Singling out 1 in 77

The California Club for Growth, a new independent expenditure committee headed by Ventura County Assemblyman Tony Strickland has targeted Democratic incumbent Assemblywoman Nicole Parra of Bakersfield for defeat. It has sent out a number of mailings that attack Parra for her support of measures it characterizes as tax increases.

One vote cited in the mailers is Parra's support for AB 1266, a measure related to the 2003 budget that made a number of cuts in education spending. Among the cuts were a reduction in the number of guaranteed state grants that pay college expenses for would-be teachers who agree to teach after they graduate in schools lacking credentialed teachers. Also included was a partial suspension of college grants given to high school students who score highly on the state's standardized tests. Because of these previsions, the mailers describe the bill as one that raises taxes on college students.

That bill was approved by the Assembly on 77-3 vote. Among those also voting in favor was Strickland.

In today's financial news....

The daily late contribution report at the Secretary of State's Web site is a must read for political watchers this time of year. Among the info gleaned from today's reports:
* The contest in the 61st Assembly District, once a targeted race by Republicans, is no longer a contest. Democratic incumbent Gloria Negrete McLeod is confident enough of victory that she donated $26,600 to the San Diego County Democratic Central Committee.
* Democrats still see the 35th Assembly District race in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties as a major struggle. The Riverside County Democratic Central Committee contributed $10,000 to the campaign of Pedro Nava. Earlier, Nava had been the beneficiary of a $75,000 contribution from the Santa Clara County Democratic Central Committee.
* It turns out that $10,000 Democratic contribution to Ferial Masry reported in today's Ventura County Star (see story,) came not from the state Democratic Party, but from the Sacramento County Democratic Central Committee.

Republicans showed the way in 2002 in how to use county central committees as conduits for receiving and making contributions, and the Democrats have picked up the tactic this year. They are important because, as a party entity, the county central committees can recieve and make unlimited contributions to candidates.

On Tuesday, count to 12 million

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley today forecast that more than 12 million Californians will cast ballots on Tuesday — about 1 million more than voted in the presidential election four years ago. The 12 million number would be reached if turnout reaches or surpasses Shelley's prediction that 73 percent of those registered will vote.

If that is accurate, turnout would be the highest since 1992, when 75.3 percent of registered Californians voted. Shelley said he based his projection on a surge in absentee ballots issued (4.3 million issued this year; 3 million cast in 2000) and a stampede of new voter registrations. Since about Labor Day, Shelley noted, about 1 million new registrations have been added to the rolls.

Those are the statistics. The anecdotes of voter passion this time around are even more persuasive. Pollster Ben Tulchin of the California firm Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates, told me recently he's never seen an election in which poll respondents are quite so assertive about their opinions.

"The last time was polarized," he said, "but there wasn't the sense that if the other person wins it's the end of the world." Tulchin told of a focus group he conducted in Florida the day of the final presidential debate. "We had two women who almost got into a fight. We had to step in to get them to settle down. These were supposedly undecided voters. Even the undecided voters aren't undecided."

Phi Beta Kerry

Checking out the presidential polls on a daily basis can drive a political junkie nuts. But if you're looking for something a little more satisfying than a hot tip on who's going to win next Tuesday, there is the occasional nugget to be found.

One is at Democracy Corps, the outfit headed by former Clinton polling guru Stanley Greenberg.

Greenberg says — surprise — that the political press is missing the story of this presidential election. While it is focusing on the diminishment of the Gender Gap, reporting that women are more likely to support George Bush this time around than in 2000, it is missing the emergence of a new gap just as large -- the Education Gap.

Among voters with college and advanced degrees, the Democracy Corps polling shows John Kerry with a 10-point lead. Among voters whose highest educational attainment is a high school diploma or less, Bush is winning by 2 points. That makes for a 12-point gap.

If nothing else, it suggests that if Kerry wins it's a pretty sure bet he'll follow through on his promise to expand Pell Grants to make it easier for people to attend college.

Taking the Wal-Mart challenge

Dr. Jack Lewin, chief executive officer of the California Medical Association, said today he and other supporters of Proposition 72 will begin taking what he called "the Wal-Mart challenge" beginning Tuesday.

Lewin promised that supporters of the mandated employer healthcare law will show up at Wal-Mart parking lots and other locales accompanied by former Wal-Mart workers to take up a challenge laid down over the weekend by Wal-Mart executive Bob McAdam.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times published Saturday, McAdam said: "There's no proof that any of our associates are on public assistance. I defy anyone to prove it."

Prop. 72 supporters began airing TV ads over the weekend that cited a UC Berkeley Labor Institute study that estimated California taxpayers spend $32 million a year on healthcare for Wal-Mart employees and their family members who must rely on public programs for their healthcare.

