On Mark Williams' blog, he spends a considerable amount of time and energy on the 4th Congressional District race generally, and on promoting Eric Egland's candidacy specifically. 

In addition to heavily covering the Ken Campbell anti-endorsement, he spent some time discussing how Congressman Doolittle was essentially planning on "handing off" the seat to freshman Assemblyman Ted Gaines.  Here is an except from his posting on August 25th, discussing that day's Sacramento Bee article:

UPDATE 8/25:  The Bee piece is here deep in the article is mention of Assemblyman Ted Gaines.  Congressman Doolittle keeps Gaines on a very short leash as Gaines is heir apparent to Doolittle�s congressional seat, at least as anointed by the same GOP leadership that has driven the party up onto the rocks, backed it off, and driven back up onto the rocks repeatedly in recent years.   If Gaines announces it is for one of two reasons (1) Doolittle assigns him to primary as a straw man, just long enough to take out Egland, to whom Doolittle knows he will lose in a fair race; or (2) the same boneheads who brought us Governor Arnold Kennedy (always grinning because the joke is on us) will have finally figured out that John is already �former� congressman Doolittle.  To keep the seat �in the family� they will offer up the congressman�s head, mumble something about �reform� and bring in Ted �John Doolittle Junior� Gaines to make sure that their hold on an ever shrinking base remains firm.  Either way Cindy Sheehan BFF Charlie Brown takes the oath of office in January 2009 and California�s GOP will have taken another self-inflected head-wound.

It seems that Congressman Doolittle's "leash" on Assemblyman Gaines is not working that effectively.  Just a few days later, we all read the Auburn Journal article wherein Gaines essentially called out Doolittle for being unethical and unelectable.  Is Assemblyman Gaines really "Doolittle Jr." as Williams' contends?

Also, it would be interesting to see the Placer CRA blog or Dump Doolittle or Calitics (or any other blog) handicap all of the potential candidates, including Senator Cox, Assemblyman Gaines, former Senator Leslie, and Tom Sullivan of KFBK.