Campaign updates with five days left...

-- OUTSIDE SPENDING TOPS $1 MILLION: A $176,000 television ad buy reported yesterday by the House Majority PAC has put the total amount of outside spending in Ventura County's 26th Congressional District primary over $1 million -- $1,057,008, to be precise. That amount places the district fifth nationwide in that category, based on calculations by the Center for Responsive Politics.

In addition to the Democratic super PAC, which has now spent $712,000 on behalf of Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, the other major players have been.the League of Conservation Voters ($191,000), and Women Vote! ($100,000).

-- AN ICE CREAM PERSPECTIVE: Independent candidate Linda Parks, who has been the target of much of that outside advertising, has been collecting all the mailers against her and posting them on the wall of her campaign office. By her count, as of yesterday, there had been 32.

Parks, whose kickoff television commercial ended with her telling viewers that her favorite flavor of ice cream is Rocky Road, drew an ice-cream analogy to the volume of mail. "That's one more than Baskin Robbins has flavors," she said. "Including Rocky Road."

-- MISSING FROM THE SENATE: Yesterday, on one of the busiest days of the year on the California Senate floor, Sen. Tony Strickland, the Republican candidate in the 26th District, was absent.

Senate officials said Strickland informed them he would not be attending because of unspecified "personal business." Senators can be officially excused from floor sessions only if they are ill or engaged in other legislative business.

Tomorrow is the deadline for each house in the Legislature to pass bills that originated in their house, so scores of bills are being voted on every day this week. As a member of the minority party, Strickland's votes are generally not crucual because most controversial legislation either succeeds or fails on the basis of whether 21 votes from majority Democrats can be mustered.

Still, there were a few close measures in which votes of Republicans were critical. Among them was a bill by Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, that would require nurses and other hospital personnel to either get an annual flu vaccine or wear masks whenever they are in patient care areas. The bill was opposed by the California Nurses Association, and many Democratic lawmakers either voted no or abstained. It passed 23-9, largely as the result of 13 affirmative votes from GOP senators.

Strickland was on the floor on Tuesday and is expected to return today.

While his competitors and outside groups have been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting other candidates in the 26th Congressional District race, Oxnard Harbor District Commissioner Jess Herrera has marshaled his relatively meager resources. Now, in the final week of the campaign, he's launched Spanish- and English-language web videos and radio ads in an attempt to break through all the advertising noise surrounding fellow Democrat Julia Brownley and independent Linda Parks.

To my knowledge, Herrera becomes the first candidate in this race to reach out to Latino voters with Spanish-language ads.

The radio ad features an upbeat campaign song, "Say Yes to Jess!" The lyrics are simple, but catchy:

We need a leader in Congress.
A leader like Jess.
We need a leader in Congress.
Let's all say Yes to Jess?

The web video, entitled "Homegrown Candidate," stresses Herrera's Oxnard roots and his role as a community leader. It begins with a pointed dig at Brownley, who only recently moved from Santa Monica to Oak Park. The opening scene is of the Santa Monica Pier, as Herrera says off-camera, "My home is not here."

It's difficult to assess Herrera's chances on Tuesday. He has a chance to perform well in Oxnard, where he has lived his entire life and has consistently been the leading vote-getter in elections for the Harbor District. In addition, he has been targeting working-class Latino voters in other areas of the district, notably Santa Paula and Fillmore. Depending on Latino turnout and how fractured the overall vote turns out to be, an upset may not be inconceivable. But at the very least, he has the potential to play the role of a spoiler, siphoning away from Brownley a share of the Democratic vote that she may need to outpoll Parks.

If nothing else, that would send an overwhelming message to Democratic Party officials in the district and statewide: Do not take Latino voters for granted in this new, highly competitive Ventura County district.

The House Majority PAC, a Democratic Super Pac that has already spent more than $500,000 in the 26th Congressional District campaign, has ventured into an area in which I cannot recall any local campaign venturing before: It has purchased television commercials on Los Angeles broadcast TV stations promoting the candidacy of Assemblywoman Julia Brownley.

Given that the L.A. television market encompasses all or most of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernadino and Ventura counties, viewers in 26th Congressional District make up far less than 10 percent of the audience -- which means, of course, that the House Majority PAC is paying to send a message that will be irrelevant to more than 90 percent of the market.

In other independent expenditure news in the congressional district over the holiday weekend, the group icPurple, formed to promote independent candidates, reported a $21,250 cable television advertising purchase on behalf of Supervisor Linda Parks, and the Emily's List-associated group Women Vote! reported an $18,915 mailer supporting Brownley.

In theory, the one thing just about everyone involved in the political process says they believe in is the disclosure of campaign contributions. Even the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, in its controversial Citizens United case that opened the door to unlimited campaign spending by businesses and labor unions, eloquently made that point:

"Transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages," the court majority declared.

The problem is that there are a lot of smart -- some would say sneaky -- people involved in political campaigns who have figured out ways to make the transparency of disclosure about as transparent as the mud-brown water that washes down the Santa Clara River during floods.

Sometimes, however, with a careful detective work it is still possible to follow the money. Sacramento political consultant Steve Maviglio, deconstructing the financing behind an independent expenditure campaign, passes along this step-by-step explanation of how money from Chevron and Philip Morris found its way this spring into the 19th Senate District campaign.

