As I wrote in my previous post, the big question in the gubernatorial primary campaign was whether GOP candidate Steve Poizner would seize the Goldman Sachs controversies to attack Meg Whitman on her ties to the Wall Street investment giant.

Poizner answered that question today with the release of a new ad, "Vulture." The name comes from Whitman's financial disclosures that show a portion of her massive, widely diversified financial portfolio is invested in so-called "vulture funds," designed to profit from others' economic hard times.

The significance in this shift on Poizner's part is that his previous commercials, including one featuring former Ventura County lawmaker and conservative icon Tom McClintock, have essentially charged Whitman with not being conservative enough. That matters in a Republican primary, but those attacks were unlikely to weaken Whitman's standing with all-important moderate voters going into the general election campaign. But by hitting Whitman on the Goldman Sachs issue, Poizner is picking at a Whitman vulnerability that will linger into the general election.

Poizner told the Orange County Register the other day that he believes he is going to pull of one of the great political comebacks in California history, and that he hopes by May 10 his contest with Whitman will be "an incredible horse race." His strategy all along has been to hit late and hit hard.

Still, many Republicans will be cringing at his new commercial. If Whitman is the eventual nominee, this new attack will essentially amount to a multimillion-dollar contribution by Poizner to the campaign of Democratic nominee Jerry Brown.

In politics, timing is everything, and for billionaire GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, the timing of the Security Exchange Commission's fraud charges against Goldman Sachs and this week's high-profile congressional hearing featuring company executives couldn't be worse.

Just as she appeared close to wrapping up the Republican nomination, a new vulnerability has been exposed: Whitman once served on the board of directors of Goldman Sachs and, while CEO of eBay, received preferential treatment in getting access to initial offerings of stock, which can and were quickly resold at significant profits. The company gave such preferential treatment to executives at companies, such as eBay, that gave them business. The practice, known as spinning, has since been outlawed.

Whitman, reacting to the crisis, told the Associated Press that she now regrets having participated in the spinning and that serving on the Goldman Sachs board was, for her, "not a good fit."

All this opens a huge window for Whitman's primary opponent, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner. Poizner's television advertising attacking Whitman as a phony conservative has already chipped into Whitman's once-overwhelming lead. The question now is whether he will launch ads focusing on Whitman's Goldman Sachs connections.

The Poizner campaign today issued a "research briefing" on the issue, under the headline "It's too late to apologize."

Democrats have already attacked Whitman on the issue in their statements and on various Internet sites, but they know that there's only one person who has the resources and the motivation to take the attack to the television airwaves at the moment, and that's Poizner.

Democrats fear that Poizner's commercials to date have done nothing to hurt -- and have perhaps helped -- Whitman in the general election. His attacks thus far have been designed to appeal to conservative Republican primary voters who are going to vote for the GOP candidate in November no matter what. When Poizner's ads tell viewers, for instance, that Whitman has the same position on immigration reform as President Obama, that may upset some conservatives but it probably helps her standing with independent and Latino voters.

But if Poizner decides to attack Whitman on her Wall Street and Goldman Sachs connections, that would be a different story. In that event, win or lose, Poizner will have done Democrats a favor by advancing the same narrative they're sure to use against Whitman in the fall if she is the GOP nominee.

In a commentary posted this week on the blog Fox & Hounds Daily, Thousand Oaks Assemblywoman Audra Strickland asserts her view that California should not move forward with implementing the new federal healthcare reform law.

She specifically criticizes a bill by Assembly Speaker John Per that would begin the process of setting up California's health insurance purchasing exchange, a key component of the new federal law. States will be required to establish such exchanges, which will serve as an online marketplace for consumers to shop for, compare prices and purchase policies in the individual market. They must be in place by Jan. 1, 2014.

True to her convictions, Strickland voted against that bill when it came before the Health Committee, on which she sits, last week.

But at that same meeting, Strickland voted for a bill -- this one authored by fellow Republican Mike Villines of Fresno, a candidate for state insurance commissioner -- that would set up in California a high-risk insurance pool that would provide partially subsidized coverage for people who have been denied policies because of pre-existing medical conditions. The high-risk pools and the federal subsidies are also part of the federal reform law.

