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.

Boxer Calls For Independent Commission on Bush Torture

It's expected for a lawmaker in the beginning of a new election cycle to get a little more active, with high-profile articulations of positions on key issues. So it is for Sen. Barbara Boxer. In the past week, she has released a report on the statewide recession, featuring interviews with local officials from all 58 counties; demanding that Attorney General Mukasey intervene to reverse a "blatantly illegal" memo by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson claiming that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant (the Supreme Court has already ruled that it is); and most interesting to me, wrote a letter to incoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair John Kerry calling for hearings on the Bush Administration's use of torture, as well as an outside commission to investigate it:

I write today to raise an issue of the utmost significance -- the Administration’s use of torture against detainees held in U.S. custody. Despite widespread condemnation from Members of Congress, policy experts, and human rights advocates, Vice President Richard Cheney stated in a recent interview with ABC News that the torture policies used against detainees were appropriate and admitted that he played a role in their authorization. In fact, when asked if any of the tactics -- including waterboarding -- went too far, he responded with a curt “I don’t.”

I find Vice President Cheney’s response deplorable, particularly in light of a recent report released by the Senate Armed Services Committee following an eighteen-month investigation. In sum, the bipartisan report found that “senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.” The report, led by Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, concluded that “those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.” I fully support Chairman Levin’s proposal for an outside Commission with subpoena power to investigate this matter further.

The whole letter is here. This is one step away from the needed call for an independent prosecutor to investigate Bush's war crimes, but it's as close as any Senator has been willing to go. This suggests that Boxer considers an investigation of this nature to not only be the right thing to do in a democracy, but not electorally damaging whatsoever. She should be supported in this belief and encouraged to go even further. I know that Senator Boxer has begun asking for contributions to her re-election campaign. Maybe a series of contributions of $9.12, signaling support for a "9/12" torture commission and an independent prosecutor, along with emails and letters explaining this, would relay the message?

CA-Sen: Houston, We Have A Wingnut

Despite the expected post-election lull, there is actually a lot of intrigue over various open seats and 2010 prospects happening right now. Mark Ridley-Thomas' vacant State Senate seat will draw an election, likely in March, and potential gubernatorial candidates are jockeying for position (much more on that in the weeks to come). But there's also the matter of the 2010 Senate race against Barbara Boxer. The ongoing rumor was that Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is termed out in 2010, might go after this seat. However, being a complete failure as Governor has dampened that speculation somewhat. So into the breach has stepped... Chuck DeVore?

Republican Assemblyman Chuck DeVore will announce Wednesday that he will run for U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer's seat in 2010.

DeVore, R-Irvine, is declaring his candidacy just one week after winning his third and final term in the 70th Assembly District, representing Laguna Beach, Irvine, Newport Beach, Tustin and other portions of Orange County.

DeVore has scheduled an Internet news conference at 1 p.m. Wednesday to make the announcement. He confirmed his intention Tuesday in a phone conversation with Capitol Alert.

Now, Chuck DeVore is, frankly, crazy, and there's blogospheric evidence to back up that opinion. I don't think I have to cite much more than his opposition to marriage equality because it would embolden NAMBLA.

DeVore, well-liked by hard-right conservatives, is a down-the-line Yacht Party regular, in a state where the last statewide election favored the Democrat by 24 points. The lesson learned by Republicans, I guess, is to "go boldly in the direction of the insane." I'll say this - it will be an entertaining race.

CA-SEN 2010: Schwarzenegger/Boxer Hypothetical Gets First Poll

This should probably be noted today.

U.S. Sen. Arnold Schwarzenegger, rubbing elbows in the upper house with his uncle, Democrat Edward Kennedy?

Don't laugh. It could happen, according to a Field Poll released Monday.

The Republican governor, termed out of office in 2010, remains very popular with California voters and would give incumbent U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer a fight in what has been a solidly Democratic state, the poll found.


When the hypothetical question was put to registered voters in Field's most recent round of polling Oct. 11-21, Schwarzenegger had a one-point edge, 44 percent to 43 percent.

You could read this one of two ways. Either Boxer is well under 50% and Schwarzenegger isn't going to get anything more than glamour-mag coverage from the media, so this is a danger; or Schwarzenegger has parlayed years of goodwill and the most visible political position in the state and perhaps the greatest celebrity in the world into a statistical tie, so this is not a danger. Throw in the fact that the state may be headed to the crapper economically, and there's little Arnold sees fit to do about it besides more borrowing.

There's also the little detail of Arnold being almost universally disliked by his own party and not entirely likely to win the nomination (especially because DTS folks can't participate in their primaries), but that's just crazy talk. But if you think that California Republicans would do the politically expedient thing and nominate Arnold if they thought he could get the seat, ask yourself when was the last time they did something politically expedient?