.

"It's not that Healthy San Francisco is wrong its the mayor's obvious ..." (Tom Ammiano) pauses. "Look, he's running for governor and taking full credit for it. It's not true. The labor community, my office, community activists, health people -- some of the same people who are unhappy with him now -- worked with him on this. When he goes out there and claims full credit, that pisses people off, especially people who are dealing with [health care in the city] every day. ... The reaction is really based on the mayor boasting and overselling Healthy San Francisco." [...]

"Healthy San Francisco -- I think people should be very proud of it. I think it's going to meet its full potential. The rollout is going to be incremental and there's going to be little tweaks that it needs. But, you know, that's not the target [...] Unfortunately, it's getting tainted because of the mayor's boasting and overselling of it."

The neighborhood clinics at the heart of the Healthy San Francisco plan are at full capacity while funding is being slashed, and additional "woodworking" - residents coming out of the woodwork to seek services. The revenues aren't meeting the expenses, and the General Fund of the city, now facing a $590 million dollar shortfall (less per capita than Los Angeles'), has to make up the difference. As the economy continues to slow and the ranks of the unemployed swell, those at the bottom of the income ladder are already seeing service cuts. I would simply call it bad politics to put so much emphasis on a program you can barely claim ownership to and are cutting funding for at the same time as more services are desired. And this is sadly part of a pattern of the whole story being left out.

But let's set aside the issues for a moment. As focused as I am on process, I awaited Newsom's response to the inevitable questions about budget reform. He asserted support for a 50% + 1 threshold for the budget process, using the line "You need two-thirds of the vote to pass a budget, but only a simple majority to deny civil rights," referring to marriage equality. It's a good line, but he leaves out that he was shamed into changing his position after the initial proposal for a 55% threshold was slammed by just about everyone. The first instinct was to half-ass reform. There was also no explanation that there are two thresholds requiring two-thirds, the budget and tax increases, leaving his answer fairly vague, as it has been in the past.

But far worse than this was his flippant approval of Prop. 1A, the draconian spending cap that would effectively eliminate what amounts to half of the state school budget within a few years, and his dishonest rendering of the initiative as "a rainy day fund," without explaining how the rainy day fund is created. On the other ballot measures like 1C, 1D and 1E, which would privatize the lottery and raid voter-approved funds for children's programs and mental health, he gave a Solomonic "on the one hand, on the other hand" soliloquy and ended saying that he would be a bad spokesman for them.

This, then, is what needs to be kept in mind when Newsom urges a call for a constitutional convention. We see by his stances on the May special election what he would reasonably be expected to get out of that convention - a constitution that includes a "rainy day fund" created by a spending cap, coming at it from a right-wing perspective and ultimately resulting in a fake reform. This is essentially the position of Arnold Schwarzenegger, clueless media elites, bipartisan fetishists who assume without evidence the midpoint of any argument is automatically the best option, and most tellingly, the Bay Area Council, which makes perfect sense.

Meantime, the Schwarzenegger-sponsored political campaign in support of the six measures announced today an endorsement from the Bay Area Council, the business-centric public policy organization that is the impetus behind calls for a constitutional convention. Last week, Schwarzenegger made it quite clear that he supports the first convening of a state constitutional convention in some 150 years... a way to focus on multiple ideas for government reform at one time.

These two announcements certainly play to the idea of another "business vs. labor" narrative in California politics. Another possible fuel for that storyline comes in a $250,000 donation to the pro-budget measure committee on Friday by wealthy Orange County developer Henry Segerstrom. The donation from one of his companies is easily his largest campaign contribution in recent years, which saw smaller checks written to both the guv's 2006 reelection efforts and to the California Republican Party.

I support a Constitutional convention because I know what my principles are. I don't support mealy-mouthed calls for "reform" that are essentially corporate-friendly back doors to advance the interests of the powerful over the people.

Ultimately, Randy Shaw has this right - the people of California could elect Noam Chomsky, Warren Buffett or Howard Jarvis, and nothing would fundamentally change until the structures that restrict anyone in Sacramento from doing their jobs are released. And our assessment of who would be best to lead that reform should be based on deeds and not words.