So Strickland's position on "Obamacare," as she calls it in her commentary, seems to be that it's really bad, except for the good parts.

If you've happened to see the paid Meg Whitman for governor infomercial on TV and thought it seemed, well, a little staged, the Steve Poizner campaign has put together a revealing video on the subject.

It's worth a look, if for no other reason than to confirm your suspicions about how politicians these days are packaged and marketed as carefully as any consumer product. Here it is.

The latest statewide voter registration report was released late yesterday by Secretary of State Debra Bowen, and it shows that the trend toward voters declining to affiliate with either major party is continuing. More than one in five California voters is now registered as "decline to state" a party affiliation.

Ventura County lags behind most of the rest of the state, with 18.4 percent of its voters in that category. But here, too, the nonpartisans are catching up.

Since the comparable point before the last gubernatorial primary four years ago, Ventura County has added 38,410 voters. The largest bloc of them, 13,057, has registered as decline to state. Democrats in the county have picked up 10,040 voters in that time. And, remarkably, Republicans have lost 267.

The trend seems to be picking up steam. In the three-plus months since the state's most recent report, based on Jan. 5 registrations, both major parties in Ventura County have lost voters (Democrats are down 328, Republicans down 348). But while both major parties were losing voters, the number of nonpartisans increased 323.

Similar numbers from around the state are sure to bolster the arguments behind Proposition 14 on the June ballot, which would establish a primary election system in which all voters get to participate in the process of picking which candidates will be on the fall general election ballot. When 20 percent of voters are more or less excluded from that process (they can specifically request a Republican or Democratic ballot on Election Day, but few do), the traditional party primary system does seem more than a little out of date.

The previous time that Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman got together for a sort-of debate, it was a kid-gloves affair. But now that each has spent a boatload of money attacking the other on TV, it's become apparent that they're increasingly getting under each other's skin.

One suspects that when they get together for their second and, apparently, final debate on May 2 things won't be quite so gentile.

Consider these remarks from press releases issued today regarding Whitman's release of internal polling that shows her lead has slipped from 50 percent to 31 percent.

From Poizner Communications Director Jarrod Agen: "Meg Whitman's candidacy was always like one of those French soufflés one of her private chefs would cook up on her private jet -- full of expensive air and destined to deflate."

From Whitman pollster John McGlaughlin: "Unless in the remaining few weeks Steve Poizner can make himself a likable person, there's no way he can win."

If Whitman wins, don't expect her to start chatting up Poizner for a U.S. Senate campaign in 2012, as her campaign staff did a couple months ago when they were trying to talk him into dropping out of the governor's race.

In a poignant show of solidarity with members of the deaf community who appeared before the Health Committee today, Assemblywoman Audra Strickland rose from the dais and signed much of her remarks on the bill that brought them there.

Strickland explained that her mother was a sign language interpreter and that her entire family learned to sign when she was growing up. She also noted that she has taught her two young children "many, many signs." Then, acknowledging her own limits, Strickland deferred to the professional interpreter on hand in the committee room as she completed her specific remarks on the bill.

The measure, whose fate remains unclear at this time, would expand the amount of information about communication options that is given to parents of newborns who are diagnosed with hearing impairments.

The state Democratic Party over the weekend gave Santa Barbara City Councilman Das Williams a big boost in his contest with businesswoman and environmental activist Susan Jordan for the party's nomination in the 35th Assembly District.

The state party affirmed the decision of local Democratis to endorse Williams in the race, and the hurdle to attain such an endorsement is quite high -- 60 percent support from voting delegates. The endorsement means that Williams' name will appear on any pre-primary mail sent by the party and also that Williams can bill himself as party-endorsed candidate.

Jerry Brown was well known during his first go-round as governor for the philosophy of paddling a little on the left, a little on the right to maintain a centrist course.

He showed at the Democratic convention on Saturday that he intends to stick with that strategy as he seeks to return to the office after a 24-year absence.

To an audience largely made of up of hard-core environmental activists, Brown spoke of the need to clear out the "regulatory underbrush" to clear the way for new electricty transmission lines that are needed to accommodate the development of large-scale solar energy developments in the desert.

