The presidential election will take place one year from today, Nov. 4, 2008. Today is T minus 366 days and counting because, remember, presidential elections are always held in leap years.

If it seems a little early to start the countdown, you haven’t been paying attention. We’re now two months from the Iowa caucus (Jan. 3) and three months from the California presidential primary (Feb. 5). Such a political calendar makes Wal-Mart’s decision to decorate its stores for Christmas shopping on the weekend after Halloween seem like a model of restraint.

I’ve chosen this day to relaunch my the campaign-season blog that I have written for the past several election years. The blog has a provocative new name – “95 percent accurate� — which is not intended to reflect the precision of my reportorial skills. Rather, it’s a tribute to Ventura County’s remarkable record as a predictor of national presidential election results. Over the last 20 presidential elections, dating back to 1924, voters in Ventura County have backed the winner 19 times. They have been, in other words, 95 percent accurate.

Over the next 12 months I will report in this space developments not just in the presidential campaign in California, but also in the myriad other campaigns that will unfold in 2008. There will be many, if for no other reason that California will go to the polls not once, not twice, but three times — in February, June and November.

Ventura County could be the scene of a couple very interesting, very expensive and potentially very competitive campaigns next year. Or not. It will all depend on the outcome of Proposition 93 on the Feb. 5 ballot.

If approved by voters, that measure would make it possible for current legislators to serve additional terms. If it fails, then state Sens. Tom McClintock and Sheila Kuehl will be termed out, resulting in a couple of potentially fierce campaigns to pick their successors.

In McClintock’s 19th District, former Assemblyman Tony Strickland has apparently succeeded in clearing the field for the Republican primary. But two Democrats — former Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson and political consultant Jim Dantona are engaged in a game of chicken over the Democratic nomination. If neither of them swerves, they will collide in a primary battle that will be settled in June.

There will be an opening no matter what in Kuehl’s 23rd District, because she tells me she won’t run for a third term even if Proposition 93 passes. Former Assemblywoman Fran Pavley is definitely running to be the Democrat to take her place. She’ll face competition from Assemblyman Lloyd Levine if Proposition 93 fails. But if it passes, Levine will choose instead to run for re-election to the Assembly.

If what you’re looking for in a blog on politics is partisan spin, direct your cursor elsewhere. But if you’re a political junkie in Ventura County or elsewhere in the state, please come back again and again in 2008. You’ll find tidbits, observations and anecdotes that I hope will at the very least provide a diversion from the obsessive checking and rechecking of the latest polls at pollingreport.com.

Posted for Timm Herdt by staff