As I prepare to take off for three days of golf outside of Las Vegas, at Tom Fazio's two breathtaking gifts to golf at Primm Valley, CA, time to clean out the email inbox and relay some campaign updates (just 10 days to the filing deadline, after which things get really interesting)...

If Assemblywoman Julia Brownley thought the carpetbagger attacks against her would be confied to the general election (should she get there), she was mistaken.

Alex Thompson, campaign manager for Westlake Village businessman David Cruz Thayne, hit her with a broadside earlier this week in a strongly worded memo distributed to the press. Among the highlights: "Brownley is a long-time resident of Santa Monica, and has never lived for a single day in either Ventura County or the 26th District. In fact, she lives in this nearly $1 million condo, which she bought in 2008, on 3rd Street in Santa Monica--just three blocks from the upscale Third Street Promenade and three blocks from the ocean, in one of the most high-priced neighborhoods in Santa Monica."

Meanwhile, one of the other two announced Democrats, Moorpark Councilman David Pollock, yesterday visited Houweling's Tomatoes in Oxnard, the second stop on a what he says will be a sustained tour of environmentally friendly Ventura County businesses. He calls the focus on green industry a focus of his campaign. In a press release, the campaign says: "Pollock, who devoted much of his private sector career to business development in the high tech industry, believes that Ventura County is uniquely suited to cultivating a green technology economy."

In legislative races, 19th Senate District Democratic candidate Jason Hodge is using a family connection to bolster his environmental credentials. His campaign sent out a fundraising letter (complete with photos of the two exploring tidepools as youngsters) signed by his sister Jessica, who is a field organizer for the Sierra Club. Jessica:writes that her brother has been a proponent on the Oxnard Harbor District board by promoting green practices there, and that his commitment in that arena is consistent with their upbringing. "Our father also liked to take us hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains and camping every summer. The beauty and diversity of California's wild places inspired a sense of awe and stewardship in us growing up," she writes.

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If Democrats in Ventura County think Supervisor Linda Parks might create headaches for them by running as a "no party preference" candidate in the 26th Congressional District, perhaps they can get together with Republicans in the San Bernardino County-based 8th Congressional District to commisserate.

Former Assemblyman Anthony Adams, a moderate Republican who was assailed by conservatives because of his vote for a 2009 compromise that produced a state budget balanced with both spending cuts and temporary tax increases that have since expired, announced today he will be running as a "no party preference" candidate in the heavily Republican 8th District. The potential problem for the GOP is that there are five announced Republican candidates already, and only one Democrat. Like Ventura County's 26th District, the 8th is an open seat with no incumbent.

In his statement today, Adams mirrored some of the same points Parks has been making since announcing her intent to run: "my candidacy will not be targeted to the extremes of either party but to the base of both parties" ... "The citizens of this district are fed up with the partisan bickering that has deadlocked Congress" ... "Democrats and Republicans are putting their party ahead of our country. I believe there is a better way."

The new top-two primary creates an opening for candidates who are not aligned with either major party. In June, Adams, Parks and perhaps others will test whether that opening is large enough to seriously test two-party dominance.

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Soliticitations from political candidates and organizations asking for contributions are commonplace in email inboxes these days, as candidates from all political stripes seek to emulate the netroots fundraising strength exhibited by such champions of the technique as Barack Obama and Ron Paul. I sign up to get on the distribution lists of a great many candidates, and as a result probably receive more than most folks, getting almost daily solicitations from political operations as varied as the Tea Party Express and Obama for America.

Until yesterday I had never seen one with poetic prose and beautiful nature photography.

The appeal from 26th District congressional candidate Linda Parks was pure poetry.

"It is the calm before the storm," she wrote, reasonably predicting that as an independent she will be the target of funded attacks from the left and the right, from both opposing candidates and the national political parties based in Washington, D.C. The impending storm is so certain, she noted, "even the birds are stopping their singing and returning to their nests." It is illustrated with a striking photo of a mountain landscape with gathering clouds on the horizon.

