State Sen. Tom McClintock, his political consultant in tow, showed up on the state Capitol steps today to view "draft Tom" posters that had been circulated and signed at last weekend's state Republican convention. The photo op was attended by a Sacramento TV station and a reporter from the Sacramento Bee.

McClintock is considering entering the race for Congress in the 4th Congressional District, a vast area that extends from the Sierra foothills above Sacramento to include most of the northeast corner of California. For 22 of the last 26 years, McClintock has served in the Legislature representing districts centered in Ventura County, 400 miles away. Most of that time he has lived near Sacramento, including a stint actually in the 4th District, but his current home in Elk Grove is as distant from the district's edge as Thousand Oaks is from Ojai.

Surely anticipating a question about being a carpetbagger, McClintock had a ready answer: Voters, he said, care more about "where you stand than where you live."

The event gave credence to some stinging criticism posted by conservative political consultant Jeff Flint on the Red County blog earlier today. Flint argued that circumstances suggest McClintock is trying to create the impression that he would be doing Fourth District voters a favor by agreeing to run for Congress.

McClintock must make a decision by March 12, and indicated it could come as early as next week.

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As reported here more than two months ago (see entry for Dec. 9), former state Controller Steve Westly has agreed to become the lead Democrat backing what is now a bonafide bipartisan effort to change the way political districts are drawn in California.

His leading role in the campaign to pass a redistricting initiative headed for the November ballot was announced today by the sponsors, including Common Cause and the League of Women Voters. Westly joins with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to give the measure the bipartisan image it will need if it is to have any chance of passing.

You may remember that Westly and Schwarzenegger successfully teamed back in 2004 to help sell Californians on a $15 billion bond measure that was floated to bail out the state from its crippling post-dotcom bust deficit. That association may have hurt Westly in the 2006 Democratic primary for governor, which he narrowly lost, but the former e-Bay executive is sticking with his centrist instincts and again aligning himself with the Republican governor.

The redistricting initiative desperately needs high-profile Democratic support because all previous efforts have failed at the ballot box after being portrayed by opponents -- in some cases accurately, in other cases not so much -- as Republican power grabs designed to manipulate the system to the GOP's advantage.

This fall's initiative falls well short of comprehensive reform, because it covers only legislative districts and leaves untouched the Legislature's ability to draw new congressional districts after the 2010 census.

With the filing deadline for the 2008 elections just two weeks from today, it can't be too early to start thinking about 2010 -- especially now that voters have affirmed the state's term limits law, retaining the predictability about who is leaving when.

One person who will be leaving in 2010 is Assemblywoman Audra Strickland of Moorpark, and the fellow who was runner-up to her in the 2004 primary is already making the rounds lining up endorsements for another campaign. He is former deputy district attorney Jeff Gorell, who lost to Strickland by 1,800 votes, or 3.6 percentage points, in a three-way Republican primary four years ago.

Gorell, 37, is a former aide to Gov. Pete Wilson who spent several months in Afghanistan in 2002 as a lieutenant in the Navy reserve. He hasn't really stopped running since that 2004 loss, and is positioned to line up a lot of support from established local Republicans. One told me this week that Gorell is already asking folks to sign endorsement cards.

There will be another local vacancy in the Assembly in 2010, when Santa Barbara Democrat Pedro Nava is also termed out. Folks in western Ventura County tell me that Santa Barbara City Councilman Das Williams is laying significant groundwork for a campaign. Williams has an advantage few enjoy in that two-market district: He has a political base in Santa Barbara and also extensive connections in Ventura County, where he works for the Latino advocacy group CAUSE.

In a strange, unanticipated quirk resulting from California's decision to conduct separate primaries this year for the presidential race and for all other partisan races, Secretary of State Debra Bowen yesterday was forced to release a report that was already three weeks outdated.

The reason is that the Elections Code requires the secretary of state to release voter registration statistics 154 days before a primary election, 60 days before a primary election, and 15 days before a primary election. The 15-day report for the Feb. 5 presidential primary included voter registration statistics through Jan. 22.

Yesterday, Bowen released the 154-day report for the June primary. That period closed on Jan. 1 -- so the numbers in it were three weeks behind the report she already had released in late January. It will take legislation to clean up this silliness.

Nearly every county Democratic organization in the nation predictably sponsors two annual events: a Labor Day barbecue and a Jefferson-Jackson dinner.