First, Chevron gives $375,000 and Philip Morris $50,000 to JobsPAC, the political arm of the California Chamber of Commerce, here.

Then JobsPAC gives $255,000 to the California Now Independent Expenditure Committee here.

Then the California Now Independent Expenditure Committee gives $220,000 to the California Senior Advocates League PAC here.

Then the California Senior Advocates League PAC spends $475,000 on independent expenditures this month seeking to influence five state Senate races, including the 19th District, here.

There. Aren't you glad that the transparency of disclosure enables the electorate to make informed decisions?

One of the interesting offshoots of having a highly competitive congressional district created in the heart of Ventura County is that the campaign appears to be changing a political culture in which contributing money to candidates was largely a foreign concept.

In the past, few candidates had been able to successfully tap into a local donor base to help fund their campaigns, resulting in either lopsided races or contests that were largely funded by the state party machinery and outside interest groups. Finance reports from the candidates in the 26th Congressional District so far this year suggest that the heightened sense of competition has motivated politically engaged individuals in Ventura County to start opening their checkbooks.

In the first quarter of this year, for example, based on a Star analysis, Republican Tony Strickland raised $139,000 from county donors, independent Linda Parks $96,000 and Democrat Julia Brownley $93,000. The latest reports filed yesterday show that the trend is continuing. I haven't yet analyzed them, but just a cursory look reveals that scores of county residents are continuing to make contributions.

(You can review the reports here. Just type in the candidate's last name, and on the menu bars select the appropriate party, state and "House" for type of contest. Once you get to the candidate's reports, click on "itemized receipts," all lines.)

It elections past, such reports would reveal only a relative handful of the usual suspects of contributors in the county -- Salem Communications' Edward Attsinger III on the right, for example, or Patagonia's Yvon Chouinard on the left.

There are some differences among the candidates. Strickland's support, for instance, is largely based in the east county and his donors often give from $1,000 to $2,500. Brownley's local contributors come largely from the west county and typically give from $100 to $500. In Parks' initial report, most of her donors were from her Thousand Oaks-based supervisorial district and gave $500 or more. Her new report shows that base broadening both geographically and in the size of the contributions.

Also notable is that the online group Act Blue, which solicits small, directed contributions (often in the $25 to $50) range online, raised $75,000 in April and the first 16 days of May in small contributions for Brownley.

If this activity signals the start of a trend, it might change some of the local political dynamics. It might mean, for example, that candidates from Ventura County could become more competitive against candidates from Santa Barbara County (which has long been a gold mine for political contributions) in districts that cross county lines.

One troubling aspect of all this, however, is that it could serve to further disadvantage Latino candidates, who still don't have a local fundraising base. In this campaign, for example, Oxnard Harbor District Commissioner Jess Herrera, a Democrat, has consistently impressed folks attending forums with his thoughtful answers, sense of humor and sense of purpose. But as the fundraising and spending has ramped up, Herrera has been left behind, struggling to get his name out while the others are either flooding the TV airwaves, stuffing mailboxes with campaign material or both.

Herrera could still have a significant impact in this campaign, however. Although hardly a one-dimensional candidate, he has been working neighborhoods in Oxnard, Santa Paula and Fillmore. And, at least as far as I know, none of the candidates has used any of this money to reach out to lower-income voters who don't contribute. I've seen no evidence of any Spanish-language advertising.

Some independent voters in Ventura County must be shaking their heads today, trying to make sense of a glossy, attractive political mailer that showed up in their mailboxes yesterday. It was promoting a state Senate candidate, George Plescia, and the first clue that something may have been amiss was the headline: "Getting it done for San Diego."

That's right. Plescia, a former assemblyman, is running in the 39th Senate District in San Diego -- but his campaign mail was delivered to Ventura County households.

Yes, it was a mixup. Plescia shares the same consultant with congressional candidate Tony Strickland and somehow the wrong set of labels was attached to this mailer. I'm assured by consultant Joe Justin that the reverse did not happen -- that is, no Strickland mailers were sent to San Diego voters.

Republican Tony Strickland has had the easiest seat in the house during the primary campaign in the 26th Congressional District. With Julia Brownley and her advocates working hard to make certain she solidifies the Democratic vote and independent Linda Parks having to try to fend off attacks from national Democratic groups, Strickland has had a free ride.

He knows it will be over soon, however, and this week he took a pre-emptive step to try to innoculate himself from a line of attack traditionally used against conservative Republicans -- that they're heartless.

Just as he did in his 2008 state Senate campaign, Strickland is using a letter from a constituent to make the case. This one is particularly compelling, because it comes from a Camarillo mother who lost her child to a rare disease that caused the little girl much suffering before her death. The mailer includes portions of a news story I wrote last month when Kathleen Scott came to the state Capitol to testify on behalf of a bill Strickland authored at her request. The bill would require that the disease that afflicted her daughter be included among those that are screened for in medical tests given to newborns.

The mailer is poignant, as was her testimony. It is impossible not to empathize with the family's pain, grief and desire to achieve something positive out of their daughter's suffering. One part of the story that is not included in the mailer, however, was the testimony from a leading public health expert that not enough is known about the efficacy of the stem-cell transplantation used to treat the disease if it is discovered before symptoms develoip (once it becomes symptomatic, nothing can be done). Or that the California Medical Association and the California Hospital Association opposed the bill for the same reason.