"A hurricane of money" is on its way, she warns. "Onshore winds are whipping up waves of money from the west, and state and national PAC money is gathering from the east."

But don't despair, she writes, there is hope. The new top-two primary will allow voters to "take the district by storm."

"Electing me," she wrote, "will send a message against big money and partisan extremism."

And in the end, it is "a beautiful day" -- a message underscored by another lovely photograph, this one of the sun breaking through the clouds and sunlight reflecting off the ocean as waves lap beneath a pier.

It closes with an invitation to a Sunday birthday party at HLR Ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains -- a party at which campaign contributions are recommended in lieu of presents.

There's no question that Parks is a different kind of candidate. Whether poetry will be enough to compete in the rough-and-tumble of big-time congressional politics, however, remains to be seen.

Give this to 26th Congressional District Democratic candidate David Cruz Thayne: He sure knows how to recruit talented help.

Thayne announced this morning that noted Democratic strategist Joe Trippi has joined his campaign team. Trippi is widely credited with developing the Internet-based grassroots support that briefly propelled former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean to the top of the heap in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary. But Californians might remember him best for his most recent work as the lead media strategist for Gov. Jerry Brown's 2010 gubernatorial campaign -- a campaign that won national recognition for the devastating television commercial featuring clips of Republican candidate Meg Whitman and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzengger saying the exact same things.

Trippi has also worked for such big-name national Democrats as the late Sen. Ted Kennedy,

A press release issued this morning quotes Trippi as saying this about his role with the Thayne campaign: "I will be working with David to utilize the unharnessed grassroots power of this diverse and proud district."

Thayne, a former tennis pro and a Westlake Village businessman whose endeavors have included producing tennis-based film documentaries, already has an all-star lineup on his campaign team that includes former Gov. Gray Davis' top strategist Garry South, pollster John Fairbanks and fundraiser Tricia Riffenburgh.

The one big question at this point is how Thayne intends to pay for all this high-powered help. His 2011 fundraising was relatively meager, although South told me recently he still expects that the campaign will raise in the neighborhood of $300,000 for the primary.

If that happens -- and it's a very big if -- it will be fascinating to see what kind of campaign Trippi and South come up with in their attempt to put an unknown candidate over the top in a field that also includes a well known state senator (Republican Tony Strickland), a member of the Assembly with proven fundraising ability (Democrat Julia Brownley), a county supervisor with high name recognition in the district (potential independent Linda Parks) and two longtime local government officials (Moorpark Councilman David Pollock and Oxnard Harbor District Commissioner Jess Herrera, both Democrats).

19th Senate District candidate Jason Hodge began his campaign against fellow Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson with an impressive early showing among organized labor, racking up both campaign contributions and endorsements -- including that of the Tri Counties Central Labor Council.

But that may be changing, thanks in large part to a piece of campaign literature that Hodge has been leaving on district doorknobs. It proclaims Hodge to be "The Democrat Who Doesn't Think You Need Higher Taxes."

As a stand-alone campaign strategy, it's fairly smart politics because it differentiates him from the label that Republican Tony Strickland and his allies relentlessly pinned on Jackson during their $11 million 2008 race: "Taxin' Jackson." The monicker was pinned on her by a disgraced and now departed editorial writer at the conservative Santa Barbara News-Press, and it seems to have stuck, if for no other reason that it sounds clever and evokes the title of the 1988 action film "Action Jackson."

But in the context of the 2012 campaign, Hodge's slogan rankles organized labor, which is rallying behind one or more initiatives that could be headed to the November ballot that will ask California voters to increase taxes to provide additional revenue to boost school spending.

The SEIU reported this week that a "town hall" process involving members in the districts resulted in an endorsement of Jackson. And sources tell me there are efforts afoot to deny Hodge the California Labor Federation federation endorsement when the statewide group meets this spring to consider whether to ratify the local labor caucus' decision to back Hodge.