No disrespect to Thomas Jefferson or Andrew Jackson, but it was about time somebody updated the list of Democratic heroes worth celebrating with an annual dinner. That has now happened in Ventura County, following Saturday's inaugural Jack and Bobby Kennedy dinner.

One of the organizers, Sue Broidy of Ojai, reports that the event raised about $12,000, which will be used for a paid voter registration drive that Democrats hope will generate less than the 500-voter net gain that they need to pass Republicans and gain a plurality of registered voters in the county.

Ventura County still gets little respect from statewide Democrats. The only two of note who attended Saturday's event were Controller John Chiang and Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero.

Broidy says organizers hope to make the Kennedy dinner an annual event. Thomas and Andrew would probably be happy that some people from the 20th century are getting some tributes for a change.

Ever since he returned to the Legislature in 1996, Sen. Tom McClintock has made no secret -- and no apologies -- about his decision to keep his primary residence in the Sacramento area while shifting his official voting residence back to Ventura County. He had young children at the time and said that, for the sake of family stability, he intended to keep his home near his place of work.

Now, at least one Republican activist is promoting a way to bring McClintock's political district closer to his home. Ted Costa, best known as the person who started the recall petitions against former Gov. Gray Davis, commissioned a poll last week in the 4th Congressional District, which has as its population center the Sacramento suburb of Roseville. The district is being vacated by Republican John Doolittle, and is arguably one of the most conservative districts in the state.

Two prominent Republicans -- former state Sen. Rico Oller and former Congressman Doug Ose -- have declared their intent to seek the GOP nomination to replace Doolittle. But Costa, long an admirer and ally of McClintock's, last week commissioned a poll testing the strength of a third Republican candidate. That's right, McClintock.

The results were eye-opening: McClintock 43 percent, Ose 11 percent, Oller 6 percent.

I have yet to be able to get in touch with Costa, but sources say it is likely the poll was conducted without McClintock's knowledge. Clearly, no one told McClintock's former aide and longtime ally Tony Strickland about his former boss having any interest in the race. Tony and Audra Strickland announced today that they are endorsing Oller -- who was once Tony Strickland's roommate when the two were both in the Legislature.

Only someone schooled in the Machiavellian nature of hardball partisan politics can appreciate the true significance of Rep. Elton Gallegly's decision yesterday to file for re-election at the earliest possible moment. Had he decided instead to hold out until near the deadline of 5 p.m. on March 7, the delay would have created endless gossip, conspiracy theories and backroom plotting.

Here's why there was such potential for mischief:

A seat in Congress is the crown jewel for a local politician because there are no term limits, the pay and perks are very good, and the districts are and probably will continue to be safely designed to protect all but the most careless incumbents. As a general rule, these seats open only once in a generation. Eastern Ventura County is a case in point: Gallegly was elected in 1986, and the seat has been locked down ever since.

No one wants to miss the opportunity when a seat does become open.

It's no secret that former Assemblyman Tony Strickland covets that seat in Congress whenever Gallegly decides to retire. But this year, Strickland is already committed to a campaign for state Senate and has succeeded in clearing the field of other Republican challengers. As Gallegly found out two years ago, the Elections Code -- designed to prevent gamesmanship -- says that once an individual files candidacy papers for one office he cannot back out or decide instead to run for a different office.

So Strickland was in a pickle. If he filed his Senate papers before Gallegly, then he would have been left out of the picture had Gallegly decided to retire. So he would likely have waited, creating a possible game of chicken at the county Elections Division. Making matters more complicated, Strickland could not have abandoned his Senate run at the last minute because that would have left Republicans without a candidate and conceded the district to Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson.

So, of course, there was speculation about lining up a back-up candidate who would have been waiting in the wings to step in at the last moment for Strickland had his opportunity to run for Congress presented itself.

Adding further intrigue, a new state law requires that the filing period be extended for five days in the event that an incumbent member of Congress does not file for re-election. The extension also applies to seats in the Legislature -- but not if the incumbent is termed out, because in that event the opening is evident well in advance of the deadline. The Senate seat is held by Tom McClintock, who will be termed out.

Thus, had Gallegly waited until the last minute and not filed for re-election, Strickland would have had to commit himself by 5 p.m. on March 7. And had Gallegly not filed his papers, all other Republicans in the district would then have had a full week to decide whether to jump in and run for Gallegly's vacant seat. Adding further intrigue is the fact that the district includes three counties -- which means Strickland could not have simply waited at the Ventura County Government Center to see what Gallegly was doing, because Gallegly could have decided instead to file in Santa Barbara or Los Angeles counties.