In case anyone misses the point of this mailer, it includes the headline: "Tony Strickland. Compassionate leadership."

It's not a bad tactic to try to make that point now and build up some good will. After the primary, it's fairly predictable that whoever his opponent turns out to be will accuse Strickland of wanting to cut the Social Security checks of starving seniors....

MEANWHILE, it's worth noting that while state Senate candidate Hannah-Beth Jackson continues to make a campaign theme out of how she will fight "special interests", a special interest has dropped another $50,000 into an independent expenditure campaign on her behalf.

This particular special interest is the foil of the one portrayed in the mailer linked to above: the trial lawyers who sue insurance companies.

Scott Lay, publisher of AroundtheCapitol.com and of a daily "Nooner" email newsletter on all things political in California, is sponsoring a contest among his readers -- mostly Sacramento insiders -- to pick the top two finishers in a variety of election contests around the state on June 5.

The contest closed last night with 392 entries. That's a fairly good measurement of the conventional wisdom in Sacramento -- for whatever that's worth, given the fairly poor track record of conventional wisdom inside bubbles such as the lobbying/political consulting/legislative staff community around California's Capitol.

With that disclaimer -- meaning that these results don't necessarily mean much of anything -- here are the collective guesses of who will win the three highly contested primaries in Ventura County races. Remember also that many of the contestants may be familiar with only some areas of the state and are offering nothing more than blind guesses about races in other areas.

Congressional District 26:
Position 1
Tony Strickland (R) - 52.3%
Julia Brownley (D) - 42.3%
Linda Parks (N) - 3.7%
Jess Herrera (D) - 1.2%
David Thayne (D) - 0.4%

Position 2
Julia Brownley (D) - 44.4%
Tony Strickland (R) - 37.3%
Linda Parks (N) - 13.7%
Jess Herrera (D) - 3.3%
David Thayne (D) - 1.2%
Albert Goldberg (D) - 0.4%

Senate District 19
Position 1
Hannah-Beth Jackson (D) - 51.5%
Jason Hodge (D) - 31.0%
Mike Stoker (R) - 17.6%

Position 2
Mike Stoker (R) - 45.2%
Jason Hodge (D) - 28.0%
Hannah-Beth Jackson (D) - 26.8%

Assembly District 38
Position 1
Paul Strickland (R) - 36.4%
Patricia McKeon (R) - 31.2%
Scott Wilk (R) - 17.0%
Edward Headington (D) - 15.4%

Position 2
Edward Headington (D) - 40.3%
Patricia McKeon (R) - 23.7%
Scott Wilk (R) - 20.2%
Paul Strickland (R) - 16.2%

OK, I get it. Today is May 22 and the primary election is still two weeks away, on June 5. You might ask how anyone can know anything about the election results so far. Fair question, but the fact is that mail-in voters have already started this election process. And although we won't know who any of them voted for until shortly after 8 p.m. on election night, we do know how many ballots have been turned in so far and who they came from.

Here's what we know, based on information compiled by Political Data Inc. and Redistricting Partners: In the 26th Congressional District, 7 percent of the ballots sent to the district's 151,515 permanent mail-in voters have already been returned. Of them, 40 percent have come from Democrats, 45 percent from Republicans and 11 percent from nonpartisans.

This suggests that, as expected, even though a plurality of district voters are Democrats, the primary electorate is likely to be skewed toward Republicans because of superior turnout.

The bigger the differential between the higher Republican turnout and the lower Democratic turnout, the more difficult the challenge will become for Democrat Julia Brownley to finish second, ahead of independent Linda Parks and the three other Democrats on the ballot. That is because Parks -- as a former Republican, someone well known in the GOP heart of the district (the Conejo Valley), and the only candidate other than Republican Tony Strickland who doesn't have the words "Democratic Party" beneath her name on the ballot -- is likely to pick up most of the GOP votes that don't go to Strickland.

Still, as the scenario tool created by David Maron that I posted here last month shows, Parks' challenge as an independent is steep. If the partisan breakdown of the early turnout were to hold, Parks would need to capture 35 percent of the Republican and nonpartisan votes and 22 percent of the Democratic vote in order to barely squeak by Brownley for second place behind Strickland. All of those numbers seem pretty ambitious for an independent running in a primary, because historically primary elections have been partisan affairs.

In the contentious and sometimes ugly runup to the June 5 primary, the mudslinging up until now has been between GOP candidates Scott Wilk and Patricia McKeon. But two recent developments suggest that the third Republican candidate -- Paul Strickland, who hasn't raised one-tenth the money of the other two -- is very much in the picture.

Exhibit A is a video that was brought to my attention by the anonymous "38thassemblyracewatcher," the same party that alerted me to the controversial website attacking McKeon months ago. The "watcher" sent an email last week with this link to a YouTube video . This time it's Strickland, not McKeon, who is being lampooned.

Exhibit B is a mailer sent by Wilk in which he contrasts himself not just with "Patricia (not Buck) McKeon" but also with "Paul (not Tony) Strickland."

This clearly indicates that Strickland, largely by virtue of sharing the same last name (but no family relation) with Sen. Tony Strickland, continues to poll well in that Assembly race.

