In the evolving campaign for Ventura County sheriff, it was inevitable this issue would come up:

The previous sheriff was named Carpenter. One of the men who wants to become the next sheriff is named Carpenter. Are they related? Can the new Carpenter benefit from the good name and reputation of the old Carpenter?

Those questions are apparently sensitive to at least one member of former Sheriff Larry Carpenter's family. In a letter to the editor in today's Star, Margo Carpenter, the former sheriff's daughter, wrote that she is "disturbed" that Chief Deputy Dennis Carpenter -- no relation -- is using the nickname "Carp" -- a name long associated with her father, who uses it even in his signature.

"There is only one Sheriff Carp, and that's my Dad," Margo Carpenter wrote. "You may have heard the term 'bait and switch.' Well, don't get hooked."

I talked with the former sheriff this morning, and Larry confirmed that he has not publicly endorsed either the candidate who shares his surname or Cmdr. Geoff Dean. He said he may decide to support one or the other later in the campaign, "but that's about all I can say about that."

Don't underestimate the value of name association in relatively low-profile campaigns. Larry Carpenter was a well regarded sheriff, especially in rural areas of the county and most especially in his hometown of Fillmore. His name has residual positive association with voters.

Whenever these name-association issues come up (remember, for instance, that there was an Edward Kennedy and a Robert Dole among the multitude of candiates who ran for governor during the 2003 recall), I am reminded of a story my brother told me from 1968, when he spent some time as a college student canvassing for anti-war Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Eugene McCarthy. He and other volunteers were told that if they encountered people who praised the communist-hunting former Sen. Joe McCarthy and assumed this was the same Sen. McCarthy, they were not to correct them but simply to thank them for their support and move on.

As California continues to experience annual net outmigration (more people moving out than moving in), one common theory is that many Californians are fleeing the state to find refuge in Nevada because it has no income tax.

While there might have been something to that theory at one point, it apparently no longer holds true. The Census Bureau today released its annual population estimates and reports that Nevada -- the boom state of the early part of this decade -- has now reached the same status as California when it comes to outmigration. More people are moving out than are moving in.

Both California and Nevada have unemployment rates that are near the highest in the nation.

The evidence suggests that the single most important factor that draws people in and out of states isn't tax rates, but jobs, jobs, jobs.

The talking heads are having a field day with the fact that Democrats in the U.S. Senate had to throw in the sweetener of having the federal government subsidize the entire cost of the expansion of Medicaid in Nebraska in order to secure Sen. Ben Nelson's essential 60th vote to keep healthcare reform alive.

But some observers in Sacramento, accustomed to watching the horse-trading involved in order to attain super-majority votes, believe Nelson was a pushover.

The most recent example came in February, when Republican Sen. Abel Maldonado held out before agreeing to cast the 27th and decisive vote for a budget deal in the state Senate that required a two-thirds majority vote. One lobbyist I talked to today noted, "Abel got a consitutional amendment and a lieutenant governorship appointment, and that was just for a one-year budget deal. And all Nelson got was that for a vote on permanent healthcare reform?"

The Nebraska deal is somewhat less than it seems (although the cost was pegged today at $100 million). Under the Senate plan, the expansion of Medicaid to include childless adults and all those with incomes between 100 percent and 133 percent of the federal poverty guidelines won't kick in for three years. For the following three years, the federal government will pay 100 percent of the cost of insuring the new enrollees. After that, the feds will pay 82 percent -- a 4-1 federal match instead of the 1-1 match for existing Medicaid enrollees. So the Nelson deal saves Nebraska 18 percent of the cost of Medicaid expansion beginning in 2018, but nothing until then.

As a side note, advocates of eliminating the two-thirds vote requirement in California for passage of the state budget and tax increases are hoping all this national attention will raise public awareness for their cause. The spectacle in the Senate over the wheeling and dealing it takes to attain a 60-vote majority, they argue, is the same spectacle that happens every year in California. Attaining those last few votes is always very expensive.

In addition they believe the U.S. Senate's unprecedented reliance on the filibuster (which requires 60 votes to break) is showing on the national stage the kind of paralysis that results when minorities are empowered to tie the hands of the majority. Former Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, in a fund-raising appeal this week for her advocacy group Speak Out California, asked supporters to look at what's happened in the U.S. Senate and to redouble their efforts to end "minority rule" in California governance.