On today's third anniversary of the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- aka, the stimulus package -- the National Republican Congressional Committee is celebrating by making calls in targeted House districts to remind voters about what the GOP group calls the "failed stimulus plan that has paralyzed our economy."

No surprise that among the targets for the calls is the new 24th Congressional District, which spreads up the coast from the beaches in Ventura through Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. Rep. Lois Capp is the Democratic incumbent, and she voted for the bill and will have to make the case during the upcoming campaign that even though the economy continued to sputter after its passage things would have been far worse had it not passed.

What is a bit of surprise is that the robocalls being made into Ventura County's 26th Congressional District call out Moorpark Councilman David Pollock by name. That means, at least for now, GOP leaders in Washington consider him the favorite among the announced Democratic candidates. In these calls, voters are reminded that "David Pollock's friends in Washington, D.C." were the ones responsible for passing the legislation.

With the issue of who will become the frontrunner among Democratic candidates in the 26th Congressional District an open question following the departure of Supervisor Steve Bennett, the remaining candidates are showing renewed signs of vigor.

Moorpark Councilman David Pollock scored at least a small coup this week by securing the first labor endorsement in the race, that of Teamsters Joint Council 42, which represents 22 Teamsters local unions in California, Nevada and Hawaii. Labor, of course, often plays a big role in Democratic primaries, but until this week unions had stayed out of this race.

That endorsement is potentially a much bigger deal than the other development Pollock's campaign is touting -- a brief appearance on an MNBC news-talk show on Friday in which he was asked about his "Bad News Bears" Internet video. That appearance allows him to legitimately assert that he's the only candidate in the race to have received national television news coverage.

Meanwhile, Westlake Village businessman and former tennis pro David Cruz Thayne has picked up the endorsements of three more members of the Legislature's Latino Caucus.

Thayne's campaign also released a pointed statement today designed to discourage Assemblywoman Julia Brownley of Santa Monica from entering the race. Brownley, whose district includes Port Hueneme and much of Oxnard, is considering a potential run now that Bennett has departed. Here is some of what Thayne's campaign manager Alex Thompson had to say about that:

"Although I like and have the deepest respect for Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, she would not be a good fit for the 26th Congressional District. Not only does she not live in the district, nor has she ever lived in the district, she actually lives in Santa Monica, 26-30 miles from the eastern boundary of the district, depending on which way you drive...

"Whichever Republican ends up in the run-off, he or she will live in the district and have deep ties to the district. Democrats should think long and hard about supporting a candidate who lives far outside the district and will be subjected to attacks for not only being a carpetbagger, but for representing 'Santa Monica values.'"

With little fanfare on Friday afternoon, Gov. Jerry Brown signed urgency legislation that will have the effect of making Supervisor Linda Parks' decision about how to position herself in the upcoming congressional campaign a little tougher.

Under AB 1413, which passed both houses of the Legislature without a single negative vote, candidates running in the new top-two primary must choose as their "party preference" the same preference expressed on their voter registration affidavit. In other words, if a candidate is registered to vote as a Republican, he or she must list on the ballot "prefers Republican Party." The only way a candidate can be listed as "no party preference" is if he or she declines to state a party affiliation as a voter.

That means if Parks wants to run with a "no party preference" designation -- the equivalent of an independent -- she will first have to change her voter registration from Republican to decline to state.

The original legislation authored by former Sen. Abel Maldonado gave candidates the option of choosing a party preference that was different from their voter registration status.

Maldonado, who on Monday took out papers to file as a candidate in the 24th Congressional District against Democratic Rep. Lois Capps, told me he has no problem with the change.

The change, he noted, does protect against candidates attempting to fool voters by using an insincere party preference on the ballot. The integrity of the top-two system he led the charge to create, Maldonado said, remains intact. "It's still an open primary where all people get to vote for the best candidate, so I'm OK with the change," he said. "It still allows 3.5 million Californians (those registered as decline-to-state voters) a role in the primary. They don't have to ask permission to get a ballot."