You get the idea. There was potential for high drama and a good deal of mischief.

By filing on Monday, Gallegly put a stop to all the intrigue. The rumors are dead.

Given all the confusion of two years ago, Gallegly's decision was the right and honorable thing to do.

Will the lastest voting embarrassment in Los Angeles County finally be enough to persuade lawmakers to clearly spell out in the Elections Code that the ballots of voters whose intent was clear should be counted, regardless of whether they followed all the nit-picking requirements placed on the ballots for the convenience of elections officials?

The latest word from Los Angeles is that more 94,000 ballots of decline-to-state voters who cast ballots in last week's presidential primaries were tossed out because they did not fill in a bubble that asked which party's primary they were voting in. This follows the fiasco in San Diego in 2004 in which write-in candidate Donna Frye received the most votes but lost the election because several thousand voters who wrote in her name did not also fill in a bubble indicating that that they were voting for a write-in candidate.

These bubbles are exclusively put there for the convenience of machine-tabulating the results. They were not put there to test a voter's ability to follow arcane instructions. Last week, thousands of voters cast ballots for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, but their votes were discounted because they did not also expressly say they were voting in the Democratic Party primary. In 2004, thousands of San Diegans took the trouble to write in the name "Donna Frye" -- even spelling it correctly -- but their votes were discounted.

It's absurd, it's an affront to democracy -- and the disenfranchisement it engenders has been upheld by the courts.

It's time to make the Elections Code crystal clear: If a voter's intent is unmistakable, count his or her ballot. Anything short of that is a victory for bureaucracy over common sense.

Back in July, when polls everywhere showed that Republican voters were pretty much ignoring John McCain, Ventura's Neal Andrews stepped up and offered to become the Arizona senator's
Ventura County campaign coordinator. The McCain camp eagerly accepted the offer; they weren't exactly being overwhelmed by volunteers.

"I've run some underdog campaigns in the past," Andrews told me yesterday. "This campaign was the most challenging. It had the least resources."

Meanwhile, other Republican candidates amassed strong grass-roots campaigns in the county. Former Assemblyman Tony Strickland put together an impressive corps of financial contributors and ground-level volunteers for Mitt Romney. The team of seasoned operatives that had coordinated local efforts on behalf of George W. Bush during the previous two presidential campaigns -- led by such folks as Simi Valley City Councilman Glen Becerra and Thousand Oaks activist Dianne Alexander -- went to work on behalf of Rudy Giuliani.

"Tony had such a strong Romney campaign here," Andrews said. "So many times I came up against situations in which I was unwelcome."

On Tuesday, McCain carried Ventura County by 184,000 votes.

"I was a little bit surprised that McCain won California so handily," Andrews said. "But I was much less optimistic about winning this county."

"It's sweet."

On this primary election day. the headlines may be about the vote count but the real story will be in the delegate count, particularly on the Democratic side.

The formulas are confusing, but here's one clear fact: The two congressional districts that include parts of Ventura County are among the 21 in the state in which Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama have an opportunity to separate themselves from the other. The reason: Those two districts, the 23rd and the 24th, will each send 5 delegates to the national convention.

Each district is assigned from between 3 and 6 delegates, based on the number of Democratic votes cast four years ago. In the 32 districts with even-numbered delegates, one candidate would have to win more than 58 percent of the vote to gain an edge. Otherwise, each candidate will receive the same number of delegates.

In the odd-numbered districts, however, the candidate with the most votes will get an extra delegate -- for instance, if Clinton were to beat Obama by just one vote in the 24th District, she would get 3 delegates and he would get 2.

For hard-core political junkies, the odd-numbered districts are the ones to watch tonight. For a complete list, check the California Democratic Party website.

Simi Valley conservative activist and newsletter publisher Steve Frank labored nearly a year on the payroll of Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, in charge of building coalitions within the state to bolser the former New York mayor's campaign.

He did not, however, follow Giuliani's lead and endorse Sen. John McCain.

On Friday, Frank threw his support behind former Gov. Mitt Romney, writing a "dear friends" e-mail that said in part: "My candidate needs to be a consistent conservative, one that I trust will promote conservative and Republican principles."