Hitting (at) the lottery

Since about the time the first California Lottery ticket was sold in 1985, the most common and enduring public misperception about education financing has been that the lottery should have pretty much taken care of school funding.

Most elected officials have found this public perception exasperating. The lottery accounts for only about 2 percent of school funding, they say. It was never intended to be the cure-all for school financing, they note. The slogan about kids being the winners, they say, was mostly just that — a slogan designed to generate public support for the lottery initiative.

Controller Steve Westly has apparently decided to take a different tact in his campaign for governor: If you can't beat a public misperception, join it.

In a TV commercial unveiled yesterday, Westly lists "reform the lottery" as one of the chief planks of his plan for education. A spokesman said Westly will lay out details of the plan on Monday in a speech before an education advocacy group in Los Angeles.

Short of restructuring the basic scheme for dividing up lottery revenues — half for prizes, about a third for education and the rest for administration and promotion — it's hard to imagine what that plan might be. And to change the formula would almost certainly require a vote of the people to change the initiative they approved.

The campaign of Treasurer Phil Angelides responded quickly yesterday to the new Westly ad. "As Controller, Steve Westly annually audits the lottery and for four years he has failed to get more money for our schools," the Angelides camp wrote in an e-mail to political reporters. "Now he's counting on a half-baked lottery 'reform' plan to fully fund education."

The lottery provides about $1 billion a year to public schools, or about $125 per pupil out the about $7,000 per year the state spends on each child. In his first years as controller, Westly always trumpeted the quarterly payments his office made to schools in distributing lottery revenues. "The lottery program is paying off for California schools right when they need the money the most," he wrote in a 2003 press release.

We'll know the details of Westly's plan soon enough. It will be very interesting to see whether he's got an idea that could generate significant new money for schools, or whether he's simply figured out a way to pander to the uninformed perceptions about school funding that are coming out of his focus groups.

Posted by Timm Herdt at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)

Jobs, jobs, jobs

This is "economy week" in the Schwarzenegger administration, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is staging a series of events around the state designed to call attention to the job growth that has taken place under his watch. Interestingly, his political campaign has launched a TV commercial, being shown in markets that track the governor's personal appearance schedule, also touting economic growth. Press Secretary Margita Thompson, at her weekly briefing this morning with Capitol bureau reporters, insisted there was no political coordination.

The campaign of Treasurer Phil Angelides was quick to distribute an e-mail to political reporters quoting Schwarzenegger from his own 2005 State of the State address: "If a politician tries to take credit for job growth, don't believe it. Ladies and gentlemen, I did not create this record number of jobs.”

No one can blame any governor for bragging about good things that happen while he or she is in office, but a little perspective is in order. As much as Californians like to say their state, if it were a nation, would make up the 5th or 6th largest economy in the world, the fact is that the California economy is very much intertwined with the U.S. economy. Both, after all, use the same currency and tap largely the same markets.

So, some perspective, based on figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Between January 2004 and January 2006, roughly tracking Schwarzenegger's term in office, the size of California's civilian labor force has grown by 1.58 percent. During that same time, New York's also grew by 1.58 percent, Texas' by 3.2 percent, Arizona's by 5.8 percent and Florida's by 5.9 percent.

The U.S. economy is doing well all over. The argument for cause and effect is very difficult for any governor to make.

Posted by Timm Herdt at 3:59 PM | Comments (0)

The elephant not in the room

I spent three hours Friday night listening to 16 Republican candidates in Ventura County give campaign speeches of from 7 to 10 minutes each, and this is the most telling observation I came away with: of the thousands of words spoken over those three hours, not one of them was "Schwarzenegger."

Maybe there's something to this notion that the Republican governor no longer excites his base.

The setting in Thousand Oaks included a cardboard standup of President Bush and the speakers stood before an oversized, red-white-and-blue banner that read, "Support President Bush and our troops." Behind and to the left of the speakers was a smallish photograph of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Only three speakers even mentioned him by title. Assemblywoman Audra Strickland spoke of the GOP Caucus' efforts to protect the concept of marriage exclusively between a man and a woman — and noted, almost as an aside, that victory was achieved on that front last year only because a veto by an unnamed governor. But she spoke not a word of his 2006 agenda — rebuilding highways, schools, levees and water systems.

