THE TOWN SQUARE, COMMUTER STYLE
THE TOWN SQUARE, COMMUTER STYLE
How do you do face-to-face politicking in an Assembly district with nearly a quarter-million people, many of whom spend 10 to 12 hours a day either out of town working or on their way back and forth to their jobs? You look them in the eyes, through their windshields. At 6:30 in the morning.
Every weekday last week, and for every morning from now until Election Day, 37th Assembly District candidate Audra Strickland has been at intersections in Camarillo, Thousand Oaks, Newbury Park and other high-traffic commuter neighborhoods waving at motorists while volunteers and staff members display "Strickland for Assembly" signs. They call the practice "Burma Shaving," after the celebrated roadside advertising from the 1950s. To be sure, the crew places signs leading up to the intersection, but they don't have the wit and rhyme of the Burma Shave originals.
Audra
Strickland
4
Assembly
just doesn't have the same appeal as, say,
Special seats
reserved in Hades
for whiskered guys
who scratch their ladies
The problem, said Strickland campaign strategist Joel Angeles is that "nothing rhymes with Audra." Maybe not, but how about this?
One candidate talks
the other waxes
she's the one
who won't raise taxes.
Got any better ideas for Audra, or perhaps for any of her three opponents, Mike Robinson, Jeff Gorell or Eric McClendon?
Send them my way, to therdt@venturacountystar.com, and we'll post the best ones next week.
Posted by Timm Herdt at 5:13 AM | Comments (2)
DRIP ... DRIP ... DRIP
DRIP ... DRIP ... DRIP ... THE POLLS ARE LEAKING OUT
As candidates probe to discover what messages to stress and what possible opponents' weaknesses to exploit as the primary campaign reaches the serious stage (absentee ballot applications begin going out on Monday), their consultants are beginning to leak dribs and drabs of what their polling shows.
Here are two interesting tidbits to come up in the last couple days; I cannot reveal the sources from which they came. Please note that these are private polls, there is no way to verify their authenticity, and the methodology could be suspect. Take them with a grain of salt, but they do add some interesting flavor to the most significant campaigns going on in Ventura County.
1. In testing to see what political figures carry the most weight among county voters, a sampling of voters was asked to say how favorably they regard a number of leading names and organizations. The most remarkable finding is that the standing of Sheriff Bob Brooks appears to have been diminished by months of squabbling with the Board of Supervisors over the divvying up of county resources. The percentage of voters who said they view Brooks either very or somewhat favorably came in at less than 50 percent -- the first time that's happened in recent years for a sheriff of Ventura County, whose endorsement has always been coveted by politicians at every level.
2. In a survey of Republican voters asking their preference in the 37th Assembly District primary, Audra Strickland came out on top. No real surprise, there, since the Strickland name is very familiar to those who've voted for her husband, Tony Strickland, in the last three elections. The surprise is who came in second: Eric McClendon, the Simi Valley attorney who has spent less than $1,000 on his campaign. He finished ahead of Deputy District Jeff Gorell, who has the endorsement of dozens of local elected officials, and legislative aide Mike Robinson, who is spending a half-million dollars of his own money on his campaign.
Why McClendon? The most plausible answer is that five of the first six letters of his last name are the same of those of Sen. Tom McClintock, the most well known Republican elected official in the county. When they are told "McClendon" over the phone, apparently a number of voters hear "McClintock."
Posted by Timm Herdt at 5:44 AM
THE POLITICS OF DEMOGRAPHY With
THE POLITICS OF DEMOGRAPHY
With all the news coverage given the New Hampshire primary and Iowa caucus, those who live in places other than Des Moines and Nashua are suddenly becoming aware that there will be a presidential election this fall.
Given President Bush's high approval ratings, the challenge among Republicans these days is to avoid a sense of complacency -- to make supporters understand that the election could in fact be very competitive.
Karl Rove, the president's political adviser, and Gerald Parsky, Bush's point man in California, have been busy reminding anyone who'll listen that the nation has not fundamentally changed politically since the 2000 barn-burner of an election — that it is still, in many ways, a 50-50 country.
