SD-15: Maldonado's Dishonesty

After running as a write-in candidate on the Democratic ballot line in June, Abel Maldonado is now buying spots on Democratic slate mailers, even though he is facing only token opposition from independent Jim Fitzgerald. This guy REALLY doesn't want to self-identify as a Republican.

Independent state senate candidate Jim Fitzgerald accused incumbent Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) of wanting to have it both ways, running as a Republican but appearing on slate mailers for Democratic and independent voters.

"I wonder if John McCain would have let him speak at the RNC if he knew that Abel would be paying for flyers that tell voters to vote for Barack Obama," said Fitzgerald, a retired UPS worker who is self-financing his campaign, in a press release. "I wonder if the Republican Party would have contributed over $50,000 to Abel's campaign if they knew that he was going to pay $12,000 to appear on literature that promotes the Democratic ticket."

This is another reason why Don Perata's bullying of Democrats to keep them out of the race against Maldonado was such a failure. He wouldn't have an opportunity to buy his way onto these slate mailers if there was a Democratic candidate. And so he gets to position himself as an independent-minded reformer instead of the down-the-line Yacht Party Republican he is, for the most part. This enhances Maldonado's public image at precisely the time when he is likely to run for statewide office (I know he lost the controller's race in 2006, and afterward claimed that he'll never run for office again, but I don't buy it). He spoke at the RNC this year, a clear sign that the party views him as a rising star. The proper move for opposing parties is to try and cripple the other side's rising star. You don't enable them when they can come back and beat you years later.

Thanks a lot, Don Perata, don't forget to pick up your parting gift in a month...

SD-15: Independent to challenge Maldonado

Despite Don Perata's extreme efforts to keep Democrats off the ballot to face his BFF Abel Maldonado in a plurality-Democratic district, Jim Fitzgerald has succeeded in getting enough petitions to mount a challenge on the November ballot. This is from his press release:

Independent Candidate, Jim Fitzgerald, is building support to unseat Abel Maldonado on November’s Ballot.

“I am running for office to bring independent thinking and change to Sacramento. Our state is still operating without an approved budget. The price of gas is out of control. Schools should not pay the price for wasteful government spending. These are just a few of the issues that are important to me and the citizens of our district.” (Independent Candidate Jim Fitzgerald)

Fitzgerald is not a career politician beholden to any party. He is an ordinary citizen who wants to breakup the gridlock in the State Senate divided on party lines.

Fitzgerald has worked for UPS for over 30 years ending his career as an account manager. He had personal dealings daily with small businesses throughout the Central Coast. Working from the ground floor up, he knows what it is like to work long days in order to support a family. Fitzgerald is not a professional politician but rather a hard working individual who will give back to the very people he is supposed to be representing.

Now, Fitzgerald is an independent candidate, not a Democrat. But his issue positions certainly lean Democratic. His main proposal on his website concerns modernizing the government fleet to make every state-issued car a hybrid or electric vehicle.

This is obviously longer than a longshot, but I appreciate Fitzgerald's efforts if only to force Don Perata to make good on his word to walk precincts for his good buddy Abel in the fall. That'll be a good use of time for the guy who just got $250,000 for his legal defense fund from the CDP.

SD-15: Update On The Dennis Morris Write-In Campaign

The campaign liaison to us blogger folks is providing us with constant updates about the write-in campaign of Dennis Morris, the legal scholar who launched a last-minute effort to step into the breach and get on the ballot to face Abel Maldonado in November in the 15th Senate District. San Luis Obispo County, where the effort originated, now reports 2,385 write-in votes, an addition of 396 since the count on election night. As far as the other counties, we have:

Santa Barbara: 413 write-in votes
Santa Cruz County 897 write-in votes

Which brings us to 3,701 votes, with 3,689 needed for passage. Now, Monterey and Santa Clara Counties have not released their write-in totals, but Frank Russo is reporting that there were 1,182 write-in votes in Monterey County. That brings us to 4,883. And that's without Santa Clara County:

And we don’t have any figures from Santa Clara County that supplied 24.4% of the Democratic votes in this district the last time the seat was contested in 2004. If Santa Clara County voters follow the rule of thumb of the other counties, there should be at least another thousand or more write-ins.

