Party primaries are in many respects tougher campaigns than general elections, because they often feature two candidates with similar records and policy positions. That forces people to take sides, knowing that if their candidate loses they will need later to make up with the winner.

That is what's happening lately in the 23rd Senate District, where Democrat Fran Pavley won a contested primary against incumbent Assemblyman Lloyd Levine. In that race, organized labor largely sided with Levine, as did the West Los Angeles political machine of Rep. Howard Berman.

These days, those people who were foes in May are trying to make nice in September.

Pavley, who had been a classroom teacher for 28 years before being elected to the Assembly in 2000, had felt particularly slighted when the union to which she paid dues for nearly three decades -- the California Teachers Association -- backed her opponent in the primary.

Now the union has begun the process of making amends, sending a $7,200 contribution to Pavley's campaign account -- even though she is running in a district so stacked with Democratic voters she is virtually a shoo-in for victory in November. That contribution followed another $7,200 check that came from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union.

Yesterday, Rep. Berman joined in, making a $2,000 contribution to Pavley from his congressional campaign account.

It's not clear whether Pavley's hurt feelings -- if she in fact had any -- can be salved with money. Still, the contributions will likely help strengthen her standing when, as is likely, she becomes a freshman senator next year. She ended the primary campaign with a balance of more than $200,000 in her campaign account and has taken in more than $25,000 since then. In addition, she proved herself to be a very capable fund-raiser during the primary campaign by tapping into a substantial number of individual contributors who reside in the affluent district.

Add all those together, and Pavley becomes someone to whom incoming Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg will turn to help finance Senate campaigns and provide resources for other political endeavors.

Just in time for campaign season, Syracuse University press has released its latest offering, a biography of Saudi Arabian immigrant and Newbury Park schoolteacher Ferial Masry, the Democratic candidate in Ventura County's 37th Assembly District.

There may be local candidates who are more charismatic, who have a better chance to win, have more experience and what-not, but a case can be made that none has as compelling a personal story as Masry.

To check out the publisher's blurb on the book "Running for all the Right Reasons," click here.

The latest endorsement in the 19th Senate District race was bestowed yesterday on Republican Tony Strickland, this one from the Camarillo Chamber of Commerce, which broke a 68-year tradition of not publicly supporting political candidates by formally backing three Republicans.

Two of the Republicans were from the same family -- Assemblywoman Audra Strickland, along with her husband, got the chamber's blessing. As did Rep. Elton Gallegly.

Meanwhile, both candidates have sent mailers touting their law enforcement endorsements. Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson has swept the endorsements of rank-and-file public safety workers across the district, including the Ventura County Deputy Sheriffs Association and the Ventura County Firefighters Association. She also has the backing of Ventura Chief Pat Miller and Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown.

Among those in Strickland's camp are Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks, Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten, former Santa Barbara County Sheriff Jim Thomas and the California Association of Highway Patrolmen.

As for local government endorsements, there seems to be a certain sense of unanimity. Strickland has all the city council members in the Republican-dominated cities of Santa Clarita and Lompoc. In the Democratic-dominated areas of the district, Jackson has the entire Ventura Unified School District board, the entire Santa Barbara City Council, five out of seven members of the Ventura City Council.

If you want to see a full list, one is available on Jackson's website. On the Strickland website under "endorsements," however, the message reads: "This page will be updated shortly."

19th Senate District Republican candidate Tony Strickland today unveiled a new TV ad that features a testimonial from Erin Brockovich, the legal clerk whose research uncovered evidence that led to a major class-action settlement with Pacific Gas & Electric over the poisoning of drinking water and whose story was dramatically told in the 2000 film "Eric Brockovich," starring Julia Roberts.

"I'm a consumer advocate and a Democrat, but I'm also an independent thinker. And so is Tony Strickland," Brockovich says in the ad.

Strickland consultant Joe Justin described Brockovich as "a bigger than life personality" whose testimony will be effective because she is seen as "truly independent."

Brockovich has come to Sacramento a number of times to promote legislation relating to the regulation of toxic materials, such as the chromium 6 chemical that poisoned the water of Hinkley, CA, in the story featured in the film.

When I told Democratic candidate Hannah-Beth Jackson of the ad today, she said she was "a little surprised."

Brockovich may be a Democrat, but in her blog recently she said she is considering becoming an independent -- in the same entry that she praised GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

"Some of the comments about Sarah Palin have been unfair and I don't say that because blogs say she is 'Sarah Brockovich' or 'half Ronald Reagan half Erin Brockovich' or 'The Erin Brockovich of Alaska,'" she wrote. " I am proud to be a member of the same Strong Woman's Club that Sarah Palin is in."

The latest voter registration statistics, released Friday by the secretary of state, show that Ventura County is inching up to a milestone in the number of registered voters heading into the Nov. 4 presidential showdown. As of Sept. 5 -- 60 days before the election -- there were 399,317 voters in the county. That surpasses the 398,652 who were on the rolls at the close of registration in the 2004 presidential election. With nearly a month left until the Oct. 20 registration deadline, and with both parties stepping up their voter-registration efforts, it seems likely the 400,000 mark will be surpassed.

The new report also shows the continuation of Democrats' gains in the county. Registered Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans this spring for the first time since the mid-1980s, and Democrats padded their margin by another 1,500 voters between May 19 and Sept. 5. They now outnumber Republicans in the county by 5,638 voters, or 39.7 percent to 38.3 percent.