If California’s future is measured by our education system, we are in deep trouble. And we are in this difficulty because the state’s Democratic Party and progressive activists have allowed right-wing Republicans to exert major control over the state’s budget.

I say “allowed” because there is no other explanation for elected officials and activists failing to put a measure on the November 2008 ballot removing the 2/3 vote requirement to pass a budget. Although state Republicans made their opposition to new taxes clear, progressives passed up a large turnout ballot whose voters would have approved such a reform. Passage of such an initiative would have avoided the billions of dollars in cuts we went on to face, with more cuts slated for future years [...]

If we have learned anything from the past months, it should be that putting money into state candidates will accomplish less than passing the budgetary reforms and tax hikes needed to return California to its leadership in education and other areas [...]

It’s time for the people to say “Yes We Can” to a new progressive future for California. Once the people lead, the politicians -- particularly those seeking their votes -- will follow.

It is senseless to discuss candidates for a race into a straitjacket, which is the current dress code for Sacramento. Anything less than fundamental reform will not solve the enormous set of problems the state faces - and it will take more than charisma, but an actual commitment, to make it happen.

CA-Gov: Way-Too-Early-Field-Isn't-Even-Set Poll Coverage!

Two polls were actually released today on the 2010 California Governor's race. The Field Poll did an extensive poll of the race, including favorability ratings, and Lake Research, a Democratic firm, did their own poll which included some head-to-head matchups.

Field's poll included Dianne Feinstein and I don't think the results were all that great for her. In the primary she polls well under 50%, compared to earlier polls which had her closer to that number.

Dianne Feinstein: 38%
Jerry Brown: 16%
Antonio Villaraigosa: 16%
Gavin Newsom: 10%
John Garamendi: 4%
Steve Westly: 2%
Bill Lockyer: 1%
Jack O’Connell: 1%
Undecided: 12%

Considering she's the most well-known figure in California politics, and that there won't be that many competitors in the final field, that's not a runaway at all. Plus, her net favorables with the electorate (+23) are less than Jerry Brown's (+25), despite her being more well-known (Among just Democrats, her unfavs are slightly higher than Brown's but so are her faves). If anything, this shows that she would have a tough race, maybe too tough for her to want to try it rather than luxuriate in her position whitewashing Bush's war crimes on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Without DiFi in the race, it's a packed field. Here's Field's poll:

Jerry Brown: 26%
Antonio Villaraigosa: 22%
Gavin Newsom: 16%
John Garamendi: 8%
Steve Westly: 2%
Bill Lockyer: 2%
Jack O’Connell: 2%
Undecided: 22%

DiFi's votes are, then, basically evenly distributed. Lake's primary poll (they didn't poll with DiFi) was similar:

Jerry Brown: 27%
Antonio Villaraigosa: 20%
Gavin Newsom: 14%
John Garamendi: 8%
Steve Westly: 3%
Jack O’Connell: 1%
Undecided: 27%

Big undecideds there, and obviously Villaraigosa is benefiting from being the only SoCal candidate in the field, although given his re-election performance he may have some work to do with his southern base. As for everyone else, there's time, but they're all pretty far back.

The Republican primary? Nobody's heard of any of the candidates, and the undecideds are off the charts, but it's early.

Meg Whitman: 21%
Tom Campbell: 18%
Steve Poizner: 7%
Undecided: 54%

Surprised to see Campbell that close, but it's probably just name ID; he's run statewide before. At least 63% of all voters, and at least 67% of Republicans, have no impression whatsoever of any of these candidates. Their favorables are miniscule. Given that, Poizner and Whitman will have to spend a lot of their millions just to introduce themselves to the public.

Finally, Lake Research did some (selected) head-to-heads.

Brown: 41%
Poizner: 30%
Undecided: 29%

Brown: 43%
Whitman: 27%
Undecided: 30%

Newsom: 38%
Poizner: 29%
Undecided: 33%

Newsom: 40%
Whitman: 25%
Undecided: 35%

Long story short, DiFi wouldn't have a cakewalk, Villaraigosa appears to have strength based on geographic isolation, Brown looks well-positioned, nobody knows the Republicans, and any Democrat can win.