The change will force Parks to make a decision that will at least marginally detract from her chances, whichever choice she makes.

If she decides to remain registered as a Republican voter, the "prefers Republican Party" designation on the ballot would make it nearly impossible to get the kind of support from Democrats she would need to finish in the top two in the primary. If she decides to change her registration to decline-to-state, it will make it more difficult to pick up support from Republicans who may be inclined to support someone other than the GOP-endorsed candidate, Sen. Tony Strickland.

Until Friday, a system had been in place in which Parks could have had the best of both worlds by remaining a partisan voter and campaigning as an independent candidate. But the rules changed, just in time for Monday's opening of the candidate-filing period.

Well, that was quite a weekend for Ventura County Democrats in San Diego -- topped by the Saturday night shocker of Supervisor Steve Bennett arriving there minutes before the endorsement caucus for the 26th Congressional District and telling those who were about to overwhelmingly vote for him that he was withdrawing from the race.
Much more on that, and the ongoing repercussions, to come in my coverage in The Star.

In other developments over the weekend...

* Central Committee vice-chairman David Atkins told me of a curious sequence of events that resulted in a non-endorsement by the California Young Democrats in the 19th Senate District primary between Jason Hodge and Hannah-Beth Jackson. Although the local clubs in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties heavily supported Jackson, Atkins tells me that the San Francisco club objected because it had "a special friend" connected to that race. That would be San Francisco Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, Hodge's wife. The objections from San Francisco won the day, and the statewide organization issued no endorsement.

* Sen. Fran Pavley told me that members of the Conejo Valley Democratic Club attending a Friday night reception received VIP treatment from Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg. Democrats from the Conejo Valley are unaccustomed to such treatment because for the last decade they have lived in political districts in which Democrats had little chance of winning. The new 27th Senate District, however, is a different story. Steinberg and state Democratic leaders say it is one of three districts in which the outcome will determine whether the party captures a two-thirds majority in the Senate this fall.

* With Bennett's withdrawal, the 26th Congressional District -- targeted by Democrats as one of nine "battleground" districts statewide -- became one of only five of California's 53 House districts in which there will be no official party endorsement.

* Attorney General Kamala Harris' speech to delegates on Saturday had such a rousing rhetorical finish that it was easy to imagine President Barack Obama's campaign inquiring about a potential reprise at the national convention in Charlotte this summer. Harris, after mentioning the bailouts of banks that were "too big to fail," recited in a repetitive crescendo a series of things that Democrats believe are "too big to fail" -- the middle class, environmental protection, inclusive society, marriage equality, the rights of women, etc. It brought down the house. No only does Harris have a compelling speech that dovetails with what surely will be themes of the Obama campaign, but she was an early and ardent supporter of Obama back in 2008, when many Democrats believed he had no chance against Hillary Clinton. Presidents don't forget that kind of thing.

* It turns out that Democrats from Ventura County aren't the only ones in the party who have especially strong feelings about local Republican Tony Strickland. The chairwoman emeritus of the party's Environmental Caucus, Rachel Binah from the Mendocino County coast, made a point of introducing herself to me and offering to be a source of information about Green Wave Energy -- the firm that received, lost and has now reapplied for a Federal Energy Commission permit to develop a wave energy facility off Mendocino County. The local environmentalists up there hate that idea -- and they are well aware that Strickland is an investor in the firm and that he used that association to present himself to local voters four years ago as an "alternative energy executive."

* Local candidates who did emerge from the convention with party endorsements included Pavley and Jackson in the Senate races; Das Williams, Tom Mullens and Edward Headington in the Assembly races; and Lois Capps and Lee Rogers in the congressional races.