Ever since Woodward and Bernstein's heyday, the phrase "follow the money" has become something of a cliche in political reporting. But cliche or not, there is always a clear corelation between the amount of money spent by independent groups in the last few weeks of a campaign and the closeness of the contest.

Independent expenditure committees often have a lot of money to throw around in legislative races, but they are in no rush to just throw it away. They follow polls closely, and spend their money only in campaigns in which they believe it can make a difference.

That said, the contest in the 19th state Senate District between Oxnard Harbor District Commissioner Jason Hodge and former Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara, both Democrats, must be fairly close.

On Saturday, another $75,000 was dropped into the race, most of it from a group making its first expense -- one called "California Alliance, a coalition of consumer attorneys and conservationists." That's a significant amount of money for mail, so it probably means two pieces, in support of Jackson.

Meanwhile, the California Professional Firefighers reported spending another $17,700 on mail in support of Hodge, a fellow firefighter,

Hard to say what the private polling is showing -- those poll results are always closely guarded -- but it's safe to say that two big outside players wouldn't be dropping that kind of money into the race this close to Election Day unless they thought the outcome remains in doubt.

Yesterday was a big day for outside expenditures in Ventura County's 26th Congressional District -- which now ranks eighth nationally in the amount of independent expenditures made so far to influence U.S. House races in 2012, with $658,874 having been spent so far.

That total, by the way, excludes the involvement of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Because it is a party committee, it will not have to report its expenditures until later. Based on the number of mailers it has sent opposing independent Linda Parks, it's likely that it has spent at least $150,000 on the race.

The Democrats' House Majority PAC kicked in another $77,000 for a mailer opposing Parks and more TV advertising in support of Democrat Julia Brownley. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that brings the super PAC's total to $417,335 in the 26th District primary.

Brownley also picked up support from a $100,000 expenditure by the League of Conservation Voters, although the report from the Federal Elections Commission is less than specific on how the money was used: "support for IE (independent expenditure) activity -- mailers & phone calls."

Perhaps the most interesting development, however, was the emergence of an outside group calling itself icPurple. The group, founded by billionaire philanthropist Ted Waitt, the co-founder of Gateway, Inc.,announced Friday it will be supporting independent candidates, including Parks and San Diego mayoral candidate Nathan Fletcher.

Its FEC report shows a $23,687 expense for "online video production costs" in support of Parks. The online video is the same for Fletcher and Parks, with only the tag line at the end changed. It's unclear whether the video will be used for television advertising, although the fact that it's exactly 30 seconds long suggests it could be.

Less than 20 days 'til Election Day, candidates and their supporters are getting cranky, and more than 6,000 people in Ventura County (about 4 percent of permanent mail-ballot voters) have already turned in their ballots. So lots to write about today in a three-dot blog post...

WHAT MAKES A DEMOCRAT A DEMOCRAT? -- A couple of weeks ago in an interview, 19th Senate District candidate Jason Hodge told me he'd been a Democrat "all my life," and I quoted him as saying so. County Democratic Central Committee vice-chairman David Atkins checked out the claim at the county registrar of voters' office and asserts it's untrue.

In fact, Hodge was from 2002 until 2008 registered as "decline to state" a party affiliation.

Hodge acknowledged that today -- but asserted that doesn't mean he hasn't always been a Democrat in his heart. For example, he said that in primary elections he has always requested a Democratic ballot. A person can be a Democrat, he said, but the voter registration cards give a people an option whether to state or decline to publicly state their party orientation. He chose to decline, he said.

That may be the case. But when you're a candidate and you tell a reporter that you've always been a Democrat, nearly everyone who reads that quote is going to interpret it that you've always been a registered Democrat. It was misleading at best.

SPLITTING THE FIELD? -- With three candidates challenging incumbent First District Supervisor Steve Bennett of Ventura, it is likely that they're fighting among themselves for second place -- but also likely that, combined, they will keep Bennett under the 50 percent-plus one threshold he would need to win re-election outright on June 5.

But, as my colleague Kathleen Wilson notes, opponents of Bennett appear to have some trouble coalescing behind a single challenger. "In a bit of surprise, Christy Weir has won the endorsement of a key business group for the only contested seat on the Ventura County Board of Supervisors," Wilson writes. "The Ventura Chamber of Commerce's political action committee gave the moderate Ventura councilwoman the nod over pro-business candidates Neal Andrews and Bob Roper .

"Roper, the retired county fire chief, has the endorsement of the Ventura County Coalition of Labor, Agriculture and Business, a 300-member group at odds with Bennett's environmental views."

AN UPSIDE-DOWN WEBSITE -- Opponents of independent congressional candidate Linda Parks (although they don't identify themselves) have created a new website -- lindaparksrepublican.com to further spread the word to Ventura County voters that Parks was a Republican for 16 years before re-registering as an independent just before becoming a candidate for the U.S. House. The wallpaper on the site features the GOP's elephant logo, upside-down.

The site includes an image of Parks' 1996 voter-registration card in which she changed political affiliation from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. Above the card, the text reads:

"In case there was any doubt, here's a copy of Linda Parks' Republican voter registration form, proving her Republican registration for sixteen years, from the Newt Gingrich era, through the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Palin era, all the way to today's Romney-Boehner era.

"Note that she used this form to switch from Democrat to Republican in 1996. Which raises the question: what was it about Newt Gingrich and his values that Linda Parks found so much more appealing than Bill Clinton?"