Environmental impact reports on the project, he said, "are as high as this podium. We need transmission lines. We need to be able to utilize solar... Every one on every mile will be objected to, but we need to get real here." His objective: complete the project in two years instead of nine to meet a goal of 20 megawatts of solar-powered electricty by 2020.

At a news conference following his speech, Brown reminded reporters that he has pledged not to support any tax increases unless they are approved by voters. "That may not be a big deal in the Republican Party, but it's a big deal in the Democratic Party."

In addition, he said he will work to decentralize government decision-making and taxing authority. The former Jesuit seminarian said that philosophy is modeled on "the papal principle of subsidiarity -- you want the smallest institution to deal with the problem."

Daniel Goldberg of Oxnard, the 24-year-old Adam Sandler-lookalike seeking the Republican nomination in the 35th Assembly District, is a third-generation flower farmer.

Most of the flowers grown at the family's Oxnard and Santa Maria ranches are raised in open-ended, plastic-covered structures that most folks would call greenhouses. But Goldberg tells me he's stopped using that word when selling his wares at farmers' markets because, well, somehow global warming has given greenhouses a bad name. He refers to them as "hoop houses," which seems to allay some purchasers' fears about buying flowers from that have been grown under conditions that must somehow be bad for the environment.

Problem is, the "greenhouse effect" is merely a metaphor to describe the effects of carbon dioxide and other gases on the Earth's atmosphere. It's called the greenhouse effect because these gases serve the same function as the glass panes on a greenhouse -- they let in the sun's warming shorter-wavelength radiation, but trap the longer-wavelength radiation reflecting off the Earth's surface and keep much of it from escaping the atmosphere.

Global warming has absolutely nothing to do with actual greenhouses. They are designed to trap in heat for the good of the plants (which actually absorb the real greenhouse gases, but that's another story). Inside a greenhouse, the greenhouse effect is a good thing.

Maybe if Goldberg wins, having a flower farmer in the Legislature could help sort out such ill-informed confusion.

To the surprise of no one except idealistic dreamers in the gay rights community, the all-volunteer effort to try to place an initiative on this fall's ballot to repeal Proposition 8 has fallen short.

The advocacy group Love Honor Cherish announced this morning it has failed to collect the nearly 700,000 voter signatures that would have been necessary to force a vote this fall.

The group set out on its own last fall after Equality California, the lead organization in fighting Proposition 8 in 2008, announced its strategic decision to delay any attempt to overturn the constitutional ban on same-sex marriages until 2012. It was the consensus opinion of the organization's donors and political strategists that 2012 would present a more favorable political climate to try to overturn the measure. Equality California said it would not raise any money to support a signature-gathering effort in 2010.

Love Honor Cherish sought to collect the necessary signatures through an all-volunteer effort -- something that, despite the lip service once given the intitiative process as a means for ordinary citizens to shape their government, never works.

It's the latest example of how, if you don't have a million or two million dollars to spare, forget about putting an initiative on the ballot.

No matter what your politics, you've got to admire an idea that Democratic Assembly candidate Ferial Masry of Newbury Park has come up with:

She will be hosting a campaign kickoff event on Sunday, May 2, at which she will speak to supporters and seek to sign up volunteers. But instead of being asked to bring money to contribute to the campaign, guests are being asked to bring canned foods and dry goods to donate to the Conejo Valley Manna Food Bank.

"There is a high need for jelly, chili, canned pasta, cooking oil, and cereal," Masry says in a press release.

These days, it seems every candidate's political speech starts off with a recognition that these are tough economic times and people are hurting. Masry seems to be acknowledging that reality with deed as well as word.

The age of digitial ballot initiative drives remains in the future, if it is to come at all, following a San Mateo County Superior Court judge's ruling this week that petitions circulated and signed over iPhones don't meet the Elections Code's requirement for signature-gathering.

Judge George Miram noted that the Elections Code contains provisions specifying the margins that must be used for the printing of paper versions of the summaries of initiatives that individuals must be shown before signing their names and other technical provisions that would make it impossible to circulate petitions in any way other than in paper form.

"Substantial compliance means actual compliance in respect to the substance essential to every reasonable objective of the statute," Miram wrote.