I had a visit today from Damon Dunn, the 33-year-old former pro football player who has suddenly become just about every California Republican's favorite candidate for secretary of state. It's easy to see why: He's bright, young, likeable, a Stanford grad and an African-American whose presence on a statewide GOP ticket would be the kind of symbol of diversity that the party sorely lacks.

To be sure, it seems an odd choice of office for him to seek. The secretary of state is California's chief elections officer and Dunn is a glaring novice when it comes to familiarity with the electoral system. Until last year, he'd never voted in his life. He calls himself a "recovering nonvoter" and forthrightly addresses the issue with sincere humility. He was raised in a dirt-poot Texas household. "We weren't a community of voters," he says. "It's just a bad habit I brought from my youth, and a bad habit that I have to fix."

Dunn has an otherwise compelling story: a self-made man who transitioned from being a wide receiver in the National Football League to become a partner in a successful real estate development firm.

Inspired largely by Barack Obama's campaign last year -- Dunn says he doesn't much like the Democratic president's politics, but admires how he brought himself up from humble roots -- Dunn contacted his former sports agent, Duf Sundheim, who happens also to be the immediate past chairman of the California Republican Party.

Under Sundheim's guidance, he traveled the state to pay homage to various party leaders, including former Gov. Pete Wilson. Except for the voting thing, the secretary of state's office was a perfect target: no other Republican was seriously pursuing it, and it's a race in which Dunn has nothing to lose.

In downticket races, incumbents rarely lose and Democrats have pretty much swept those seats since 1998. That makes incumbent Democrat Debra Bowen pretty much a sure thing.

Economist Bill Watkins at Cal Lutheran University's Center for Economic Research and Forecasting certainly stirred up a hornet's nest today with a provocative report in which he asserts that California is more likely than not to default.

That assertion elicited a stinging retort from Tom Dresslar, spokesman for Treasurer Bill Lockyer, who called Watkins' assessement "nothing more than irresponsible fear-mongering with no basis in reality, only roots in ignorance."

Dresslar and Finance Director Mike Genest, in separate statements, noted that the California constitution requires that repayment of bonds has the second call on state revenues, after funding for schools, and that money for debt repayment is continuously appropriated, so that bond holders get paid even if the state has not adopted a budget.

I happened to run into former Deputy Treasurer Paul Rosenstiel , now a municipal bond expert at the investment banking firm De La Rosa & Co, on the streets of Sacramento today. He told me he believes Watkins' assertion is based on the misimpression that debt repayment has any connection with the state's chronic budget problems. Because of the constitutional protections, Rosenstiel said, the budget will always have to include sufficient allocations to pay bond holders. The real danger, he said, is the state's cash flow situation, which in the midst of this summer's budget crisis came perilously close to collapse.

Rosenstiel said that while the public saw the decision by Controller John Chiang to issue IOUs over the summer when the state's cash reserves dipped below the comfort level as a terrible thing, sophisticated bond investors saw it as a positive development. They saw the decision to issue IOUs to contractors and others as a sign that the state was willing to take extraordinary steps to ensure it had enough cash to make timely payments to bond holders.

For all you fans of direct democracy, 2010 could be a banner year. Here's the latest report from the Secretary of State's Office: 45 ballot initiatives have now been cleared for circulation and another 39 are awaiting clearance from the Attorney General's Office.

Gratefully, there will be nowhere near 84 ballot measures to vote on next year. Several of the initiative sponsors have submitted multiple measures to accomplish the same goal (for instance, there are four versions of yet another proposal to require parental notification for abortion). In addition, many of the proposals are simply loopy ideas that individuals submitted mainly in the hope of getting some publicity (outlawing divorce, for instance, or requiring drug testing for state legislators, or exempting from hate speech laws any speech based on "biblical authority," or the elimination of public funding for schools). After all, it only costs a couple hundred bucks to get a title and summary to clear a proposal for signature-gathering, and it costs between $1 million and $2 million to actually go out and get the signatures.

Even at that, there are plenty of measures that have the potential to ignite a ballot war among special interests: multiple proposals to eliminate the 2/3 vote requirement for passage of a budget and/or tax increases; one to roll back corporate tax cuts included in the current year's budget agreement; one to establish an independent commission to redraw congressional boundaries; several to legalize marijuana; four to change the way auto insurance rates can be calculated; two designed to prevent unions from spending members' dues on political campaigns.