How many former Wal-Mart employees will the Prop. 72 campaign produce? Lewin would say only that it is more than one.

Just how big is that club?

The California Club for Growth, a new political advocacy group headed by outgoing Ventura County Assemblyman Tony Strickland, has made its first foray into legislative politics. It has targeted only one race this fall, deciding to play in the 30th Assembly District contest in which Republican Dean Gardner is trying to take out Democratic incumbent Nicole Parra, who beat him by a whisker in 2002.

Gardner has been beset with problems, stung by an embarrassing string of revelations about bankruptcies, the use of various aliases and even the discovery of a court case in which a bank accused Gardner and his wife of trying to pocket $40,000 that had been inadvertantly credited to their account. What had once been seen as a great opportunity for the GOP to knock off a Democratic incumbent is now largely seen as an iffy proposition at best.

Yet here is where the Club for Growth will take its stand, in Bakersfield. On Wednesday, it reported a $16,000 independent expenditure on mailers attacking Parra. Today it announced a television advertising campaign, but did so in such a way that it won't be reported as an independent expenditure. The group is calling the spot "an issue ad" that doesn't expressly advocate for one candidate or the other. The ad attacks Parra for her vote on a proposal to restore cuts in the vehicle license fee -- a move critics characterized as "tripling the car tax."

"The constituents of the 30th Assembly District have been betrayed by Parra's promise not to raise taxes," Strickland said in a statement.

It remains to be seen how effective the Club for Growth will be. The amount of the spending is unreported; perhaps today's last pre-electing fund-raising report will give a clue at least to how much money the group has to play with.

Do you take thee, George ...

The Public Policy Institute of California's latest pre-election poll, released today, had one interesting demographic nugget on state voters' presidential preferences. Democrat John Kerry leads President Bush among whites, Latinos, men and women. There is one group, however, in which Bush leads: married people, who prefer him over Kerry 47 percent to 43 percent.

In other words, Kerry's entire 12 percentage point lead in the state is the result of overwhelming support among singles, the divorced, widows and widowers.

As a matter of political tactics, at least, maybe Bush should reconsider his position on that constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages...

Those Santa Monica Republicans

If your only exposure to Republicans who run for the Legislature is to listen to the debates in the Senate and Assembly, you might come to believe that just about every Republican in the state is pretty darned conservative on social issues: against hate crimes legislation, against expanding anti-discrimination laws to include protections based upon sexual orientation, against gay marriage.

But every two years at election time, there comes the realization that the ones who make it to Sacramento are only those who hail from districts where those views likely represent the prevailing public sentiment. Turns out there are Republican candidates who live in decidedly more liberal districts and hold markedly different views.

Consider the Republican legislative candidates in the districts that include Santa Monica: Leonard Lanzi, running against Sheila Kuehl for state Senate, and Heather Peters, running against Fran Pavley for Assembly.

Over iced tea at an oceanfront hotel in Santa Monica this summer, Peters told me of her experience growing up, raised by "very liberal, hippy parents," in New York's Greenwiich Village at a time when AIDS was new, not well understood and spreading fast. She has very strong feelings about the need for gay couples to have domestic partner rights. "I lived in a community where the only 'family' that people had were the people who loved and cared for them, and they were on a daily basis being kept out of the hospital rooms."

Lanzi is now working for Junior Achievement after a longtime attachment to another prominent nonprofit group ended abruptly. "I worked for the Boy Scouts for 13 years as executive director in Santa Barbara," he told the Ventura County Star editorial board. "I was forced out for being gay... I know what discrimination in the workplace is all about."

He further said he admired Kuehl's record in the civil rights arena and said that on social issues he and his opponent "are very much on the same page."

It's too bad the voter registration in their districts is so stacked against them. If they won, they would certainly add the spice of variety to those weekly Republican Caucus luncheons.

Depends on what your definition of 'it' is

Before the expenditure was finally reported over the weekend, Mike Shimpock, consultant to 35th Assembly District Democratic candidate Pedro Nava, was complaining that JobsPAC had already bought tens of thousands of dollars in television advertising without disclosing the expense.

The evidence suggested he had a point: Records from two broadcast TV stations in Santa Barbara County showed the JobsPAC, the statewide independent expenditure committee backed largely by energy companies, prepurchased at least $40,000 worth of advertising in the middle of last week. The commercials, however, weren't scheduled to air until Sunday.

So, does an independent expenditure committee have to report an expense when it writes the check or when the commercials show up on TV?

On the one hand, the FPPC regulation 18225.3(C) appears clear: "Costs directly traceable to the communication are reportable when the communication is made, or when payments are made in connection with the development, production or dissemination of the communication, whichever is earlier." (Emphasis added)

So why didn't JobsPAC report when it wrote the check?

