Secretary of State Debra Bowen held an informal roundtable talk with reporters yesterday in advance of next week's election, the event I've dubbed the "hangover primary" because it follows the big presidential primary on Feb. 5 that attracted a record number of California voters. Tuesday's election could set an all-time low because there's no statewide candidate or issue to drive turnout.

Bowen, with reasonable restraint, declines to predict what percentage of voters might participate

Since there were relatively few election-related issues to talk about, I asked whether she had seen the new HBO movie "Recount," a dramaticization of the events surrounding the controversial Florida vote in the 2000 presidential election. Bowen, who lives in a rural area outside Sacramento and occupies much of her spare time tending to an expansive vegetable garden, said that she has not. "I don't have cable. I don't get HBO," she said. "I'd like to see it."

She probably should, since it prominently features the woman Bowen said has become a sort of reverse role model for her: former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who became the most celebrated or reviled (depending on one's partisan perspective) elections official in the nation during the Florida vote count. Harris had been an outspoken backer of candidate George Bush, a political affiliation that colored her role as the neutral arbiter of vote-counting issues in the wake of the 2000 vote.

Learning from that, Bowen, who had been a very partisan Democrat during her days in the Legislature, has pretty much removed herself from partisan politics since being elected secretary of state.

Seeing the movie would certainly reinforce the wisdom of that approach.

"I'd like to see it if someone would make me a tape," she said.

There it is, an invitation. Some Democrat out there with a VCR or DVD recorder might want to take her up on it. Send a tape to: Debra Bowen, Secretary of State, 1500 11th Street, Sacramento, CA 95814.

No one has ever called former Gov. Pete Wilson, an ex-Marine, a shrinking violet. So it was no suprise yesterday that when he stepped up to the microphone to urge Northern California voters not to support Sen. Tom McClintock for Congress, he didn't pull any punches.

McClintock and Wilson were bitter adversaries during Wilson's eight years in the governor's office, as McClintock ceaselessly assailed Wilson for having agreed to a temporary tax increase as a means to help close a gaping state budget deficit in 1992.

McClintock, Wilson said, didn't have "the guts" to support the level of spending cuts that would have been necessary to balance the budget, but at the same time chose to be "a back-bench bomb thrower" in voting against and loudly criticizing the tax increases that were necessary to solve the problem.

Wilson and former Gov. George Deukmejian are both supporting McClintock's opponent, former Congressman Doug Ose, in the Republican primary in the 4th Congressional District.

In a brief interview after the press conference, Wilson acknowledged that McClintock's reputation for making problems for a Republican governor preceded his governorship. "He had a reputation of being two-faced," Wilson said.

Wilson also noted that McClintock voted against the car-tax reduction passed by the Legislature in 1998. "If he was so anti-tax, why did he vote against the car-tax cut?" Wilson asked.

"As governor, I could never count on Tom McClintock," Wilson said. "He was always the first to criticize, but the last to help the team. His record doesn't match the rhetoric."

If the former governor's rhetoric seemed harsh, it perhaps still fell short of the level used by McClintock in a 1993 op-ed article he penned for the Los Angeles Times. McClintock wrote at the time that his pet cat had a better chance of winning the governor's race in 1994 than Wilson.

Republican presidential nominee-to-be John McCain is in California today, holding a rally in Stockton to be followed by a fund-raiser at the home of GOP donor extraordinare Alex Spanos.

He can't be happy with the timing of today's release of a new PPIC poll of California voters.

Not only does the poll show him trailing Barack Obama by 17 points and Hillary Clinton by 12 points in head-to-head matchups, it also suggests his standing among independents in California isn't what it used to be. The poll shows that more independents have an unfavorable view of McCain (53 percent) than have an unfavorable view of Clinton (50 percent).

It also shows that if pitted against Democratic front-runner Obama, about twice as many Republicans (19 percent) would cross over in the general election than Democrats (10 percent).

It's an early sign that California could once again be pretty much ignored in the fall presidential campaign, with Democrats taking it for granted and Republicans giving it up as a lost cause.

Under the leadership of new chairman Ross Johnson, the state Fair Political Practices Commission has launched a campaign to shine light on the role of independent expenditure committees in influencing California elections. And quite a role it is.

Since the passage of Proposition in 2000, an ballot measure that placed strict contribution limits on the amoung candidates can receive from donors, independent expenditure committees have taken off as the driving force in campaigns for the Legislature and other state offices. These committees can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, as long as they do not coordinate their activities with the candidates they are supporting.

Tracking the activities of IEs, as they are known, has always been laborious. Now the FPPC has created a one-stop site that reporters, bloggers, political activists and just plain concerned voters can use to see who's providing the money behind who in local campaigns. You can check today, for instance, and see that independent groups have thus far spent $180,000 on behalf of former Assemblywoman Fran Pavley in the 23rd Senate District primary, but only $7,000 on behalf of her opponent, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine.

The tool will be particularly useful for political observers in Ventura County in the fall, when it's likely that IE's will spend millions in the high-profile 19th Senate District campaign between former Assembly members Hannah-Beth Jackson and Tony Strickland.

Johnson is also pushing to find regulatory steps the commission can take to make the activities of independent expenditure committees more transparent. One great idea: requiring them to provide the name of a real person who can be contacted to account for any given group's activities.

Given that IE's are responsible for most of the dirtiest, nastiest campaign activities, a heightened level of accountability would be welcome. It's too easy now for candidates to simply shrug their shoulders and disavow the sleaze campaigns launched on their behalf, saying they have nothing to do with them. Someone needs to accountable.

Anyone expecting a tense Clinton-vs.-Obama showdown when pledged district delegates to the Democratic National Convention met in Sacramento on Sunday to pick the rest of the delegation -- 5 unpledged add-ons, 48 pledged elected officials and 81 statewide at-large delegates. The two presidential campaigns had mutually agreed on the slates, and the business of the delegate meeting was completed in about 20 minutes without a dissenting vote.

Former Controller Steve Westly, co-chairman of Obama's California campaign, nominated Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Clinton supporter, to be chair of the state delegation, and she was elected by voice vote.

Chairman Art Torres said the prolonged contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, rather than being a potentially divisive problem, has been "healthy for the party."

He had some numbers to back up that assertion: Between Jan. 3 and April 4, 93 percent of new voter registrations in California were Democrats. "We've turned Ventura County blue, we've turned San Joaquin County blue and Stanlislaus County is close behind," he said. Getting people energized during the primary season has created "our army for November... We will come together as we always do."

In keeping with national party guidelines, the California delegation will be remarkably diverse: 26 percent Latino, 16 percent African-American, 12 percent gay or lesbian, 10 percent 30 or under, 10 percent disabled, 9 percent Asian-Pacific Islander, 1 percent Native American, with a 50-50 split by gender.

The California delegation will truly be the 800-pound gorilla when national Democrats convene in Denver. It includes 554 delegates, alternates and standing committee members. In second place will be New York, with 280.

Ventura County Supervisor Peter Foy, president of a newly formed state chapter of the taxpayer group called Americans for Prosperity, held a news conference on the steps of the state Capitol today standing beneath a giant blowup of an ATM machine.

On this one, the inititials stood not for "automated teller machine," but rather for "already taxed to the max."

Foy's group promised to take the ATM machine to 23 California cities over the next several weeks and to collect tens of thousands of signatures on petitions demanding that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers not raise taxes to close the state's $15 billion budget shortfall.

The event was upstaged later in the day when Schwarzenegger unveiled his revised budget proposal, but here's some of what Foy had to say:

"This $15 billion is not the taxpayers' fault, and we don't believe the taxpayers should be punished... Taxpayers of California believe that they pay enough. They've been taxed to the max. We're done."

Foy is emerging as a visible spokesman for fiscal conservatives in California, taking on this role and also writing an occasional column for the conservative political blog Flashreport.org. He was joined at the event by some of the state's other leading anti-tax spokesmen, including Sen. George Runner, Assembly Republican leader Mike Villines and Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association President Jon Coupal.

When residents of Malibu and Oxnard last year were successfully rallying to defeat a proposal to build a liquefied natural gas terminal off the local coast, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine was at their side.

Less than three years earlier, however, Levine was expressing a different view to the U.S. Coast Guard and the State Lands Commission, one of the two state agencies that ultimately rejected the proposal.

A letter from Levine dated Nov. 26, 2004 -- sent to me by the campaign of former Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, Levine's opponent in the 23rd Senate District primary -- urges the commission "to facilitate the permitting and construction of the Cabrillo Port project in the timeliest manner."

The letter could be damaging material for a Democrat running in a district that includes Oxnard, Port Hueneme, Malibu and Santa Monica.

When I asked Levine about it this week, he said the letter was sent out by his office in error. "It was written by a staff member and went out without my approval. We've changed the procedures in my office" he said. "It didn't go out with my approval, and I take responsibility for that."

Levine, chairman of the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Commission, said his position is that California does not need to import natural gas from abroad because the state has ample pipeline capacity to deliver enough gas from Canada and other states to meet its demand.

Still, that letter is on his official Assembly letterhead and bears his signature. Don't be surprised if a copy of the letter -- or at least excerpts from it -- shows up soon in the mailboxes of Democratic voters along the coast.

Since moving to the Sacramento area to cover state government for The Star, I have lived in the nearby university town of Davis. Among my neighbors is a member of the Legislature, Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, who lives on the same small residential block.

Since I had written a story yesterday about the campaign issue being made of Sen. Tom McClintock's acceptance of per diem pay even though he lives just 14 miles from the Capitol and does not keep a residence in his district, I decided to check the odometer on my trip to work this morning.

From the intersection nearest Wolk's house, it is 18 miles to the Capitol.

Then, I checked to see how much per-diem pay Wolk had taken in 2007. Zero.

McClintock, who commutes to the Capitol from four miles closer, accepted $36,012 in tax-free per-diem pay.

It was a graphic illustration as to why McClintock's congressional opponent, Doug Ose, believes he can make this an effective campaign issue.

In this era of campaign contribution limits, independent expenditure committees have become the big dogs of California politics. But candidates can't coordinate with groups they hope will put up some money to independently help their cause. That means, for instance, that a big-spending special interest group can't call up the campaign and ask for a photo of the candidate.

Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, who's engaged in a high-stakes primary against former Assemblywoman Fran Pavley for the Democratic nomination in the 23rd Senate District, has come up with a clever solution to that problem.

On his website he has posted a photo gallery of 11 different photographs of himself. They are high-quality digital photos suitable for downloading and using however one might choose. There is a message to underscore that point: "Click on each image to get a high resolution photo."

It will be interesting to see if any of those photos make their way onto campaign mailers printed and distributed "independently" by someone else.

Camarillo is planted squarely in the middle of Ventura County's two most Republican-stacked political districts in Ventura County, but you'd have never known it tonight at a Democratic candidates' forum at which a pair of candidates for each contest made their cases why they should be the ones their party picks to run uphill in November.

There have been years in the not-too-distant past when Democrats had to essentially beg someone to run for Congress or the Legislature in Camarillo-centered districts. No longer.

This spring, Mary Pallant and Jill Martinez are vying for the right to face 11-term Congressman Elton Gallegly. And David Hare and Ferial Masry each want the opportunity to challenge two-term incumbent Assemblywoman Audra Strickland.

None appeared to be a masochist.

They talked boldly about running to win and realistically about what it would take; Martinez said a viable campaign against Gallegly would cost $1.6 million and Masry said it would take $1 million to take down Strickland.

Who knows where they'd raise that kind of dough, but gone are the days when Democratic candidates in these districts talked wistfully about winning with shoe leather and word-of-mouth advertising.