LA City Election Wrap-Up

First of all, the turnout was indeed 15%, down from 28% for the primary just four years ago. That's mainly due to the top of the ticket, which was competitive last time around and featured just Antonio Villaraigosa and a bunch of tomato cans this time. But I don't think Villaraigosa should be celebrating about his performance. Despite 4 years of work as the Mayor, despite a field of underfunded nobodies, he actually got LESS votes in 2009 than he did in 2005. His support has diminished and not increased. And the seas are about to get a lot choppier.

Flanked onstage by Weiss, sometime-rival City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo and labor leader Maria Elena Durazo, Villaraigosa turned to the mounting challenges ahead from the city's looming $1 billion deficit to the possibility of widespread layoffs.

"I know these are troubled times for many of our families -- you see I've traveled around the city for the past few months and I witnessed the anxiety rising," Villaraigosa said. "I have a simple message for Los Angeles tonight, we're going to rebound out of this economic crisis and we will emerge stronger than ever."

The guy who is less likely to emerge stronger than ever is Villaraigosa. He ended up with just 56% of the vote after running a dismissive non-campaign where he refused to debate and spent almost no time in the city. One of his top lieutenants, Jack Weiss, is now in a runoff for city attorney despite spending millions on his campaign. And Measure B, the solar power initiative which the mayor backed, is too close to call at this hour, as provisionals and late absentees are tabulated.

That's an objectively terrible performance. And it should stop the Mayor from thinking about his next campaign so quickly. The enduring image of the Villaraigosa tenure is a crane alongside a half-built skyscraper. He is full of good ideas that never get the follow-through they deserve. That's what this election was like - he was already thinking about the Governor's race before finishing his re-election campaign. This may now be a fatal blow, but it doesn't look good for him. The Mayor of Los Angeles is a challenging, maddeningly complex position. It would be nice if the current occupant paid more attention to it.

California Campaign News!

Aren't you excited that, with nearly two years until the next election, here I am offering campaign news?

Except there are two significant developments today in California of which you should be aware.

First, Jerry Brown is throwing his hat in the ring to be California's governor for a second time. He hasn't formally announced, but this interview signals that he will.

It was 1974 when Jerry Brown ran for governor as a dashing 36-year-old reformer, the embodiment of change in Watergate's aftermath.

"I was the new spirit," Brown recalled. "That was my slogan."

No one would mistake Brown for a new spirit today. At 70, he occupies a prime spot among the elders of California politics. His career has spanned four decades, with three failed tries for the White House along his way up, down and back up the elective ranks.

Now, after two years as state attorney general, this Democrat who first ran for office in the era of Janis Joplin and the Beatles is remaking himself yet again. This time, Brown's quest is to recapture the job he won 35 years ago: governor of California.

California doesn't have a good history of Democratic candidates for Governor not named Brown over the last 50 years, so that alone is something. Brown has a lot to recommend him for the job and almost as much to reject him. He would be solid on the environment, energy and infrastructure but an absolute mess on prison policy. Right now, the field includes Gavin Newsom and John Garamendi, with several other possibles. If there's a movement candidate on the horizon, I don't see him or her.

The second development is that the DCCC, the campaign arm for Democrats in the House, has launched radio ads in 28 districts nationwide attacking House Republicans for their obstruction on the stimulus package.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), chaired by Congressman Chris Van Hollen, today announced the DCCC is launching a Putting Families First ad and grassroots campaign in 28 targeted Republican districts. The ads focus on the Republicans out of step priorities by putting bank bail outs and building schools in Iraq before the needs of the Americans in the struggling economy. The Putting Families First ads begin airing on Tuesday morning during drive time and will run for a week.

In addition to the strategic radio ads in 28 Republican districts, the DCCC will also begin a grassroots initiative which includes targeted e-mails to 3 million voters and nearly 100,000 person-to-person telephone calls.

This is pretty early to be making such a move. And what's very notable is the districts in California the D-Trip is hitting.