In other words, the judge's view is that the law must be changed if electronically generated signatures are ever to be allowed. Under the technology promoted by the
Silicon Valley-based Verafirma, initiative sponsors could send out electronic copies of their petition. Individuals could electronically click to affirm having read the initiative, then affix their signatures by tracing their fingers over the iPhone's touchscreen and then electronically transmit their signature back to the initiative sponsor.

Proponents see it as a potentially game-changing development for California's multimillion-dollar initiative industry because once a certain group has amassed a large enough database of voters who share its ideological bent, it could cheaply and quickly tap into that group of voters to qualify an initiative whenever it wanted by simply sending out a mass e-mail blast.

After this week's ruling, it appears that day may be a long way off.

As sponsors of a proposed initiative that would shelve California's first-in-the-nation efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions continue to collect signatures in the hope of forcing a November vote, a new Field Poll finds that Californians still strongly support the law and believe that the state can combat global warming and promote economic prosperity at the same time.

If the initiative drive, funded largely by the Texas-based oil company Valero, succeeds, the question will obviously be politically important on its own. But it also could emerge as a significant issue in both the races for governor and U.S. Senate. Republican candidates for governor Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner both support pulling the plug on California's law, as do GOP senatorial candidates Carly Fiorina, Tom Campbell and Chuck DeVore.

Given Democrat Jerry Brown's high-visibility defense of the law as attorney general and Sen. Barbara Boxer's role in pushing for a federal cap-and-trade policy that would resemble California's law, the state's commitment to dealing with climate change could be a significant dividing-line issue in the fall campaigns.

Given the poll results, it will be interesting to see whether, after the primaries, the winning GOP candidates will backtrack on the issue as they seek to broaden their appeal to independents.

The state Fair Political Practices Commission, in its monthly Top 10 list, has placed Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Thousand Oaks, at No. 4 on its all-time list of beneficiaries of independent expenditure campaigns.

Strickland got the benefit of $1.7 million ($1,679,729, to be precise) in independent campaign advertising, purchased by interest groups with no direct connection to the candidate, during the course of his 2008 Senate campaign, the FPPC reports.

That places him just behind former Democratic Assemblyman John Dutra, who lost a primary contest in 2006, and just ahead of Sen. Rod Wright, who won his Senate seat in 2008.

Atop the lost is Orange County Sen. Lou Correa. Interest groups independently spent $2.4 million to help Correa narrowly win election in 2006.

The new USC/L.A. Times poll released over the weekend shows that the views of younger voters are markedly shifting political views on a variety of issues in California, from healthcare reform to same-sex marriage to immigration policy.

The phenomenon is most pronounced in voter views on same-sex marriage. The poll found, as did this month's Public Policy Institute of California poll, that a majority of likely California voters (52 percent) now support same-sex marriage. Among voters 18-29, the support is overwhelming: 72-24. It's also very strong among those 30-44, with 60 percent in support and 35 percent opposed. Support drops to 49-43 among those 45-64, and those 65 and over are strongly opposed, 35-53.

The age-based divide on that issue has been well reported in the past. But this poll shows the same age divide coming into play on other issues.

On healthcare reform, among all likely voters, 52 percent said the nation will be better off under the law signed by President Obama late last month. Among those 18-29, 64 percent felt that way. Notably, 27 percent of those in that age group said they do not now have health insurance, while only 8 percent of those 45-64 were without coverage and only 1 percent of those over 65.

And on immigration reform, young voters are much more supportive of providing social services to illegal immigrants than voters at large. Among all voters, 31 percent believe all social services should be denied to illegal immigrants, but only 22 percent of those 18-29 hold that view. "The single greatest determinate on that issue is age," said Dan Schnur, director of USC's Unruh Institute of Politics. "These numbers represent a sea change."

Interestingly, the age variations aren't tremendously significant when it comes to assessing various political candidates -- except for evaluating President Obama. His favorability rating among all California voters is a strong 64 percent, but among voters 18-29 that number is an astronomical 78 percent.

After the last of several lawsuits over what words candidates could use to describe themselves on the ballot were at last resolved, Secretary of State Debra Bowen late yesterday released the certified list of candidates for the June 8 election.