To help illustrate that point, here are some demographic data distributed by the Census Bureau today as Black History Week approaches. Given the overwhelming propensity of blacks to vote Democratic, perhaps these figures will provide some motivation to Republicans who, as Rove fears, may be overconfident that the South is safely theirs and that Florida's all-important electoral votes will again swing to Bush.
-- BETWEEN APRIL 1, 2000, and July 1, 2002, the black population of Florida grew by 216,000. The second largest numerical gain was in Georgia. The Census Bureau notes that the concentration of blacks in Southern states is on the rise; over the last seven years, for every black resident who has moved from the South to the North, two blacks have moved from North to South.
-- REMEMBER BROWARD County, Fla., from those nerve-wracking, chad-counting days of the Florida election count? The county was critical, the home of hand recounts and allegations of voting irregularities that might have cost Al Gore hundreds of votes. Here's something else to know about Broward County: Over the last two years, more blacks have been added to its population (50,100) than any other county in America.
Posted by Timm Herdt at 9:05 PM
CAR TAX INITIATIVE RUNS OUT
CAR TAX INITIATIVE RUNS OUT OF GAS
Early last summer, Sen. Tom McClintock had a file of papers sitting on his desk along with a check already made out, awaiting the moment that Gov. Gray Davis followed through on his promise to trigger an increase in the vehicle license fee. Within an hour of that action, McClintock vowed, he'd be at the Attorney General's Office filing papers for an initiative to abolish the car tax altogether.
When the moment came, McClintock followed through on his pledge — attracting a swarm of reporters when he arrived at the Department of Justice building to file the initiative.
That was the bang. Last week, with a whimper, the clock ran out on the signature-gathering time period for McClintock's initiative. Needing more than a million signatures, the initiative drive generated only about 600,000, McClintock says.
The problem, McClintock said, were the events that transpired between the time he filed the initiative and the deadline: the recall election and the subsequent action by new Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to bring the rate back down to where it had been before Davis' action. That was short of McClintock's goal of eliminating the tax, but enough to deflate any momentum for the initiative.
"The wind just went out of our sails," McClintock told me today.
This was McClintock's second unsuccessful attempt to qualify a car-tax initiative. Will there be another? Only, he responded, "if they try to increase it again in the future."
Posted by Timm Herdt at 7:03 PM
SIGN HERE ... AND HERE
SIGN HERE ... AND HERE ... AND HERE
A gambling initiative sponsored by California horse-racing tracks is expected to be cleared for circulation today, and it seems destined to become one of the major players in one of the most crowded fields of initiatives in years.
The racetrack initiative brings to 27 the number qualified for circulation, with 25 more pending review by the Attorney General's Office. While many are pie-in-sky ideas without sufficient funding, there are a bundle of petitions that have significant money behind them. Among the monied sponsors pushing intitiatives for the November ballot: the Agua Caliente tribe that operates two large casinos in Palm Springs, the state Chamber of Commerce, the California Teachers Association and actor-producer Rob Reiner, the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties, and a good-government group headed by millionaire politicians Steve Westly and Richard Riordan.
It all adds up to a scenario under which signature-gatherers might be demanding as much as $3 a signature by spring, said Fred Kimball of Kimball Petition Management in Westlake Village.
Kimball, who's been in the business more than 30 years, has this advice for initiative-backers: Get out there early and try to wrap things up before March 1. After that, the push will be on to qualify two gambling initiatives and a workers' compensation reform measure by mid-April, in time to be on the November ballot.
"The shorter the time frame, the higher the price," Kimball said. "You can assume that only three or four will be around later... Anything after that will be noise."
Posted by Timm Herdt at 7:39 PM
HARDBALL ABORTION POLITICS On the
HARDBALL ABORTION POLITICS
On the anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortions in the United States, pro-life activists staged protests and vigils across the country on Thursday. One of them was in Thousand Oaks, where 37th Assembly District candidate Mike Robinson joined about 90 others at a "Prayer for Life" vigil.
Later in the day, someone distributed fliers — on plain white paper, with no indication of authorship — at office buildings along Thousand Oaks Boulevard. The headline: "Audra Strickland Supported by Abortion Doctor." The flier asserts that the Audra Strickland campaign has received contributions from Los Alamitos Race Course, owned by Dr. Edward Allred, a man villified by anti-abortion activists as "an abortion doctor."