Representative Dan Lungren (CA-03)
Representative Elton Gallegy (CA-24)
Representative Ken Calvert* (CA-44)
Representative Brian Bilbray (CA-50)

CA-03 is an obvious choice, as it's the most ripe district in the state for a turnover, and Bill Durston has already announced for a third run after his good showing in 2008. It's good to see CA-44 get some action; Bill Hedrick came the second-closest in the state to defeating a Republican, and he's running again. (The asterisk on that race means that they are actually using two separate ads in his district, one on children's heath care and one on the bank bailout, so they're actually targeting Calvert more than the others.) CA-50 is a perennial tease, with the Democrat never besting 46% against Brian Bilbray, but it's just close enough to target.

The inclusion of CA-24 is interesting. We basically had no candidate there this time, as Marta Jorgensen spent pocket change to go against Elton Gallegly. She still managed 42% of the vote, showing that the floor for Democrats is fairly substantial. Gallegly has threatened retirement in the past and this is probably just pressure to get him to leave Congress. Perhaps the D-Trip knows of a good candidate waiting in the wings.

No CA-26, CA-46 or CA-04 on this list, probably because Debbie Cook, Russ Warner and Charlie Brown have made no indication that they're running again.

CA-32: Hilda Solis To Be Named Labor Secretary

MSNBC just reported it. They hinted at it earlier today.

It's an outstanding progressive choice. Solis is the daughter of a Teamster shop steward from Mexico, and a tireless advocate for environmental and economic justice. The Labor Department will be an EXTREMELY different place under her leadership.

But I'm bummed that she won't be available to run for Governor. I don't see a movement choice out there now. This is yet another example of California rising nationally and cratering locally. Solis made the right choice, I would say - if you're a California politician, you wouldn't want to work in California at this point.

Sen. Gil Cedillo may end up running for this seat, I think a piece of it overlaps his district. Sen. Gloria Romero is an option as well, as well as Asm. Mike Eng. Hopefully Ron Calderon, a Blue Dog in waiting, won't jump in.

California's Crisis of The Status Quo - And the Only Woman Who Can Fix It

There's an interesting dynamic happening in California. At the national level, the state's power is growing. Californians hold the Speaker of the House and four key committee chairs, including the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and now the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have Californians at the helm. Any energy and environmental policies will have to go through the committees of Californians, and they'll have California allies inside the Administration, with the selection of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Dr. Steven Chu as Energy Secretary and Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Nancy Sutley as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Other Californians are up for possible Administration jobs, like CA-31's Xavier Becerra (US Trade Representative) and CA-36's Jane Harman (CIA Director). It's a good time to be a California politician in Washington.

It's a TERRIBLE time to be a California politician in California, as it dawns on everyone in Sacramento that the state is ungovernable and hurtling toward total chaos. The two parties are miles apart from a budget deal, and even their biggest and boldest efforts would only fill about half the budget gap. The peculiar mechanisms of state government, with its 2/3 rule for budget and tax provisions, and its artificial deadlines for bills to get through the legislature, which causes remarkable bottlenecks and "gut and amend" legislation changed wholesale in a matter of hours, and the failed experiment with direct democracy which has created unsustainable demands and mandates, make the state impossible to reform and even get working semi-coherently. The state's citizens hate their government and hate virtually everyone in it with almost equal fervor, yet find themselves helpless to actually change anything about it, and believe it or not, ACTUALLY THINK THEY'RE DOING A GOOD JOB setting policy through the initiative process, which is simply ignorant (though they paradoxically think that other voters aren't doing a good job on initiatives). The activist base does amazing grassroots work, very little of it in this state. We have a political trade deficit where money and volunteerism leaves the state and nothing returns. And the political media for a state of 38 million consists of a handful of reporters in Sacramento and a couple dudes with blogs.

Many of these problems have accumulated over a number of years and cannot be laid at the feet of anybody in particular. But in general, the reason that we've gotten to this crisis point, the reason that California is a failed state, is because by and large the dominant political parties WANT IT THAT WAY. I'm not saying that the state Democratic Party or its elected officials, for example, wants the state to be flung into the sea, metaphorically speaking, but there's certainly a tendency toward the closed loops of insiders that prefer a predictable and stable status quo, that naturally restricts reform and leads to corruption, gridlock and crisis. I'll give you an example. Last night I was on a conference call where Eric Bauman, Chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, announced that he would drop out of the race for state party Chair and run for Vice-Chair, because when 78 year-old former State Senator John Burton entered the race, all his labor, organizational and elected support dried up. Fitting that he didn't mention his grassroots support, because it clearly doesn't matter who they prefer.