* It was clear that Democrats, who were dispirited last year after election losses nationally in 2010 and disappointment that Obama had not met their high expectations, have been re-energized by the Republican presidential primary. There's nothing that gets partisans worked up quite like disdain for the other side. Best line on that phenomenon came from House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi: "How many times have you heard this?" she asked. " 'This is the most important election of our generation.' They just keep getting more important because the other side keeps getting more outrageous."

For the last 25 years most of Ventura County has been represented in the House of Representatives by one of the country's most hardline congressmen on immigration issues. It has been Rep. Elton Gallegly's signature issue. With Gallegly's retirement, that will change. But in what direction?

It's unclear yet what will be the position of the Republican candidates on that issue -- most critically, whether they will support some sort of provision that would allow a path to legal residency for illegal immigrants who've lived here for a number of years.

But the four Democratic candidates spelled out their positions at last night's candidates' forum in Oxnard. My colleague Gretchen Wenner, who reported on the forum in today's Star, provides the following account of what was said:

David Pollock: In an unnamed reference Gallegly, Pollock said: Our Congressman we've had to live with the last 25 years... "has done more damage to Ventura County just on that one issue alone than any good he may have done...
"It's put an entire class of people in the shadows," he said, adding that comprehensive immigration reform makes sense. Pollock said there needs to be a method for people to come here to work, and to free up border control to focus on real threats to security.

Steve Bennett: "Elton Gallegly has used this and scapegoated the immigration policy shamelessly, in my opinion," he said. He asserted that it's important that the representative from Ventura County be a leader in Congress on the issue. They would need to support a way to earn citizenship, support children not being held accountable for the actions of their parents and so on. "The biggest thing we have to do is start to recognize that we are a country of immigrants," he said.

Jess Herrera: "I'm definitely in favor of immigration reform," he said.
"These issues usually come up when we have a downturn in the economy. When there are brown people in the fields" or washing dishes, he said, no one seems to notice when there's no downturn. "Let's help those people," he said. "You know they do all the dirty jobs."

David Cruz Thayne: "Nobody wants to tackle this difficult issue," he said. "For me this is not a difficult issue. You cannot deny the human spirit." You can put up fences and borders but people will continue to come here, he said. There's now a system where people come but are living in the shadows. "We have to give them opportunities to become citizens."

The National Republican Congressional Committee has its eye on Tony Strickland.

That group, the political arm of the Republican House majority, is announcing today that Strickland, the state senator from Moorpark, has been placed on its "on the radar" list of up-and-coming congressional candidates. Strickland is running in the new, open 26th Congressional District in Ventura County. Today's designation places Strickland one step away from the NRCC's "Young Guns" category, the top designation given to those challengers in open seats nationwide that the group believes to have the most potential. To attain the designation, Strickland must meet party-established benchmarks for fundraising and campaign organization.

"We are looking forward to working with Tony Strickland, who has already proven himself by meeting rigorous benchmarks in the 'Young Guns' program that will position his campaign for victory," said NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions of Texas, in a statement released today.

Meanwhile, the other Republican in the race, Akiva Werbalowsky of Ojai, has scheduled an announcement press conference for tomorrow at the County Government Center in Ventura. In his press release on the event, the unconventional Werbalowsky acknowledges that he is "new to this announcement-dissemination world" and asks for help in spreading the word. And he promises it will be a little different from traditional political press conferences. "I'll have a short press conference and then whomever wants can walk with me to a tavern for straight talk, cervesa, soft drinks, and more," he writes.

And in congressional news from up the coast in La Conchita, Santa Barbara and beyond, Democratic Congressman Lois Capps is taking pains to point out that tea party supporters will still have a candidate in the June primary, even after Sunday's announcement by Tom Watson that he will not run.

Watson has endorsed Chris Mitchum, another tea party supporter. Mitchum, the son of the late actor Robert Mitchum, was the GOP nominee for Assembly in 1998 in the district that included Santa Barbara and western Ventura County.