In addition, four of the high-profile political reform measures that do appear to have sufficient financial backing are still waiting for signature-gathering clearance. Those include the much-talked-about measures to call for a constitutional convention.

I participated in a forum discussion of the political reform measures last week in Santa Barbara, sponsored by the Santa Barbara Regional Chamber of Commerce. At that event, Fred Silva of the reform group California Forward said he anticipates that 2010 will be a "festival of reform" in the state.

One has to wonder, however, at one point voters will cease considering a package of reforms a "festival" and begin thinking of it as a bothersome circus. My guess is 10 or 12 measures might qualify as a festival; anything in excess of 15 would fall into the circus category.

When the California Chamber of Commerce today joined with the Oxnard and Camarillo chambers to endorse Republican Jeff Gorell in Ventura County's 37th Assembly District, they were thinking about both 2010 and beyond.

Gorell, the only announced Republican candidate so far in the race to replace termed-out Assemblywoman Audra Strickland, is seen by business leaders as not just a strong candidate next year, but also the type of relatively moderate, thoughtful GOP candidate who would be strong in 2012. That's important because whoever is elected in 2010 will be running in a new, presumably more competitive, district in 2012 -- one that will be drawn by a new citizens' redistricting commission. Gorell also has the kind of personal background that could have broad appeal: a former prosecutor and a Navy reservist who served a stint in Afghanistan (albeit as a p.r. man).

"We're very attuned to what's happening," state chamber political strategist Rob Lapsley told me this afternoon. "We have to make sure that these candidates are positioned so they can win after redistricting. Jeff is the kind of candidate new voters can support."

Lapsley said the coordinated chambers' early endorsement in an uncontested primary was also designed to send a message to discourage any potential, last-minute GOP challengers. "We want to communicate to other potential candidates that he has the support of the business community," he said. "They will have to factor that in."

The 2008 race in the 37th was relatively close -- Strickland won by a mere 4 percentage points -- so the open seat in 2010 is likely to draw at least a close look by Democratic leaders looking for opportunities to pick up seats. Lapsley noted that the state and local chambers combined to put on a $1 million independent expenditure campaign in behalf of Republican Senate winner Tony Strickland in the county last year.

If need be, he said, they will do it again. "We will be there with the same resources we brought to Tony Strickland's race."

Expect next Tuesday to be the date of one of the most interesting political showdowns in recent Ventura County history. That's the day the Board of Supervisors will consider an ordinance establishing professional and educational criteria for the post of county treasurer-tax collector. There is already a state statute in place establishing such criteria, which exist in most California counties, but Ventura County has never acted to implement those standards.

It is an interesting policy question in its own right, but there will be no escaping the raw political aspects of this particular decision. Republican Assemblywoman Audra Strickland has said she wants to run for the job, but if the board were to adopt the criteria she would be disqualified from seeking the office.

Strickland has already secured the endorsements of nearly 30 Republican local elected officials (as well as two Democrats) and she and her supporters have launched a letter-writing campaign to make the somewhat tricky argument that there should be no requirement that the person in charge of handling the county's money have any expertise in investing or financial management.

Now, county Democrats have responded with a coordinated effort of their own. The county party today broadcast an e-mail asking supporters to write to supervisors asking that the criteria be adopted. The e-mail reads, in part, "Termed-out State Assembly Member Audra Strickland has targeted this seat as her next public office. We, as citizens, need to make sure that Audra Strickland, or anyone without a background in financial management, should not be allowed to run for the office. Audra Strickland is not qualified for this important job, and her hyper-partisan behavior could cloud her judgment if she held this position."

The battle lines should be interesting. Incumbent Treasurer Larry Matheney opposes the ordinance; his predecessor, long-time Treasurer Hal Pittman supports it.

Supervisors Kathy Long of Camarillo and Steve Bennett of Ventura, both Democrats, have publicly said they favor the idea of qualifications. Supervisor Peter Foy of Simi Valley, a Republican, is an ally of Strickland and a likely opponent. Supervisor Linda Parks of Thousand Oaks, regardless of how she comes down, has a self-interested reason to oppose the ordinance: If Strickland can't run for treasurer, she could possibly move into Parks' district and challenge the incumbent supervisor instead. That would seem to leave freshman Supervisor John Zaragosa of Oxnard, also a Democrat, as the decisive vote.

Expect a large crowd and heated testimony. Political drama such as this doesn't come along very often in this county.