And in each of these counties there are a number of ballots not included in the initial election night sweep—vote-by-mail ballots or absentee ballots as they used to be called that were either dropped off at the polling place on election day or arrived in the mail at the registrar’s office on election day and were not opened until later. Also provisional ballots. These are thousands of ballots that will undoubtedly contain many more write-ins. In fact, Morris’ write in campaign got rolling—as much as it did—late. So a higher percentage of late voters would have been aware of it.

The caveat is that we don't know anything about what these write-in votes say on them. They could have Dennis Morris' name. They could have Abel Maldonado's name, considering he petitioned at the last minute to file as a write-in candidate in the Democratic primary. And they could have Mickey Mouse's name. We have no idea at this point.

Still, if all the votes come in at roughly the same level as they had, there's at least theoretically a decent cushion of votes for Morris to get to the 3,689 needed. That said, it's not at all safe, and there's nothing we can do but wait and see. We'll probably know sometime around the middle of the month, as the write-in canvass occurs after all other votes have been tabulated.

New CA Registration Numbers Released

The Secretary of State has come out with her revised registration numbers, broken down by county, Congressional district, Senate district and Assembly district. I'm sure our resident numerologists will break down the numbers more closely, but here are some quick thoughts:

• There are 16,123,787 registered voters in the state, about 70% of those eligible. Democrats have a 1.8 million-vote advantage, and by percentages that translates into 43.75%-32.53%, with 19.4% decline to state. Those are significant increases in Democrats and more significant losses in Republicans from 2004.

• The room to run for Democrats is in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. They have among the lowest registration rates in the state (only Tulare and Yuba counties have lower percentages than Riverside), and they are among the fastest-growing populations. We're actually within 5,000 votes of having a plurality of Democrats in San Bernardino County.

• CA-03 is now less than 4% difference between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans have a mere 15,000-vote lead. This is a huge opportunity. Republicans still hold an 8,000-vote advantage in CA-11, but that's dropping. We're within 19,000 votes in CA-45 and with a big voter registration drive I think that's reachable.

• SD-12 is Democratic by a 47%-35% count, and SD-15 is Democratic by a 40.5%-36% number. SD-19, the district Hannah-Beth Jackson is trying to flip, is within 10,000 votes.

• AD-80 looks to be in real good shape (46.5%-35.6%), though the participation there could be better. AD-78 is a 10-point advantage for Democrats, and AD-15 is now plurality Democratic by 3,000 votes. AD-10 is within less than 5,000 votes.

SD-15: Media Failure In California Hits A New High

We've been talking a lot today about the media whitewashes and their failures to properly inform the country in the run-up to war, due to corporate dictates or budget constraints or sheer laziness. That has a residual effect everywhere. The same problems we see with the media at the national level are magnified at the local level, where money is even tighter and cluelessness abounds. I had to do a double-take when I read the LA Times' paean "GOP maverick" Sen. Abel Maldonado, supposedly in the context of his re-election "campaign" for State Senate.

SANTA MARIA-- -- Sen. Abel Maldonado crouched to desk level and, with a mischievous smile, enlisted the help of sixth-grader Michelle Grahame to sweat the governor over the state's looming budget cuts.

The 12-year-old was immersed in her computer animation project, an Earth-like blue sphere hovering behind a curiously grown-up message: "Please don't cut Education."

Maldonado, on a tour of Ralph Dunlap Elementary, persuaded her to tweak it to read: "Please don't cut Education Arnold." He left with a printout he promised to deliver to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is hashing over ways to close the state's estimated $2-billion budget gap.

"We're in some challenging times, but I've made a commitment not to cut education," Maldonado, a Republican, told school officials and PTA members after the tour. "We're going to have to get creative."

It was a gentle jab at Schwarzenegger, but Maldonado has crossed the governor and his party leadership before, earning the scorn of conservatives and Republican loyalists. One party official writing on a conservative blog declared that the senator, one of the few Latino Republicans in Sacramento, "is not one of us."

Those same maverick traits, however, have intrigued party moderates who are struggling to make the GOP more appealing to the fastest-growing segments of the California electorate: Latinos and independents.

