AND THE CAMPAIGNS KEEP ROLLING ALONG....

In an unusually long new television commercial that runs for a full minute, the House Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC, slams Sen. Tony Strickland for his vote as a member of the Assembly in 2002 against a bill establishing rules for the use of embryonic stem cells in medical research in California.

The poignant ad features just three people, a young man, a middle-aged woman and a young girl, each talking to the camera with only a white backdrop behind them. The young man says that in the near future he will be in a car accident and will become

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Watch videos analyzing the November California ballot propositions featuring Timm Herdt and David Maron of the Ventura County League of Women Voters.
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paralyzed; the woman says she will develop Alzheimer's Disease; the little girl says she'll be diagnosed with diabetes. All those afflictions are areas in which medical experts say stem cell therapy holds potential promise.

The bill, later signed into law, established regulations for the use of embryos created in test tubes by couples who sought to use in-vitro fertilzation to have children. That process creates multiple embryos, and many are never implanted into the woman. Under the bill, those couples could decide whether those embryos would be stored indefinitely, destroyed, donated to another couple or donated for research. It was supported by the Biotechnology Industry Association of California, the Alzheimer's Association, and the Parkinson's Action Network, among other groups. It was opposed by the California ProLife Council and the Scholl Institute of Bioethics, among others.

It passed the Assembly on a 46-27, mostly party-line vote, with Strickland joining nearly all other Republicans in opposition.

House Majority PAC spokesman Andy Stone told me today that the ad will run for one week, at a cost of $100,000. Nearly identical ads have been used in three other congressional districts, including one in the Sacramento area.

HALF-MILLION CLICKS ON REGISTERTOVOTE.CA.GOV-- Secretary of State Debra Bowen reported today that the number of people who have filled out voter registration forms online has topped 544,000 in its first four weeks of operation. Users have just three more days -- until midnight Monday -- to register for the Nov. 6 election.

Not all the online registrants are first-time voters, as a great many but unknown number have used it to update their voter registration to reflect a change of address.

Bowen notes that while paper application forms are accepted if they are postmarked by Monday, online applications must be completed -- not just started -- by midnight Monday.

CRITICAL STORY ABOUT McKEON -- Democratic candidate Lee Rogers in the 25th Congressional District is circulating a story in Roll Call, a Capitol Hill news publication, that says the staff of Rep. Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, threatened not to talk with a group of people pushing for an investigation into sexual abuse allegations at a Texas Air Force base unless they quit talking to the press about the issue.