Robinson campaign spokesman Jonathan Tee said he had no knowledge of the fliers, and in fact didn't learn of their existence until I called him this morning to inquire.
Similarly, Strickland's spokesman Chip Englander said he first learned of the flier when I called him late Thursday afternoon. No other calls had been received, he said, despite the fact that the flier urges readers to "call Audra and demand she return the money today" and lists her campaign office's phone number.
Both Robinson and Strickland are pro-life on the abortion issue; the third major candidate in the Republican primary, Jeff Gorell, is pro-choice.
The accusation is a reprise of accusations leveled against Audra's husband, Assemblyman Tony Strickland, by ultra-conservative U.S. Senate candidate Danney Ball. On his website , Ball asks, "How can someone claim to be pro-life and then take money from someone like this?"
At the time Ball made these accusations, Tony Strickland was a presumed candidate for the U.S. Senate, but he backed off the day of the filing deadline.
One could question whether the issue is political fair play, given that the contributions in question come from a company — an Orange County horse-racing track — whose business has nothing to do with abortions or medical care of any sort. But on the facts, at least, Ball's accusation against Tony Strickland is correct. Strickland, a member of the Assembly committee that hears all gambling-related legislation, has received substantial money from the racetrack over the years, most recently a $2,500 check last April.
But Audra Strickland has not received any contributions from the racetrack. She did receive $350 from an outfit called the Los Alamitos Bay Group, but that is an advertising agency in Long Beach that has no affiliation with the racetrack.
I asked Tee if he thought the issue of Tony Strickland accepting contributions from Los Alamitos Race Course was fair game for criticism. "In a general sense, who supports a candidate is a factor," he said. "I feel that candidates should be held accountable to the special interests that support them."
Posted by Timm Herdt at 10:11 PM
NO PLACE FOR A WOMAN
NO PLACE FOR A WOMAN
Camarillo businesswoman Beth Rogers had to be among the most disappointed people in the state last week when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made his first venture into coat-tails politics by endorsing former Secretary of State Bill Jones for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate.
Rogers has long been a vocal — and mostly lonely — advocate for getting more women Republicans elected to office in California. She was a founder of the Seneca Network, established to raise money for women Republican candidates, and two years ago put a considerable amount of her own money where her heart is by pouring $1 million into an unsuccessful challenge against Democratic Congresswoman Lois Capps of Santa Barbara.
She had also been a big backer of Schwarzenegger and was appointed to serve on the governor-elect's transition team to help recruit people to work in his administration.
Schwarzenegger's endorsement of Jones will make the challenge of winning the GOP nomination even more formidable for former U.S. Treasurer Rosario Marin, the candidate Rogers is backing.
The Republican Party establishment, including many of those advising Schwarzenegger, still doesn't get it, Rogers told me today. Since 1994, she noted, the number of Republicans holding elected state and federal positions in California has dropped from 94 to 66. It's easy enough to figure out why, she says — just look at a picture of the Legislature and the California congressional delegation. You will spot 60 women — 54 of whom are Democrats.
"Everybody has a shot at being given a seat at the table if you're a Democrat," Rogers said. "You cannot be at the policy table if you're a woman Republican."
In large part because of the party's failure to recruit and support woman candidates, she believes that "1 million Republican women voters have gone AWOL."
It is the hope of many centrist Republicans such as Rogers that Schwarzenegger will be the person who can lead them out of the minority-party wilderness
.
But in their view, last week was a setback. They see Schwarzenegger's embrace of Jones as more politics as usual among California Republicans.
Posted by Timm Herdt at 11:34 PM
HELP FROM A WAR BUDDY
HELP FROM A WAR BUDDY
When National Geographic Explorer dispatched TV producer Gordon Forbes to Afghanistan two years ago to document the U.S.-led war against the Taliban, the military brass assigned a Navy lieutenant to be his escort.
"The Pentago told me to take him into Afghanistan and see that he didn't get killed," said Lt. Jeff Gorell, whose civilian job is a deputy district attorney in Ventura County. "We lived up in the mountains and nearly froze to death."