ONE MORE FORUM -- Likely the last chance to hear at least some of the 26th Congressional District candidates will be tomorrow evening (Friday) from 5 to 7 at the Thousand Oaks City Council Chambers. The forum is sponsored by the League of Women Voters. Parks is scheduled to be there, and Democrats Julia Brownley, Jess Herrera, David Cruz Thayne and Albert Goldberg are expected to attend, but Republican Tony Strickland will not be.

OUTSIDE MONEY KEEPS FLOWING -- Another independent expenditure committee, this one called WOMEN VOTE! is making its presence felt in the 26th Congressional District contest. The group today reported a $26,000 mailer it has sent in support of Brownley.

In the days following San Diego Assemblyman and mayoral candidate Nathan Fletcher's announcement that he was abandoning the Republican Party to become an independent, Fletcher was predictably pilloried by conservative activists and commentators.

They reaffirmed their support for the Republican Party-endorsed candidate for mayor, Councilman Carl DeMaio, and asserted that Fletcher's decision, far from being an expression of personal principle, was a crass attempt to reinvigorate his sagging campaign. Wrote conservative consultant Tab Berg on Flashreport,org, "I don't know what is in his heart, but I cannot help asking if this was a crisis of conscience or simply raw political opportunism... To me, it screams that he values his personal success more than the ideas all of us have fought for together."

But there was one conservative voice -- someone who is also a blogger on the right-wing Flash Report -- who fired off a post in Fletcher's defense. That individual was Sen. Tony Strickland of Moorpark. On April 6, reaffirming his endorsement of Fletcher, he wrote, "
"It's okay to be sad he left the party, many of us are, but attacking Nathan's character is taking it too far."

Strickland, it should be noted, is not exactly a prolific contributor to the blog. It was just his third post this year, and he has written none since.

After Strickland's blog post was published, I got a call from a leading California conservative activist who was steamed over it -- and who asserted that the only reason Strickland jumped in to defend Fletcher was his own brand of political opportunism. This conservative's reasoning was this: Strickland is running in a congressional race in Ventura County against an independent candidate, Supervisor Linda Parks, and he was desperately trying to position himself as an independent-minded Republican.

I didn't buy that then, but now comes this -- a mailer sent to no-party-preference voters in the 26th Congressional District with a testimonial from Fletcher, under the headline, "From the only registered independent legislator in California." It includes a photo of Strickland and a tag line, "Thoughtful. Independent. For Congress."

The fact is, however, is that there are few more committed partisan Republicans in California than Strickland. He recruits Republican candidates, he is active in state party affairs, he is an acknowledged leader of the state GOP. He is, in every respect, a proud Republican -- except during the months before elections, when he seems to run from the party label and seeks to portray himself as an independent. He did that four years ago, and he's doing it again.

Getting Fletcher in his corner certainly helps.

Under California's former primary election system, Democrats in Ventura County might remember from 2004, a write-in candidate for the Legislature had to receive a minimum of 1 percent of the votes cast in the previous district election to win a spot on the general election ballot.

Democrats pulled that off in 2004, when more than 1,600 of them wrote in the name of Ferial Masry, allowing the party to field a candidate in the 37th Assembly District even though no Democrat had stepped forward to run before the candidate-filing deadline.

When they wrote the rules for the new top-two primary, however, lawmakers did not include a minimum threshold of votes needed by write-in candidates. As a result, it is likely that a write-in candidate will emerge to challenge Democrat Lois Wolk in Northern California's 3rd Senate District.

After the March candidate-filing deadline came and went, it appeared Wolk would be running unopposed in the district that includes such Democratic strongholds as Davis and Napa. But Gary Clift, a Republican who lost to John Garamendi in the 2010 race in the 10th Congressional District, has now completed the paperwork in Solano County to become a qualified write-in candidate against Wolk.

If Clift is officially certified as a write-in candidate on May 25, a spokeswoman at the Secretary of State's Office confirmed today, that means if he receives one vote in the June 5 primary he will qualify for a position on the November ballot. So, if Clift votes for himself (and he wouldn't really have to spell it correctly, as long as his intent is clear), he's in.

"Top two" apparently means exactly that -- the top two candidates advance to the general election even if the June outcome in a race between two qualified candidates is 99.99 percent to 0.01 percent.

Somehow, that doesn't seem quite right. It reveals an oversight in the drafting of the top-two primary rules that ought to be corrected next time around. In this case, it appears Clift is a legitimate Republican candidate -- at least one who ran in and won a contested GOP primary two years ago. But without a minumum vote requirement, the current system creates an opportunity for any kind of crackpot to step forward in any district with an unopposed candidate and win a spot on the general election ballot.

UPDATED AT 5:15 P.M. TO REFLECT NEW LATE INDEPENDENT EXPENDITURE REPORT

Two independent groups over the weekend doubled down on their spending in attempts to influence political races in Ventura County, and a third weighed in for the first time today..

Federal Elections Commission reports show that the Democratic House Majority PAC purchased an additional $141,285 in television advertising supporting Assemblywoman Julia Brownley in the 26th Congressional District, and spent another $22,000 on a mailer opposing independent candidate Supervisor Linda Parks. Those two expenditures bring the Washington, D.C.-based super PAC's spending in the race so far to $341,373.