There is little doubt in my mind that John Burton will run the party, or rather delegate it to whatever lieutenant will run the party, in the exact same way it has been run for the last decade or so, characterized by missed opportunities to expand majorities, a lost recall election for Governor, cave-in after cave-in on key budget priorities and a failure to capitalize on the progressive wave of the last two electoral cycles. These are not abstractions, and they have real-world effects, $41.8 billion of them at last count. And honestly, the Special Assistant to Gray Davis didn't represent all that much change, either.

We have an ossified party structure, and a phlegmatic legislative leadership that is unable to get its objectives met because the deck is essentially stacked against them. The times call for a completely new vision, one that can energize a grassroots base and use citizen action to leverage the necessary unraveling of this dysfunctional government to make it work again. The work on Prop. 8 since the election has been tremendous, but ultimately, if public schools are closing and unemployment is above 10% and the uninsured are rising and the pain felt in local communities is acute, then we have a much larger problem, one that requires a bigger movement allied with the civil rights movement to make change.

The key flashpoint is the 2010 Governor's race. There is currently no one in the field with the ability to break the lock that the status quo has on California and deliver a new majority empowered to bring the state back from the brink. In an article published last month, Randy Shaw put it best.

None of the current field appears likely to galvanize a grassroots base, or to be willing to take on the “third rails” of California politics: massive prison spending, Prop 13 funding restrictions, or the need for major new education funding. Dianne Feinstein? She’ll be 77 years old on Election Day 2010, and she has long resisted, rather than supported, progressive change.

Jerry Brown just finished campaigning to defeat Proposition 5, which would have saved billions of unnecessary spending on the state’s prison industrial complex. This follows Brown’s television ads for the 2004 election, which helped narrowly defeat a reform of the draconian and extremely expensive “three strikes” law. Brown’s consistent coddling up to the prison guards union is the smoking gun showing that he is not a candidate for change.

Gavin Newsom came out against Prop 5 on the eve of the election, undermining his own “break from the past” image. He also spent another local election cycle opposing the very constituencies who an Obama-style grassroots campaign would need to attract.

With her Senate Intel. Committee post, it is unlikely that Feinstein will run. He forgets John Garamendi, who supported Prop. 2 (!) because of his fealty to farming interests and who first ran for governor in 1982.

Shaw mentions that the state is ready for a Latina governor, and mentions the Sanchez sisters. He's right in part, but has the wrong individual in mind. I am more convinced than ever that the only person with the strength, talent, grassroots appeal and forward-thinking progressive mindset to fundamentally change the electorate and work toward reform is Congresswoman Hilda Solis. She authored the green jobs bill that Barack Obama is using as a national model. She is a national leader on the issue of environmental justice and has the connections to working Californians that can inspire a new set of voters. She beat an 18-year Democratic incumbent, Matthew Martinez, by 38 points to win her first Congressional primary. She has worked tirelessly for progressive candidates across the state and the country. In a state whose demographics are rapidly changing, she could be a powerful symbol of progress that could grab a mandate to finally overhaul this rot at the heart of California's politial system once and for all. This is not about one woman as a magic bullet that can change the system; this is about a woman at the heart of a movement. A movement for justice and equality and dignity and respect. A movement for boldness and progressive principles and inclusiveness and openness. A movement that can spark across the state.

I know that Solis is interested in the Vice Chair of the Democratic caucus if Becerra takes the job in the Obama Administration. Congresswoman, your state needs you desperately. Please consider running for Governor and leaving a legacy of progress in California.

Three Looming Battles in California

I know that we all have to be focused on the final eight days of this election, and I'm committed to bringing a great victory for Senator Obama, wins up and down our Congressional and legislative targets, and progressive values embodied in passing high speed rail and beating back the extremism of Props. 4, 6, 8, and 9. But there are some events on the near-term horizon that we all need to be aware of going forward. The challenge does not end on November 4. Eternal vigilance, price of liberty, etc.