As anyone who's ever watched a war movie can attest, those circumstances can lead to a certain amount of bonding. Gorell, who lives in Ojai, and Forbes, from Santa Barbara, struck up a friendship. At some point, Gorell talked about his political aspirations and mentioned the Assembly campaign he had been forced to abandon when he was called into active duty. Before they came down from the mountain, Forbes offered to help out Gorell should he decide to run for political office again.
Gorell is now engaged in a fierce, four-way campaign for the Republican nomination in the 37th Assembly District, which includes most of Ventura County.
The results of Forbes' offer of help can be seen regularly, starting today, on cable television franchises in Thousand Oaks, Camarillo, Moorpark, Santa Paula and Ojai. All began airing political commercials for Gorell. They were produced by Forbes, who donated his professional services.
Political consultants often steer candidates away from cable television advertising because, although the time is relatively cheap to buy, the production costs for a professional quality TV ad can be steep. Better to run no TV commercials, the consultants say, than to run schlocky spots that make the candidate look like a discount used-car salesman.
Gorell shouldn't have to worry about that. Forbes has won multiple Emmys for his work.
Posted by Timm Herdt at 10:54 PM | Comments (2)
QUALIFIED BRAVADO At their state
QUALIFIED BRAVADO
At their state convention last weekend, Democrats did their best to put a good face on their standing among the California electorate in the wake of Republican Arnold Schwarzengger's landslide win in the October recall election.
To be sure, there are few state parties in the nation that have as firm a grip on partisan political offices as California Democrats -- in Congress, in the Legislature and in statewide offices. It remains to be seen whether Schwarzenegger's victory was based entirely on his celebrity and the once-in-a-liftime circumstances of the recall campaign, or whether his election represents a shift in the state's political direction.
Among the signs of concerns expressed over the weekend:
U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer mentioned three times that there will be no Green Party candidate on the ballot when she runs for re-election in the fall. In the past, such a development would not have been worth remarking upon. Given that Green Peter Camejo got 2.8 percent of the vote in the recall, however, and that the party's strength is in the solidly Democratic Bay Area, the lack of a Green candidate could become very significant in a close election.
Party Chairman Art Torres after affirming his belief that California will be safe territory for the Democratic nominee for president in November, acknowledged a nagging concern. "What bothers me," he said, "is where decline-to-state voters are headed."
"Decline-to-state" is the designation of independent voters in California, and they are a growing bloc -- now 16 percent of the electorate. In most elections of the recent past, they have sided with Democrats. Even a slight shift among independents could spell big trouble to Democratic dominance. In October, the combined vote total of Schwarzenegger and Sen. Tom McClintock totaled at least 1.3 million more than all the Republicans who voted. To Torres and other Democrats, that suggests that decline-to-state voters may be headed in the wrong direction.
Posted by Timm Herdt at 6:34 PM
A DIFFERENT FLAVOR At political
A DIFFERENT FLAVOR
At political conventions there is typically only one kind of rhetorical entree on the menu: red meat.
Some serve it up rare, some well done, but there is a predictable sameness about it all. Republicans talk about overtaxation and runaway government bureaucracy; Democrats talk about standing up for working families and protecting a woman's right to choose.
In a stunning departure on Saturday, Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi used his few minutes on stage at the state Democratic Party convention to serve up a more nuanced dish. With a sermonesque flair, he spoke of his days as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethopia. When villagers would pass on a trail, Garamendi recalled, they would shout out at a distance to an approaching neighbor, "How are your children?"
It was the standard greeting, Garamendi said, and not idly asked. An answer was not only expected, but listened to and remarked upon.
He went on to make many of the points that those of both parties often make in convention speeches, if from different points of view: the value of education, the importance of the next generation, the primacy of family.
In our own culture, Garamendi lamented, people rotely ask of each other, "How are you?"
"It's the wrong question," Garamendi said. "We should ask, 'How are your children?'"
When he finished there were no placards waving, and most of the partisans appeared to be looking forward to a meatier dish. Reporters sitting on the media platform looked at each other quizically and shrugged.