The ballot designations, those three-word descriptions that are increasingly becoming a political art form, are worth noting here.

Likely because polls show both Congress and the Legislature with low favorability ratings, none of the local incumbents has chosen to use either of "member of Congress" or "member of Legislature" to describe himself or herself. Congressman Elton Gallegly and Congresswoman Lois Capps have chosen instead to call themselves "U.S. Representatives." The two local incumbents running for re-election to the Legislature use these designations: Cameron Smyth, "Businessperson/Assemblymember," and Julia Brownley, "State Assemblymember."

Assemblyman Pedro Nava, running for attorney general, describes himself as "Attorney/Assemblymember" -- certainly a more straightforward description than those used by his two colleagues running for the same office, Alberto Torrico ("Workers Rights Attorney") and Ted Lieu ("Military Prosecutor/Lawmaker").

Sen. Tony Strickland, who used the cleverly green designation of "Renewable Energy Businessman" in his Senate race two years ago, has chosen this time not to make reference to his association with the fledgling firm Green Wave Energy. In his run for controller, his designation will be "State Senator/Businessman."

Here's a rundown of the designations:

23rd Congressional District: Capps; John Davidson, Republican of Thousand Oaks, "Small Business Owner"; Carole Lee Miller, Republican of Pismo Beach, "Business Woman"; Dave Stockdale, Republican of Santa Maria, "Insurance Agency Owner"; Clark Vandeventer, Republican of Goleta, "Small Business Owner"; Troy Watson, Republican of Carpinteria, "Hi-Tech Entrepreneur"; and Darrell Stafford, Libertarian of Arroyo Granda, "Retired Finance Director."

24th Congressional District: Gallegly; Timothy Allison, Democrat of Ventura, "Educator/Small Businessman"; Marie Panic, Democrat of Thousand Oaks, "Biologist/School Boardmember"; Shawn Steel, Democrat of Thousand Oaks, "Environmental Consultant/Educator."

35th Assembly District: Susan Jordan, Democrat of Santa Barbara, "Director, Environmental Organization"; Das Williams, Democrat of Santa Barbara, "Educator, City Councilmember"; Daniel Goldberg, Republican of Oxnard, "Farmer"; Mike Stoker, Republican of Santa Barbara, "Businessman."

37th Assembly District: Ferial Masry, Democrat of Newbury Park, "Public Schoolteacher"; Jeff Gorell, Republican of Camarillo, "Businessman/Naval Officer"; Robert Howell, Republican of Woodland Hills, "Attorney."

38th Assembly District: Smyth; Diana Shaw, Democrat of Santa Clarita, "Small Businesswoman/Attorney"; Peggy Christensen, Libertarian of Granada Hills, "Educator."

41st Assembly District: Brownley; Terry Rathburn, Republican of Toluca Lake, "Businessman"; Linda Pierce-Avila, Green Party member of Santa Monica, "Physical Therapist."

Attorney General Jerry Brown today released the results of his investigation into ACORN, a probe that was triggered by the airing of bizarre videos that showed ACORN workers assisting a young man who says he claimed to be a pimp and his girlfriend, posing as a prostitute.

Brown's investigation turned up a number of things that could spell trouble for those who worked at ACORN, a now defunct community-organizing group -- including a missing 2007 tax return, which he has asked the Franchise Tax Board to look into. But Brown said he could find nothing that rises to the level of criminal violations that his office could prosecute.

More provocatively, Brown notes that his office obtained the unedited videos of the journalistic sting operation. He has posted them on his website.

The unedited videos reveal such previously unrevealed details as:
-- An ACORN worker in San Diego called the cops
-- An ACORN worker in San Bernardino, apparently having caught on to the spoof, told the visitors that she had murdered her abusive husband.
-- During the actual interviews, videographer James O'Keefe III wore a tie, not the outrageous pimp outfit that he wears at the beginning and end of the videos.

O'Keefe is now facing criminal charges in Louisiana after he and a colleague allegedly attempted to wiretap the office phones of Sen. Mary Landrieu.

"The evidence illustrates," Brown said in a statement from his office, "that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality. Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor."