Wow -- didn't see this one coming: the recall attempt against Assemblyman Anthony Adams, sparked by his providing the passing vote in the Assembly for the record state tax increase this spring, has failed.

According to the Secretary of State's office, the projected number of valid signatures was 24,579, while the number of valid signatures necessary for qualification is 35,825.

The recall campaign submitted 58,384 signatures. According to the Secretary of State's random sampling, only 24,579 were projected to be valid. Under the Elections Code, if the number of valid signatures is less than 95% of the number necessary for qualification, the recall is considered failed.

Source Document

I was forwarded a document for a recent California Federation of Republican Women's Southern Division meeting.

It is apparent that Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman are on completely different tracks.

In the wake of the discovery that Whitman is an elitist NIMBY and a fringe-left environmentalist (evidenced by her donations to protect the delta smelt)... we have further evidence that her campaign is attempting to veer to the left of Arnold.

Take a look at these quotes from their bios and decide for yourself:

"On September 15,2008 Poizner announced his candidacy for Governor of California. Poizner's campaign is based on strong in-state grassroots suppoer. The election will take place November of 2010. Poizner has worked for government reform, education reform, women's rights, and restoring California's position as a family-friendly, business friendly state."

and Whitman:

"On February 9,2009 Whitman announced her candidacy for Governor of California. Senator John McCain endorsed Meg Whitman for Governor of California. The election will take place November of 2010. Whitman supports Abortion Rights, same-sex civil unions and adoption rights for same-sex couples, but not same-sex marriage. Her views on same sex rights have created controversy related to her political aspirations."

Is it possible that Whitman thinks Republican women are obsessed with Abortion rights? Or is it quite simply that she is reaching out to Maria Schriver Republicans?

Poizner - Government Reform, Education Reform...

Whitman - Abortion Rights, Same Sex (insert issue here)... (Omitted: anti-gun, open borders, taxing the rich, donations to left-wing enviros, her huge fan list, etc etc etc)

I do believe that Republicans for Boxer (Clinton, Kerry, Gore, Obama) will enthusiastically endorse Whitman.

I received this press release this morning from my good friend Brad Dacus over at the Pacific Justice Institute.  They are doing great work here in California.

For Immediate Release: Thursday, November 19, 2009
Contact: President Brad Dacus (916) 857-6900

Sacramento, CA – At a packed school board meeting last night, the San Juan Unified School District reversed course and voted 3-2 not to go forward with a proposal to hide information from parents about student absences for so-called "confidential medical services," such as abortions.

Meg Whitman is the Eco-Poster Child candidate for governor. When Arnold ran for governor, people told me that Arnold was to the left of Gray Davis on the environment.

Now, Meg Whitman is the latest "Republican" that has gone of the Left Green end of a cliff.

I have been roundly critical of her Megness on a variety of issues and her reliably liberal stances on them. Since she refuses to debate, we are left to ask, "Who is Meg Whitman?"
 
1. She is a Huge fan of Van Jones - the communist that had to be retired due to his embarrassing behavior and its' reflection on Obama.
 
2. She gave not $100K, but $200K (or was it 100K then 200K?) to the EDF. The Environmental Defense Fund spearheaded the lawsuits against the farmers of the Central Valley in favor of the Delta Smelt. Whitman's donations to them were in 2007 - around the time of their court case and around the time she first Registered Republican.
 
3. This article details the recent discovery of her donation of $1.15 million to a land-grabbing organization in Colorado. They won a court case (again) brought by a bunch of residents of Telluride (where Whitman has a horse ranch) aimed at stopping development.
 
The land owner in the case was stripped of his land and paid $50Million for it. The foundation solicited donations from the NIMBY's in the area to pay the guy after he was stripped of his rights by an activist court.
 
Her Spokesman Tucker Bounds says she gave the money after the court case was settled. For those of you scoring at home - Poizner is getting criticized for actions in 2004 - but now we have Whitman in 2008 giving money to leftist environmental causes.
 
Mr. Bounds. - that makes it worse. Now, Whitman is supporting a land-grabbing organization formed by a bunch of rich people that have theirs and wanted to keep others out. And, now Whitman is trapped in the vice-grip created by her actions vs her words.
 
I'm a huge fan of Steve Poizner. Meg Whitman keeps making it easier.

Unforced confession: Sometimes I am an idiot.

This article was all written up in the post field here, and ready to post, and my damn browser crashed. Then I got caught up in elections work, and things fell by the wayside. That's all wrapped up, and now I can write again. Here we go:

Money's not everything in politics, but in political campaigns it's a necessary evil, especially as the population of your constituency grows. In a massive state like California with more than ten major TV markets and tens of millions of potential voters, you need tons of money to run a credible statewide campaign. $3 million could run an entire two-year Congressional campaign most anywhere else. In Cali it can buy you maybe a week of TV spots, if that. Besides that, a strong fundraising operation scares away potential primary and general election opponents, and draws in quality staff and earned media exposure that will only improve your fundraising operations down the road.

It's that reality that stands in the face of a lot of good press that's come Chuck DeVore's way in the past few weeks. He's become a second-tier candidate for the Tea Party movement that toppled Dede Scozzafava and is now training its nukes down here in Florida on Governor Charlie Crist. Conservative darling Jim DeMint has become Chuck's biggest fan, and former Hewlett Packard exec Carly Fiorina has seen her Senate campaign stutter a bunch out of the gate. Add to that polls showing him running competitively with Fiorina among California primary voters and performing about equally with Fiorina in head to head matchups with SENATOR Barbara Boxer, and Chuck would appear to have a lot to smile about.

And then you look at the Orange County Assemblyman's campaign balance sheet. At the end of September 2009, his Senatorial campaign committee reported just $56,000 in liquid cash after debts. Two of his state campaign committees are still in the red. His campaign is having a terrible time raising money, and is spending it almost as quickly as it's taking it in. For serious US Senate candidates, the year before an election is the 12 months you need to spend banking cash for next year. At the rate DeVore is running through his money, he's barely going to meet payroll, travel expenses and sales taxes (I would hope candidates in Cali budget for y'alls draconian consumption taxes). Not something you want to be doing going up against a candidate who can still spend $15-20 million to finance a campaign, not to mention SENATOR Boxer and her considerable warchest after the primary election is over.

I got no skin in this game and this election, at least no more than I have an interest in seeing SENATOR Boxer become Ms. Boxer come January 3, 2011. But for this to happen, either Assemblyman DeVore or Ms. Fiorina needs to prove that they can challenge Boxer both ideologically and financially. For now, Chuck DeVore at least seems to be the right ideological opponent to face off against SENATOR Boxer next year, but Fiorina certainly can be a capable campaigner with the right support system and message. But the bottom line is that in the race to finance a strong campaign in California, DeVore has failed to prove he can raise money on par with Ms. Fiorina. The most damning evidence of this is Ms. Fiorina's very declaration to run for Senate, in addition to the sad state of his campaign's bank account.

Don't take this as a belief that we should stick a fork in Chuck DeVore's campaign. There is still a ways to go, and as mentioned above, money isn't everything, even in huge states. But I will go ahead and say time is rapidly running out for DeVore to make a compelling case that he is a top tier candidate. He's got the support amongst conservative voters in Cali and from conservative opinion leaders throughout the country. But with six weeks left in the current fundraising reporting period, they need to implore conservatives to open their wallets as well as their mouths. Marco Rubio raised a mere $1 million last quarter and turned his campaign from an afterthought to a real shot at an upset. A $2-3 million haul for DeVore would force pundits to give him respect and give him the resources to actually communicate with voters in his state. Anything less than that, and at best he treads water to 2010 for a loss. At worst, Ms. Fiorina steamrolls him in the primary and goes on to face SENATOR Boxer in the general. If there is a Doomsday Clock for political campaigns, DeVore's clock is reading Six Weeks Till Midnight. Between now and December 31, he can bring home the bacon and make the case that he can raise money with the big boys, or if he'll keep treading water and slip into the red, and into the defeat column.

Written by Mark Bucher

This past week, a growing group of Californians are signing up to support the Citizen Power Campaign, an initiative that will finally pull the plug on the corrupt political machine created by the public employee unions and the Sacramento politicians they own.

Everyone in politics knows that the public employee unions are the most powerful special interest group in this state -- even the L.A. Times' editorial page admitted as much when they endorsed Prop. 75 in 2005. Worse, these union bosses and Sacramento politicians, have rigged the game by essentially funnelling your tax dollars into union political coffers, through the paychecks of public employees. This self-perpetuating cycle gives the unions more pay, perks, and power, while taxpayers are left holding the bag. This simple diagram says is it all.

This campaign is all about returing political power back to California's citizens. To do that, the Lincoln Club of Orange County has stepped up with seed money, while Tea Party Patriots and volunteers from all over the state are spearheading a grassroots effort collect signatures to qualify the initiative for the November 2010 ballot.

Conventional wisdom is that the unions are too powerful to take on, but I can remember when people said the same thing about the Soviet Union, another tyrannical power that fell 20 years ago this week when the Berlin wall came crashing down.

I was in Berlin within two weeks after the wall came down. I flew there because I had to see it for myself. I traveled in the Soviet Union just six months earlier and concluded that the Eastern Bloc countries would never see freedom, at least not in my lifetime. The Soviet Union was just too powerful, or so it seemed.

At the time I was there, soldiers in the East German military were still officially under orders to shoot anyone who came near the wall. The world had completely changed, but no one had made it official. I wanted pieces of the wall so I bought a sledgehammer and chisel and was hacking away when a soldier snuck up on me. I thought for sure I was going to be arrested. Instead, he took the tools, gave them to an East German woman who was standing nearby, and told me to get out of there. He left, and she turned around and said “These aren’t mine” and handed them back to me. I went back to knocking pieces off the wall.

I have seen firsthand the oppression of tyranny and also how the most powerful tyrannies can fall faster than anyone thinks is imaginable. The citizens of this state have more power than they realize – it’s time to take this state back.