Twelve hours later, sitting in my room at the convention hotel, it is the only speech I can recall without looking at my notepad
Posted by Timm Herdt at 5:51 AM
THE FORMER TREASURER ON THE
THE FORMER TREASURER ON
THE FORMER TREASURY SECRETARY
For all her energy, for all the power of her uplifting personal story, Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Rosario Marin can't seem to catch a break these days.
First it was the decision by her former boss Pete Wilson to endorse her chief opponent, Bill Jones, in the March 2 primary. Then came the decision by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to throw his support to Jones, which he is scheduled to do today at a press conference in Los Angeles.
In between those two events came another development that might take some of the luster off Marin's otherwise impressive ballot designation, at least among Republican primary voters.
Marin's most noteworthy political claim to fame is that she was appointed by President Bush to be Treasurer of the United States. She resigned the job last year to campaign for the Senate, but election law allows a candidate to use a title if he or she held the job within the last 12 months. Her designation on the ballot is "U.S. Treasurer/Lecturer."
The Treasurer of the United States oversees the U.S. Mint and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. He or she also gets to sign the currency — as Marin likes to say in promoting her credentials as a fiscal conservative, she "knows something about the value of a dollar."
The Treasurer's signature is on the bottom left of paper currency.
No problem with that. But most Republicans this week do have a problem with person whose whose signature is on the bottom right.
Take a look at a Series 2001 bill. On the left, "Rosario Marin." On the right, "Paul J. O'Neill."
O'Neill, of course, is the former Secretary of the Treasury who, in his book released this week, described Bush's behavior in Cabinet meetings as that of "a blind man in a room full of deaf people."
I asked Marin this week what she thinks of her former boss' book.
"It's unfortunate, some of the comments that he made."
Was she surprised?
"He always stated his position, how he felt. He is going to speak his mind. He has nothing to lose by it. I very respectfully disagree. I am proud to have worked for the president. I would never, never, never suggest that the president was disengaged or anything like that. The president is very engaged... I respectfully disagree with his view of the White House, and certainly of the president."
Posted by Timm Herdt at 1:17 AM
Welcome to my web log
Welcome to my web log — a new endeavor for me and for the Star. It says "Politics Here and There" because the intent of this blog is to write about political happenings both in Ventura County and in Sacramento. Most of the readers, I suspect, will be from either here or there.
The blog will be a forum to report information and anecdotes of interest to political insiders and aficionados. It will consist of material gathered in the course of my reporting for articles and columns printed in the Star, but for which there is too little newsprint and probably too little general interest to accommodate in the printed version of the Star.
It will be a bulletin board, not a soap box. If you want off-the-cuff opinions, find a chat room.
The writing style will be somewhat breezier than you'll read in the newspaper, but the standards for accuracy, taste and fairness will be the same.
I hope you'll check it out and let me know what you think.
Timm Herdt
Ventura County Star
WHAT IF THEY GAVE A PRESS CONFERENCE.... AND SOMEONE CAME?
In Sacramento this week, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Howard Kaloogian, the former assemblyman and recall Gray Davis crusader, held a press conference to announce his opposition to President Bush's proposed amnesty reforms that would confer legal residency status on illegal immigrants working in the United States.
Joining Kaloogian was Ron Prince, the author of Proposition 187, who is now circulating a new initiative that includes many of the same features as the original initiative -- the implementation of which was blocked by the courts.
After the news conference, Prince repeatedly refused to talk on camera with Univision reporter Xochitl Arellano of Sacramento's KUVS. At one point he shouted at Arellano and her cameraman, "Stop harassing me."
Perhaps the Spanish-language media isn't the most important forum for Prince to communicate with potential supporters of his new version of Proposition 187, but the incident did raise an interesting question: When someone stages a news conference to speak to the press and a TV camera shows up, is that harassment?
Posted by Timm Herdt at 2:44 AM
Over the last 22 presidential elections, Ventura County voters have backed the winner 21 times, or 95 percent of the time. It is one of only a handful of counties in the nation that has been such a predictable bellwether.
The Ventura County Star's Sacramento Bureau Chief Timm Herdt on state issues and politics from Sacramento to Ventura County. He can be contacted at 