Especially in presidential election years -- like this one, when GOP primary debates became mid-winter reality show programming for the cable news networks -- political junkies tend to get about 10 months ahead of the public in thinking that the campaign season has started. In reality, this year's presidential campaign will actually begin in August. And the campaigns for all the lesser offices? Those will start for real about six weeks before Election Day.

With that in mind, it's worthwhile to take a deep breath and understand that the upcoming campaign for Ventura County's new, open and highly contested congressional seat has not actually begun. First, there's the matter of who will be running. That's hardly settled. The filing deadline is still more than a month away, meaning that some of the announced candidates may not follow through and one or more may yet emerge.

Then there's the fact that the vast majority of voters won't even become aware that there is a June 5 primary until sometime around the first of May.

I thought about that yesterday evening after talking with Democratic candidate David Cruz Thayne and his campaign strategist, Garry South. It struck me that Thayne could be the turtle in a race of hares.

While Democrat David Pollock was releasing an Internet ad, while Republican Tony Strickland was touting a first-day fundraising total of more than $300,000, while Democrat Steve Bennett was working local delegates to secure their recommendation for the state party endorsement, Thayne has mostly been doing spade work.

His early fundraising hasn't been great, but he's built a structure that might help him raise money when it counts. He lined up a team of business executives, including Miramax Chairman Richard Nanula, to serve as finance co-chairs. He received the maximum contribution from filmmaker Steve Bing, a top Democratic donor nationwide whose financial support could signal others to follow suit. South still says he's confident (but then, no competent strategist would say otherwise), that Thayne will raise north of a quarter-million dollars before the primary.

Thayne has also lined up endorsements from a bunch of people voters in Ventura County have never heard of -- four legislators in Sacramento who are members of the Latino Caucus. Being able to tout those collective endorsements in Spanish-language advertising in May will give Thayne a seal of credibility among many Latino voters.

And Thayne keeps pushing the same one-note theme about his strength relative to Bennett and Pollock: that he's not a "career politician." The charge that either a longtime teacher who made a mid-career switch to nonpartisan political office (Bennett) or a career aerospace worker who has never held a fulltime political office (Pollock) is a "career politician" is somewhat incredulous on its face, but in a year when anti-incumbent sentiment is expected to be very strong, perhaps it's a theme that will play well when casual voters begin to tune in to the campaign in May.

Bottom line: I haven't heard from too many political insiders in Ventura County who've been impressed with Thayne in December or January, but it's way too soon to count him out in May.

As Republicans who've been watching their party's presidential primary are painfully aware, primary campaigns -- in which there are few actual policy differences between the candidates -- can easily become mean-spirited and personal. Moorpark Councilman David Pollock today showed that the contest among Democrats in Ventura County's new 26th Congressional District will be no different.

In an email to supporters, Pollock took direct aim at Supervisor Steve Bennett of Ventura. As I reported in The Star last week, the two held repeated conversations over at least two days in an attempt to narrow the Democratic field. Pollock asserts that all the talk was about the possibility of Bennett dropping out and endorsing him; Bennett says the discussion included other options, including the idea of Pollock getting out of the race.

Now this is what Pollock has to say about Bennett: "Unfortunately, another Democratic candidate, Steve Bennett, has chosen to distort the facts and mislead voters into questioning my commitment to this race. He has a long history of political in-fighting and has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to undercut Democrats. Just as when he supported Republican Linda Parks to chair the board of Supervisors over a fellow Democrat."

That last allegation is a little over the top. The fact was that Democratic Supervisor John Flynn had so badly burned his bridges with his fellow supervisors that when he nominated himself to become chairman of the board, none of the other four supervisors would second the motion. Bennett's support for Parks as chairman (as well as Democrat Kathy Long's support) had nothing to do with any scheme to "undercut" a Democrat.

There is a candidates' forum scheduled for Wednesday evening in downtown Oxnard. If both Bennett and Pollock attend, it could get interesting.