I'm flummoxed at why you would publish this glowing profile, which reads like it came right out of Maldonado's press office, without revealing some information that people might find helpful. To wit:

• There is a fleeting reference to a "write-in campaign organized by Democrats," but absolutely no mention of Dennis Morris and his quest to offer the voters in the district an actual choice to the as-of-now unopposed Senator. Mark Buchman of the SLO County Dems is quoted blaming Don Perata for the lack of an opponent to begin with, but even though Buchman is Morris' acting campaign chair, the story never allows him the opportunity to mention the write-in hopeful.

• There is NO MENTION AT ALL of the fact that Maldonado has crossfiled to run as a write-in candidate on the Democratic ballot in an effort to short-circuit that campaign organized by those scheming Democrats, no mention of the effort to run on both sides of the ballot.

• There is no mention of Maldonado's actual record on anything but the 2007 budget, like his vote against the Global Warming Solutions Act, for example.

• There is a mention of Maldonado's signing on to a plan even more far-reaching than the Governor's, to SELL the California Lottery, a shortsighted and ridiculously stupid idea that amounts to borrowing against the future yet again, but there is no independent analysis of that proposal; it's just stuck in there as the midpoint between two supposed extremes and therefore teh awesome.

This is just an abandonment of actual reporting in exchange for a gauzy personal profile. And considering there's an election coming up in less than a week, it's an abdication of responsibility.

Now, the LA Times doesn't have much of a presence in the 15th Senate District, they don't have many full-time reporters covering California politics, so they stumble into these half-hearted attempts to inform before election time, and this is what they come up with - a hagiography of a guy who's running as a Democrat and a Republican to shut down any efforts to challenge him.

This is the media we have in 2008.

The California Report

• As I noted at Calitics, Dennis Morris, a resident in San Luis Obispo County, got his ballot, saw that no Democrat was running in the 15th Senate District, and did something about it:

And so today he is mounting a last-minute write-in campaign to get his name on the November Ballot. From the SLO County Dems:

"The San Luis Obispo County Democratic Party endorsed Dennis Morris on May 14th in his write-in bid to run against Republican Abel Maldonado for the 15th Senatorial District which includes all of San Luis Obispo County as well as parts of several neighboring counties. The Party is urging all Democrats in San Luis Obispo County and elsewhere in the 15th Senatorial District to WRITE-IN "Dennis Morris" for that office on their JUNE 3rd BALLOT" [...]

This is crucially important. With the possible demise of the Denham recall and an unopposed Maldonado seat, Democrats were missing out on two of their best opportunities to achieve a 2/3 majority in the State Senate. Morris' bid at least provides the opportunity for a real race in one of them. Don Perata allegedly prevented top local Dems from running in this race. But this is a people-powered action that could actually be more impactful.

• So Arnold wanted to have a yacht party yesterday - at a time when his budget dropped the closure of the loophole that lets yacht owners avoid sales tax. So after his appearance got some publicity, the coward skipped out:

I waited, and waited, and waited, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t show today at the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco’s Marina District for an event unveiling a hybrid pleasure-boat engine [...]

But although Frauscher’s public relations firm had insisted Wednesday, Thursday and through much of this morning that Schwarzenegger had been confirmed to attend — and that the event had been moved from Thursday to Friday to accommodate his schedule — there was no governor. He was in San Francisco, apparently meeting with a certain newspaper’s editorial board, but he didn’t make the yacht event (though many reporters did, with most splitting as soon as it appeared he wouldn’t show).

• San Francisco is leading at the forefront of the electric car movement, investing heavily in charging infrastructure. Mayor Newsom actually had an E-car back when he was on the Board of Supervisors IIRC.

• It looks like Mark Leno is cruising to victory in his challenge of Carole Migden in SD-03. Mark's a really good guy and a transformative progressive; this is good news.

• Lost amid the budget wrangling is the fact that college fees are going up again for Cal State students, with UC likely to follow. California used to have the best education system in the world. Remember those times?

• As our warehousing of human beings continues, a California man who was shipped off to Mississippi has died in prison, reportedly of "asthma," which is, you know, often treatable. What a shame.