In reports filed with the California secretary of state, a business group that uses the name "California Senior Advocates League" disclosed a second mailer sent to voters in the west county's 19th state Senate District race. The $21,614 mail piece opposes Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson; an earlier piece supported her Democratic opponent, Jason Hodge. The new mailer brings that group's spending in the race to about $44,000.

Finally, in a disclosure filed this afternoon, the California Professional Firefighters Association IE PAC reported a $17,300 mailer supporting Hodge, a county firefighter who has the backing of firefighter unions around the state.

(UPDATED AT 3 P.M. TO REFLECT PARKS' REMARKS AT MONDAY FORUM)

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has flooded the mailboxes of Ventura County Democratic voters with another cartoonish mailer that seeks to portray independent congressional candidate Linda Parks as a tea party-style Republican extremist.

The first showed Parks' face on campaign buttons paired with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin. The cover of this one shows an open closet with GOP paraphernalia, including a cardboard cutout of Palin and a Bush-Cheney placard, spilling out. The implication is that Parks has been trying to keep her true political leanings in the closet. The headline says, "Republican Linda Parks has a secret..."

On the flip side it says that "Washington Republicans and Linda Parks would end Medicare as we know it" and that "a vote for Parks and the national Republicans is a vote for the Tea Pary."

The allegation, to put it charitably, is a stretch. In fact, one of the comments that the DCCC cites to back up its claim is an out-of-context excerpt from a Facebook comment exchange. In that exchange, a user asks Parks whether she supports the budget proposal written by GOP Rep. Paul Ryan, a proposal that includes cuts to Medicare and a plan to offer vouchers to seniors who could choose to use them to purchase private insurance instead of government-administered Medicare insurance.

The DCCC asserts that Parks evaded the question, saying it was "moot" because the Ryan budget stands no chance of passage. But here's the full text of Parks' response: "I am concerned that the Ryan Budget, among other things, would leave vulnerable senior citizens without health care. I also think it is a moot point because the Ryan Budget is dead in the water because it is a one-sided proposal and an example of what you get when you don't have Republicans and Democrats working together."

A fair reading of that response is that Parks does not support the Ryan proposal -- unless one believes that a political candidate is publicly supporting the concept of leaving "vulnerable senior citizens without health care."

Democrats understandably want to point out to their own partisan voters that Parks is not one of them. That's true. Until becoming a candidate, Parks was a registered Republican. She was a Republican throughout the eight years of the Bush administration and during the 2008 McCain-Palin campaign. But the facts of Parks' political behavior make their argument that she is an extremist difficult. Parks has worked in concert with the Democratic majority on the Board of Supervisors, she endorsed Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson over Republican Tony Strickland in their 2008 state Senate campaign, and she made her mark in local politics by being an outspoken advocate for open-space preservation.

Those are decidedly not traits one typically associates with a tea party-affiliated candidate.

Yesterday, Parks called on leading Democratic candidate Julia Brownley to publicly repudiate the DCCC mailers, but that's not going to happen. In an e-mail response to that request, Brownley campaign spokesman Lenny Young wrote me: "Despite her rhetoric, it has been unclear where Linda Parks stands on Medicare because she has been all over the place on the Ryan plan that aims to end it and on whether she'd support the House Republicans who are in lock step behind the plan... She's been a Republican for her entire elected career so I can understand why the voters in Ventura County can't count on her to protect Medicare."

On one hand, the Democrats' frustration over how to associate Parks with Republican policy positions is understandable, because Parks has been less than clear where she stands on a number of issues. Among those had been the question of whether lowered tax rates on wealthy individuals should be allowed to expire at the end of this year. Parks has ducked that question a number of times, but at a forum Monday came very close to saying no. She said: "In these difficult economic times it's hard to say yes I want a tax increase. And I think there are other things that we can do short of a tax increase."

She has also declined to say which party she would caucus with if elected to the House, who would get her vote for Speaker of the House, and even whether she intends to vote for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney for president. Those evasions will likely give partisan Democrats considerable pause.

But if Democrats are to continue to attack Parks (which they surely will), they would be wise to look for a different line of argument. They might, for instance, ask voters to assess whether Parks' approach to her job as Thousand Oaks councilwoman and as a supervisor has demonstrated the kind of temperament and cooperative spirit that would enable her to carry out her promise to "work toward middle ground with both political parties" once in Congress.

Meanwhile, the Parks campaign got a considerable boost today when the Los Angeles Times, in a lengthy editorial, endorsed Parks.

It's not surprising that the Times editorial board would take such a stance -- newspaper editorial boards, after all, always seem to be looking for opportunities to take positions that declare a pox on the houses of both Democrats and Republicans. Still, this particular endorsement was effusive. Here's an excerpt:

"If Parks were unqualified for the job, the novelty of having a nonaligned candidate would wear thin very quickly. But she is in fact very qualified."

With that, perhaps the Democrats' challenge of undermining an independent whose presence in the primary could cost them a spot on the general election ballot just got a little more challenging.

Ever since voters approved the switch to a top-two primary two years ago, political analysts have been predicting that interest groups typically aligned with one party would become more active in the other party's campaigns. The strategy is pragmatic: There are districts in which it is a virtual certainty that either a Democrat or Republican is going to win in November, so the primary presents an opportunity to support a candidate from the other party that the group finds more to its liking.