As a state senator in 2009, Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria leveraged the state's impending fiscal collapse to create a new statewide primary election system that he hoped would reward moderates. As a condition for voting in favor of temporary tax increases that helped the state get through its post-financial meltdown crisis, Maldonado insisted that lawmakers vote to place the top-twp primary proposal before voters.

Fast forward to 2012, and Maldonado is hoping the new system will work in his favor. He is running for Congress in the new district that includes all of San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties plus a few thousand voters in the city of Ventura. In the previous, mostly closed Republican primaries, Maldonado would have faced very tough sledding because his vote for the tax increases, along with his moderate views on illegal immigration, would have made it difficult for him to win among the conservative base that dominated Republican primaries in the past. There is, of course, no guarantee that same dynamic won't be in play again this year, in the first-out-of-the-box test of the new system.

But on Sunday, Maldonado received a big break when the 2010 GOP challenger against incumbent Democrat Lois Capps of Santa Barbara, the tea party-backed Santa Barbara businessman Tom Watson, announced he will not be a candidate this year. That doesn't mean Maldonado will escape without a conservative challenge in the primary, but it does mean one of the most likely ones is now out of the race.

In announcing his decision on Facebook, Watson wrote:

"After consulting with my family over the last few months and considering my ongoing business commitments, it has become clear that the timing for another congressional run is not optimal. The time and effort required to mount a successful and credible campaign is significant and life has a way of inserting itself into one's plans.

So it is with great regret that I am formally announcing that I will not be seeking elective office this cycle. I intend to lend my full support to the effort to elect conservatives to office. It is imperative that we elect not just Republicans, but conservatives who have the personal courage and integrity to take the difficult stands needed to return our republic to its Constitutional roots, avoid financial collapse, deal with the long term structural entitlement issues and most importantly, preserve our hard won liberties."

The Secretary of State on Tuesday released the first report of voter registration of this election year -- and the first that gives a detailed portrait of voters in the new legislative and congressional districts.

It is the first report issued in nearly a year -- since last Feb. 10 -- and it reflects a significant shrinkage in the rolls as voters have moved, died or otherwise had their names removed from registration records. That is typical, as will be the quadrennial surge in registration later this year as a presidential election approaches.

The bottom line of the new report for Ventura County: there are about 21,600 fewer voters, the share that are registered with both major parties has shrunk, the portion who decline to state a party affiliation has climbed, and Republicans have cut slightly into the Democrats' lead among county voters.

A year ago, Democrats held a 2.8 percentage point advantage among Ventura County voters. It has now fallen to 2.7 percentage points. In real numbers, the Democrats' lead dropped by 1,256 voters. It wasn't because Republicans gained, however -- just that the GOP lost fewer voters than the Democrats did. Nonpartisan voters now make up 19 percent of the county's voter roll.

As for the new districts, here are the partisan breakdowns for each:

Congressional District 24 (Santa Barbara County, small slice of city of Ventura): 38.9 percent Democrats, 35.1 percent Republicans.
Congressional District 25 (northern L.A. County, most of city of Simi Valley): 35.3 percent Democrats, 40.7 percent Republicans.
Congressional District 26 (all the rest of the county): 40.9 percent Democrats, 35.2 percent Republicans.

Senate District 19 (western Ventura County, all of Santa Barbara County): 43.6 percent Democrats, 31.3 percent Republicans.
Senate District 27 (eastern Ventura County, western San Fernando Valley): 40.4 percent Democrats, 34.6 percent Republicans.

Assembly District 37 (Ventura, Ojai, Santa Paula, Fillmore, southern Santa Barbara County): 45.0 percent Democrats, 29.1 percent Republicans.
Assembly District 38 (Simi Valley, Santa Clarita, portions of San Fernando Valley): 34.4 percent Democrats, 41.3 percent Republicans.
Assembly District 44 (Thousand Oaks, Moorpark, Camarillo, Oxnard, Port Hueneme): 38.9 percent Democrats, 37.0 percent Republicans.