In the key 19th Senate District, which includes most of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, Democrats cut very slightly into the Republican margin over the summer. The GOP's registration advantage took a tiny dip, from 1.94 percentage points to 1.81 percentage points. In that district, the key state Senate battleground in California this fall, the new report was mostly a status quo report: Democrats picked up 663 voters and Republicans lost 16. This is out of total registration of more than 482,000.

Just a week after 19th Senate District Republican candidate Tony Strickland lined up the endorsements of all countywide elected officials, Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson came back today with a coup of her own: The endorsement of Supervisor Linda Parks of Thousand Oaks.

In Strickland's case, the endorsements were something of a case of dog-bites-man. All of the county elected officials, led by District Attorney Greg Totten and Sheriff Bob Brooks, are fellow Republicans.

With Parks, it's more of a man-bites-dog story. She is also a Republican, but she's decided to support Jackson, the Democrat, saying she would do a better job of looking out for the environmental issues Parks has long been identified with.

Her endorsement means that Jackson, a Santa Barbaran, now has the support of four of the five supervisors in Strickland's home county. Parks joins Steve Bennett, Kathy Long and John Flynn -- all Democrats -- in backing Jackson.

Jackson's press release on the endorsement says that Parks will be active in the "Moderate Republicans for Jackson" group. It has now become big enough, and includes enough impressive titles, to become a worry for the Strickland campaign.

Two financial reports just in from the campaigns of 19th Senate District candidates Hannah-Beth Jackson and Tony Strickland. The money is flowing.

Jackson reports the receipt of $146,900 today, topped by a $135,000 contribution from the state Democratic Party.

Strickland reports $33,900 from 17 separate contributions, topped by $3,600 each from the Santa Ynez Band of Mission Indians (operators of the Indian casino near Solvang) and from political action committees representing the California Medical Association and the state Council of Engineering Companies.

The last two Fridays have been red-letter days for the 19th Senate District campaign of Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson.

Campaign finance reports show she received $55,000 Friday from the Santa Barbara County Democratic Central Committee. That comes on the heels of a $156,000 contribution from the state Democratic Party the previous Friday.

Trying to determine where the Santa Barbara County Committee raised its money, I checked the secretary of state's campaign finance site and found no electronic reports had been filed for the last several years. The explanation, Chairman Daraka Larimore-Hall, told me today is that all of the money was received after June 30. Unlike candidates, who have to report contributions of $1,000 or more within 24 hours, political committees do not have to file another report until Oct. 6.

Larimore-Hall said the money came from "several sources," including Democratic state senators who are supporting Jackson's campaign.

To voters in Ventura County, reports that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin accepted $17,000 in taxpayer money intended as a daily travel allowance even as she lived at home while governor might have a familiar ring.

The reason? They are not dissimilar to complaints that Sen. Tom McClintock, who is registered to vote in Thousand Oaks, has accepted about $30,000 per year in tax-free per diem pay for out-of-town legislators even though he makes his permanent home near Sacramento, just 14 miles from the Capitol.

In each case, it appears to be a potentially ripe political issue: a conservative elected official who professes to be tight-fisted about government spending personally stretching the rules to collect extra compensation.

Palin should look to the McClintock example, however, and take comfort. Even though opponents repeatedly tried to make a campaign issue out of his ethically questionable acceptance of per-diem pay, the charges never seemed to bother voters much. Former Congressman Doug Ose incessantly pounded McClintock over the issue in TV ads this spring, yet McClintock handily won the Republican nomination for a Northern California seat in Congress.

For the past few years, Tony and Audra Strickland have been the targets of an anonymous Internet prankster who launched critical websites. They were the work of some conservative rival -- to the degree that the first, called TonytheStrickland.com , accused Tony Strickland of being a closet liberal.

A new prank -- potentially the work of the same prankster, since some of the themes are similar -- was launched over the weekend when someone hacked a site called Democrats4Strickland.com so that it redirected visitors to a faux website called DemocratsforStrickland.com. The site applauds Strickland for, among other things, voting for a bill to provide driver's licenses to undocumented residents.

Strickland consultant Joe Justin said it appeared to be the work of someone "with too much time on their hands."

Parke Skelton , consultant to Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson, told me that not only did the Jackson campaign not have anything to do with the prank, but that it appears obvious to him that it is the work of a Republican "trying to imagine what a Democrat might say."

Interesting to note that Strickland has taken no chances with his anonymous foil trying to resurrect the old "TonytheStrickland" site. When I tried that web address today I was redirected to the Strickland for Senate website.

The group "Moderate Republicans for Jackson" -- a handful of disaffected current and former local elected representatives and others who have rejected GOP candidate Tony Strickland and aligned themselves with Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson in the 19th Senate District campaign -- put out a press release this week claiming three new members.

There is one problem, however, with the claim that the group has been joined by "three more prominent Republicans": One of the three cited in the news release is no longer a Republican.

Beth Rogers, the Carpinteria businesswoman who was a GOP nominee for Congress in 2002, quit the party couple years ago and re-registered as a "decline-to-state," or nonpartisan, voter.

Before becoming an independent, Rogers had spent years trying to persuade the California GOP to recruit and support more Republican women candidates.