Fair enough. One could even argue that such a dynamic promotes one of the stated objectives of the top-two primary -- to advantage more moderate candidates from both parties. So if unions support a more moderate Republican running against a more conservative one, or if business groups support a more moderate Democrat against a more liberal one, perhaps that's a healthy thing.

What's unhealthy is when they do it deceptively, when they hide their true identity behind a distorted organizational name, and when they get involved in a primary in a way that is designed to manipulate the rules.

Meet the "California Senior Advocates League PAC." Already this month, it's done all three of those things.

Many voters in Ventura County may have already seen the $22,351 mailer this group sent out in support of Democratic 19th Senate District candidate Jason Hodge of Oxnard. Despite its name, this group has absolutely nothing to do with seniors, has no apparent concern for seniors issues, and uses that deceptive name only to hide its connection with the California Chamber of Commerce, Big Oil and the tobacco industry.

The largest contributor to the "Senior Advocates League PAC" is JOBSPAC, the political arm of the state Chamber of Commerce. Its two largest contributors are Chevron and Philip Morris.

The motivation for the PAC's support of Hodge would appear to be directly connected to the top two primary. Voter registration in the district strongly suggests a Democrat will prevail in November. That's why the chamber-supported PAC is backing Hodge now, rather than taking the more traditional tact of waiting until November to support Republican Mike Stoker.

Although the 19th District mailer is listed as a "support" piece for Hodge, it is just as much an attack on his Democratic opponent, former Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson. It reprises the "Taxin' Jackson" monicker that the campaign of Republican Sen. Tony Strickland sought to pin on her four years ago and describes her as "an offshore drilling consultant."

If that last description were actually true, Chevron would have no interest in spending money in an attempt to defeat her. The facts are that Jackson worked on behalf of the Environmental Defense Center -- one of the most respected environmental groups in Santa Barbara, and one that has effectively fought offshore drilling there for decades. The EDC supported a controversial proposal a few years ago that would have allowed the Texas oil company PXP to drill new wells in exchange for concessions that the environmental group believed would ultimately bring an end to offshore drilling off Santa Barbara -- principally, its agreement to dismantle the onshore processing facility it controlled. It was the EDC's belief, and Jackson's, that the agreement would have spelled the beginning of the end for offshore oil in Santa Barbara. Not every environmental organization agreed. That hardly makes Jackson an "offshore drilling consultant."

It is also interesting to note the "Senior Advocates League's" other activities in state Senate campaigns so far. It spent $32,000 on a mailer supporting former Assemblyman Joe Coto in the San Jose area, another Democrat generally more sympathetic to business special interests than his opponent, Assemblyman Jim Beall.

More cynically, it spent $35,000 on a mailer supporting a Republican candidate in central L.A. who has absolutely no chance of winning and has not even raised enough money for her own campaign to necessitate filing a report with the secretary of state. Republican Charlotte Svolos is running in a three-way primary that includes incumbent Democrat Rod Wright and another Democrat, a marginal candidate named Paul Butterfield.

Voter registration in that 35th District is 60.4 percent Democratic, 15.8 percent Republican -- so Svolos has zero chance of winning in November if she makes it out of the primary. Wright is chairman of the Senate Governmental Organization Committee, which deals with all bills regulating alcoholic beverages, and also a member of the Senate Energy, Utilities and Commerce Committee, which deals with all bills involving energy issues. The only potential threat to Wright's re-election would be if he is opposed by another Democrat on the November ballot.

So why would the Chevron-funded PAC support a token Republican candidate in a Senate race? The only explanation is to help Wright by trying to make sure Svolos gets enough votes in the primary to finish a distant second, but ahead of the other Democrat. The expenditure on Svolos' behalf is cynically manipulative.

Senate candidate Hannah-Beth Jackson has done what some say she should have done in her campaign four years: Do something to directly counter the sophomoric "Taxin' Jackson" nickname that her opponent spent millions to get voters to associate with her.

It was so catchy, that workers in the campaign of her 2008 opponent, Tony Strickland, claim when they precinct walking in Santa Barbara days before the election, on Oct. 31, they encountered a mother walking her little girl out the door about to go trick-or-treating. The mother proudly told them her daughter was customed as Taxin' Jackson.

Four years later, Republican 19th Senate District candidate Mike Stoker is again refering to the former Democratic assemblywoman as "Taxin' Jackson" at every opportunity.

I asked Jackson about that nickname last week, and she insists that it stuck only because "it rhymes and it has a beat." She lamented that it would never have become an issue had she taken the name of her husband, George Eskin, when they married. "I should have listened to my mother," she said.

That's a bell that can't be unrung, however. What can be done is to launch a counterattack, which is what Jackson has done in a new commercial (it's the second one in a two-commercial set). The ad is called "Action Jackson." Although it is very tacky, slowing Jackson in sports attire competing in a race while fighting off "special interests," depicted as gentlemen wearing paper bags over their heads, the ad serves its apparent purpose: It gets another rhyming nickname into the public sphere so that when casual voters won't simply associate her name with the word 'taxin'.'

It is a shame that serious campaigns for serious offices so often come down to silly stuff like this.,

From the outset of the primary campaign, folks at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have said they are agnostic about the Democratic candidates in the June 5 primary in the 26th Congressional District. It appears they've now found religion.