Attorney Steve Lucas pointed to FPPC regulation 18225.2(D)(b): "'Expenditure'" includes any monetary or non-monetary payment ... that is used for communications which expressly advocate the nomination, election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate or candidates, or the qualification, passage or defeat of a clearly identified ballot measure."

Lucas said there is nothing to report until an expenditure is made, and until there is a communication to voters, there is no expenditure.

So how does that jibe with the reporting regulation, which says you must report when the communication is made or when it is paid for, whichever is earlier? Lucas said there is no "it" until the communication is made.

In other words, to paraphrase an attorney who remains quite prominent in Democratic political circles, it depends on what your definition of "it" is.

The right kind of in-kind

Supporters of Ferial Masry, the charismatic Saudi Arbian immigrant who is the Democratic candidate in the 37th Assembly District, sometimes worry that she spends a little bit too much time catering to the international media attention that her candidacy has generated.

On a given day, she might be giving interviews to a Dutch television crew, or giving time to a French TV producer -- time that might be better spent trying to connect to the Ventura County voters who will actually participate in the election.

But sometimes all the attention being devoted to a Muslim woman who says her candidacy sends an international message that America is in fact an inclusive democracy can pay off in practical ways.

One person who was intrigued by the publicity generated by Masry's candidacy was international pollster John Zogby, whose firm has gained prominence for the accuracy of its pre-presidential election polls in 1996 and 2000 and has also done extensive polling in the Arab world.

Zogby offered to do a poll for Masry. Without charge. The Masry campaign tells me the poll will show up on her next campaign finance report as an in-kind (or noncash) contribution. Her low-budget campaign couldn't afford much of a poll on its own, but if one conducted by the prestigious Zogby firm happens to show her anywhere within striking distance of Republican Audra Strickland, they hope the numbers might be used to persuade Democrats around California that hers is a campaign worthy of funding.

Making mischief

One argument that opponents of a wide-open primary system such as the one proposed on the Nov. 2 ballot by Proposition 62 is that allowing voters of one party to cross over and vote for candidates of another opens the way for political mischief-making.

Political strategist Garry South tried to put that issue to rest today when he spoke on Proposition 62 at the Sacramento Press Club. He used an example from his own foray into mischief-making to illustrate the point.

In 2002, when South's client, Gov. Gray Davis, was unopposed in the Democratic primary, South clearly saw former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan as the most formidable challenger should he be the one to emerge from a three-way Republican primary. South spent $1 million on television ads designed to shake voter confidence in Riordan. The ads were at least a contributing factor in conservative Bill Simon's come-from-behind victory in the GOP primary.

Under the current primary system, South said, Riordan had to appeal in the Republican primary "to a closed universe of very conservative voters. He never understood that. We got him six ways to Sunday."

On another topic, South said he, like most Republicans, believes that California's system for drawing legislative and congressional district boundaries should be taken out of the hands of the Legislature and given to a nonpartisan third party. But any attempt by Republicans to try to blow up the current districts by proposing a mid-decade redistricting, South said, is destined to fail.

He called the idea "stupid, idiotic" and predicted that if it makes it on the ballot "it will go down in flames and we'll be right back where we started."

The only way to persuade Californians to pass a redistricting initiative, he said, is to make the effort truly bipartisan and to put something before voters that wouldn't take effect until the next scheduled redistricting, in 2011.

Putting healthcare to a vote

For years in American politics there has been something of a disconnect on the issue of healthcare. Voters consistently rank it among their biggest concerns, but except for a lot of sound and fury about prescription drug benefits for Medicare beneficiaries, that voter concern has never been tested by a specific issue. In that sense, Proposition 72 on the Nov. 2 ballot in California will be a fascinating political test: Will voters put their ballots where their opinions have been and pass something specific that promises to make healthcare more accessible to working families?

A Field Poll released today showed surprising evidence that California voters may be prepared to do just that. It showed Proposition 72 leading 45-29 — despite a couple weeks of hard-hitting television advertising against it, paid for principally by fast-food restaurant chains and large retailers.

Proposition 72 is a referendum on a landmark law enacted by the Legislature last year that would require all employers with 50 or more workers to make health insurance available to workers and to pay at least 80 percent of the premiums; employers with 200 or more workers would have to also make the benefit available to their workers' spouse and children.

The poll showed that Democrats are twice as likely to support the measure as Republicans and that it is much more broadly favored by women (up 18 points) than by men (up 9 points). Besides Republicans, there were only two subgroups opposed: voters with annual household incomes of more than $80,000 (41-40 opposed) and those who have health insurance and are not at all concerned about losing it in the future (30-46 opposed). Surprisingly, the biggest support comes not from those voters who have no insurance (42-28 support), but from those who now have insurance but are very concerned about losing it in the future (57-17 support).