• Rick Caruso, a right-wing Bush Republican developer who created the great eyesore that is The Grove in Los Angeles along with Americana at Brand in Glendale, is seriously considering a run for LA Mayor. Right now, there will either be a legitimate election between Caruso and Antonio Villaraigosa, or Villaraigosa will win in a walk. Caruso, a billionaire, says he will make the decision by the end of the week. Caruso would certainly self-fund and would have the ability to basically buy the seat if he were so inclined. Richard Riordan was able to win as a Republican and I have no doubt that Caruso could as well. He'd play it moderate on social issues over which the mayor has no jurisdiction, and mask his true colors as a right-wing plutocrat. As we head into an economic downturn, Caruso would be simply horrendous for the biggest city in the state.

• Not only has Arnold Schwarzenegger already tipped off his next move after redistricting reform (and he shouldn't be counting his chickens), but the ballot initiative has already been filed. A measure calling for open primaries has been handed in to the Secretary of State. Instead of a primary where the top vote-getter in each party would move to the general election, open primaries would move the top two regardless of party into the general. Candidates would also be allowed to remove their party affiliation from the ballot. The Governor's office is saying they have nothing to do with this filing, but color me skeptical. We've already beaten the open primary concept at the ballot box at least once in recent years. The political culture is already too diffuse to allow a candidate to hide their party affiliation at the ballot, and the success of this idea in providing competition to the political process is more than mixed.

• And then there's the Governor's race in 2010. That gadfly Willie Brown is telling anyone who will listen that Dianne Feinstein is a legitimate candidate and is seriously considering the race:

She didn't tell me outright that she's running. She talked a lot about how she wanted to make sure the Democrats have 60 seats in the Senate after Nov. 4 so they and Barack Obama will be filibuster-proof - assuming he's elected as well.

But she didn't talk about staying in the Senate, either.

She talked about how things are supposed to work between the Legislature and the governor, and she wondered why they aren't working these days - and did I have any formula for fixing it?

She even brought notes. I don't know who prepared them, but somebody had done what appeared to be a detailed briefing paper on the state of California, including its finances.

It was not the kind of information you'd be seeking unless you figured that dealing with that mess might soon be your job.

Good thing she's asking Willie Brown on how to fix Sacramento. I'm sure that appealing to the state's high Broderists would be the only way she would ever govern. God forbid she ask her constituents.

Let me be perfectly clear. Dianne Feinstein cannot be allowed to ever assume the Governor's mansion. She has stabbed Democrats in the back time and again in the US Senate and would only do the same as Governor. A perfect example of this is her cutting an ad for No on Prop. 5, putting her face out in front of a position DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED to the consensus view of the state Democratic Party. It's not surprising; DiFi is the original "tough on crime" Democrat, and policies like the ones she advocates have caused a terrible crisis in our prisons where we are routinely violating the Constitutional rights of our citizens and bankrupting the state to pay for this warehousing. And yes, Jerry Brown's no good on this either; there's a political class of Democrats that think being tough on crime is the right thing to do, despite thirty years' worth of failure reflected in our current prison mess.

Compare this to our other Senator from the state and how she's been busying herself this campaign season - raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for potential Senate colleagues, sending a mass email to her entire list urging a No vote on Prop. 8 (good for Sen. Boxer) and writing the Treasury Department to demand that the government backstop the bad deals of AIG that would absolutely cripple public transit across the state. That's what a Senator that has respect for her constituents would do, not the contempt that Sen. Feinstein shows.

So, those are the looming battles.

Judges, Judges, Judges

Around the U.S., High Courts Follow California’s Lead

The California Supreme Court is the most influential state court in the nation.

That’s not just talk. The numbers back it up.

A new study counted up the number of times the decisions of state high courts were followed in other states — in other words, how often one state’s decision played a direct role in shaping a decision elsewhere. That sort of citation analysis is a common measure of influence, and there is a cottage industry of rankings for judges, law professors, law reviews, law faculties and the like.

According to the study, published in December in the University of California, Davis, Law Review, the California Supreme Court won by a landslide.

We don't usually talk about the Governor's seat as crucial in this area of policy, but appointing Supreme Court judges appears to be very important, maybe not as much as a President appointing Supreme Court judges but important nonetheless. It'd be good to see this identified as an issue area in 2010.