In an email to Democratic donors over the weekend (subject line: "My frield Julia"), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi appealed for contributions to help out Assemblywoman Julia Brownley. From the tone of it -- and, granted, these appeals are always worded in a manner designed to alarm like-minded folks enough to pull out their debit cards -- it appears Pelosi and the Democratic congressional leadership have become seriously concerned about the possibility that independent Linda Parks could finish first or second in the primary.

"Only the top two, regardless of party, get to go on. Julia is running against two well-funded opponents - an extremist Republican, and a Republican-turned-independent.If we don't act, there could be two Republicans and no Democrats on the ballot this fall," the letter reads.

The DCCC has already spent money on the campaign, funding a mailer that attacked Parks. The change in attitude about Brownley -- essentially going public with the not-so-secret detail that they'd like her to be the Democratic candidate -- means that the congressional Democratic leadership may also be spending in the future to promote Brownley. Or perhaps, a more likely scenario: Producing mail that directly contrasts Brownley and Parks.

The Democratic House Majority PAC became the first Super PAC (it won't be the last) to get engaged in Ventura County's 26th Congressional District campaign. Here's the surprise: Super PACs have gained notoriety for their relentless use of negative ads, but this one is a positive TV commercial promoting Democratic Assemblywoman Julia Brownley.

In addition to the standard positive fare -- stressing endorsements from teachers, the League of Conservation Voters and others -- the ad seeks to address the "carpetbagger" issue that others will surely use against her. Although she's represented parts of the county for 6 years, she only recently moved here from Santa Monica. The opening scene has her photo and the words, "Ventura County endorsed."

It's a pretty big buy -- $140,000 for a week.

Editor's note: The video was updated and we corrected the name of the PAC.

Since there are six candidates in Ventura County working hard these days for the right to go to the U.S. House of Representatives, I thought I should go check out the place myself.

Am headed off to Washington, D.C., for a few days. With luck, I should come up with something to post here next week. But in the meantime, 95 Percent Accurate* will likely be 100 percent silent for several days.

Come Tuesday, it's four weeks until Election Day.

Assembly Republican leader Connie Conway of Tulare announced today that her GOP caucus has created a new leadership position -- "outreach chair" -- that appears designed to take advantage of the unique circumstances of Camarillo Assemblyman Jeff Gorell.

In a news release issued this morning, Conway said that Gorell will be "charged with coordinating the caucus's efforts to promote its legislative priorities and messaging beyond Sacramento, to local constituents, third party groups and non-traditional audiences for Republicans. Assemblyman Gorell will bring his extensive experience in communications and public affairs to oversee the caucus outreach efforts."

Gorell, 41, is among the caucus' youngest members and is also just coming off a one-year tour of duty in Afghanistan as a Navy intelligence officer. In a statement released by his office, Gorell said he hopes to use the position to publicly promote "reasonable and responsible policy solutions that should be taken directly to Californians for their evaluation."

UPDATED AT 4:53 TO INCLUDE RESPONSE FROM PARKS.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee yesterday posted on its website this attack mailer against independent candidate Linda Parks in the 26th Congressional District.

As you can see, it's a fairly heavy-handed piece that seeks to link Parks with "Washington Republicans" and urges Democrats to "stop the Tea Party. Vote No on Linda Parks and the Republicans." It features campaign buttons that show her paired with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin.

A spokeswoman for the DCCC said Tuesday that the piece is in the mail, but I have received no reports as yet from anyone in the district who has received it.

The assertion that "Parks and the Washington Republicans would end Medicare as we know it" is based on the House Republican-backed budget written by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin that includes a provision for optional Medicare vouchers that would alter the way in which seniors receive health insurance. The linkage to Parks is based on Democrats' assertion that she has refused on at least two occasions to publicly say whether she opposes the Ryan budget. They note she has responded by saying it is not going to pass and is thus a "moot point."

In that same exchange on Facebook, however, Parks also asserted the view that "the Ryan Budget, among other things, would leave vulnerable senior citizens without health care." When I asked her today if she considered that to be a condemnation, Parks asked, "Do you think that's a good thing to leave vulnerable senior citizens without healthcare?"

In addition to questioing her position on the Ryan budget, Democrats are also reminding voters of the fact that until filing to run for Congress Parks was registered as a Republican voter.

That fact underscores one of Parks' big challenges: As she seeks to attract some Democratic votes, she will be hard-pressed to explain to Democratic partisans why she was a registered Republican during the Bush administration and during the McCain-Palin campaign.

Parks' challenge as an independent candidate is two-sided. If she were more strongly renounce the Ryan budget, she would risk alienating some Republican voters she hopes to attract.

Parks points out that in position papers on her campaign website, she states: "Our nation needs common-sense healthcare reform that puts patients first, protects Medicare, improves access, lowers costs, and strives for quality care." Elsewhere on the site she writes, "Protecting Social Security and Medicare is critical to more seniors now than ever."

The mailer and other DCCC activity clearly show that Democrats consider Parks, not Republican Tony Strickland, to be their biggest target in the primary. As mentioned in a previous post, the committee has posted an 80-page research report on Parks on its website, along with "raw video" of Parks captured at various public events.

The likely reason for making this material available online is that it makes it accessible for any independent expenditure group or Super PAC to use in the event they want to put together their own TV ads or mailers attacking Parks.