You can bet that employers and healthcare advocates around the country will be watching closely. If the lead holds in the face of an aggressive campaign to defeat Proposition 72, it will be another case where California will become a trendsetter — sending a clear message to policymakers in Washington, D.C., and in other states that the public thinks it's time to stop talking about doing something about healthcare and begin actually doing something about it.

Interestingly, this appears to be an issue upon which Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has taken a pass. Kerry's healthcare plan calls for tax credits for employers who offer insurance to workers and also for the federal government to take on coverage for catastrophic care, which he calculates would reduce premiums by about $1,000 per year. California Labor Federation leader Art Pulaski told me this summer that he had asked Kerry for his support of Proposition 72, but Kerry balked because it is a different approach than the one he proposes nationally. Because both candidates have skipped California altogether in the fall campaign, neither has been pressed to publicly take a position.

Swimming against the tide

Republican Bob Pohl has been making notable headway in his uphill battle against fellow Santa Barbaran Pedro Nava in the Democratic-tilting 35th Assembly District along the Ventura and Santa Barbara County coasts. His fund-raising has nearly kept pace with Nava's and he's landed some significant crossover endorsements from Democrats in the district. The endorsements include those of former Santa Barbara City Councilman Greg Hart (who was once an aide to state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell when O'Connell represented the area in the Legislature), former Oxnard High School Principal Daisy Tatum and Oxnard City Council candidate Saul Medina, who was forced to resign as president of the Oxnard Democratic club because of his betrayal of the Democratic candidate.

Some of the endorsements are not just an embrace of Pohl, but also a clear repudiation of Nava. Hart is doing commercials for Pohl, and when I asked him last week he said the decision to endorse Pohl was a no-brainer. The two served together for a time on the California Coastal Commission, and Hart said Nava displayed as a commissioner that "he's the kind of guy who sees the world in black and white... He's exactly the kind of person we don't need in the Legislature." Nava supporters assert that Hart's actions are a clear case of sour grapes -- Hart was a developer-friendly commissioner, they say, who didn't like being on the short end of coastal-protection votes. In addition, Hart had his eyes on the Assembly seat early on, but Nava outworked him to pretty much wrap up the party nomination even before the candidate-filing period opened.

Will these endorsements have any effect on the outcome? It seems unlikely, given the Democrats' 12-point registration edge and the fact that decline-to-states in the area typically break Democratic.

I asked Pohl last month if he could possibly win if the district went for John Kerry by 12 percentage points. In asking the question, I picked a number of the hat. Pohl gave a forthright response: "I've seen the polling, and John Kerry is going to win this district by a whole lot more than 12 points."

I'm told the most recent polling puts Kerry's lead in the district at close to 20 points. That's a very difficult tide to swim into, Pohl acknowledged. "If voters see this as a federal election and vote down the ticket, I will lose," he said. Pohl's most prominent supporter, former Assemblyman Brooks Firestone suggested in a conversation last week that Pohl could win if President Bush pulls clearly ahead in the national polling and California Democrats become dispirited about the presidential race. That hopeful observation came before the first presidential debate.

For all that, Democrats were concerned enough this week to send Nava $75,000 from the Santa Clara County Democratic Central Committee. They must believe this one isn't in the bag just yet.

A parallel political universe

Returning from Ohio, where I went last week for a family funeral, I bring back this report: Compared to California, the presidential campaign is being conducted there not as if just in a different state, but in a different universe.

If you didn't know better, as you drive around Columbus you'd think two fellows named Bush and Kerry were running for Franklin County commissioner. There are yard signs on every street, reminiscent of a city council election in Thousand Oaks. Every third car has a bumper sticker. For the record, the yard signs and bumper stickers appeared to be about evenly divided.

At a luncheon following the funeral I talked with relatives from Ohio. One, a NASA engineer, had seen the president three times in the last two months. His wife, a high school teacher in Cleveland, reported that Bush had visited her school the day after the Republican National Convention. Friends who live on the near-north side of Columbus told me that Laura Bush had recently stopped by their community center. And on the morning of the funeral I had to change my intended route from an airport hotel because police cars lined the street I originally intended to take and an ominous black helicopter was hovering high over the airport. I feared being delayed by a presidential motorcade. Bush was scheduled to make three stops in Ohio that day.

How different is this from California? Here's an example: A neighbor recently reported that she had approached the local Democratic Party headquarters to ask for a Kerry-Edwards lawn sign. She was told they didn't have any -- that they'd all been shipped to Nevada.