Bob Larkin, her challenger in the Assembly primary, did talk of the partisan gridlock that blocked the proposed bond package that would have funded that agenda. But here, too, that long Austrian surname did not cross his lips.

Diane Lenning, the California Republican Assembly-backed candidate for superintendent of public instruction, came closest to directly recognizing Schwarzenegger. She made note of the cardboard cutout and the photograph and said it was an honor to be among such noted political figures as the president and the governor.

Two years ago, Republicans in California based their entire campaign strategy on the hope of catching a ride on Schwarzenegger's coattails, which turned out to be nonexistent.

Last fall, Ventura County was among the most successful in the state in rallying Republicans behind Schwarzenegger's ill-fated ballot initiatives.

Now, he doesn't rate a mention. That can't be a good sign.

Posted by Timm Herdt at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

The direct-mail king of California

I don't want to make a habit of using this blog to call attention to my own stories, but because it was a rather heavy news day, there was a story on Sen. Tom McClintock's direct-mail fundraising operation in today's Ventura County Star that you may have missed.

You can read the story here.

A close look at McClintock's year-end finance report shows that his campaign is spending heavily on direct mail — spending, in fact, $1.86 for every dollar it generates. At the same time, Team McClintock is building an impressive army of small donors, some who seem to be paying him on the installment plan: They send him $25 or $35 every few months. All told, he took in 6,480 contributions during the last six months of 2005.

That small-donor base, coupled with whatever help Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state Republican Party provide him in tapping into traditional, big-money donors, could provide McClintock with enough cash to wage a very competitive campaign in the fall. And at the very least, he'll have a significant head start over his Democratic opponent after John Garamendi, Jackie Speier and Liz Figueroa get done emptying their campaign accounts during the primary.

Posted by Timm Herdt at 10:11 AM | Comments (1)

Go negative? Not me...

Question: What can a voter expect in an Assembly district in which five candidates, four of them at least moderately well funded, are running against each other and every one of them on the major issues is Democrat Pure?

Answer: Negative campaigning as a means to draw distinctions among the choices.

That's the likely scenario in the 41st Assembly District, but the three major candidates all told me this week that they won't be the one to start slinging mud.

Barry Groveman: "It's not going to be coming from me."
Julia Brownley: "I won't throw stones."
Kelly Hayes-Raitt (whose consultant is Richie Ross): "I know Richie's reputation, and Richie knows mine. Richie knows that's not me."

One candidate noted that attacks can be very risky in such a split field because even if you succeed in driving support away from a given candidate, there's no guarantee those defectors will move to you.

Still, Groveman reports that a telephone push-poll of unknown financing is already in the field, planting questions about Groveman's integrity and calling into question his credentials as a pollution-fighting environmental lawyer. "People are spreading all sorts of rumors," he said. "It's mean-spirited."

The dynamics of the race would seem to invite independent expenditure campaigns, which could step in to do the dirty work. Expect it.

Posted by Timm Herdt at 3:58 PM | Comments (1)

Standing up to reality

Treasurer Phil Angelides released a new television ad today in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor, and it relects an interesting shift in the candidate's message. It also implicitly acknowledges that Garry South, campaign adviser to Steve Westly, was correct when he observed that Angelides' first commercial "seriously underperformed."

The problem with Angelides' first ad, according to those who have seen the reaction to it by Democratic focus groups, is that mainstream California voters didn't know enough about Angelides to understand it. The message was that Angelides has the courage to stand up for what he believes is right. The evidence for that argument is that Angelides was an early and ardent critic of Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, even when the governor's approval ratings were sky high. Insiders know that. Problem is, most California voters don't. Because Angelides hadn't done the groundwork in introducing himself to voters, his message fell flat. They didn't get the ending tag line, "He stood up to Arnold. He'll stand up for you," because they essentially had no clue that Angelides had in fact "stood up to Arnold."

Note that today's commercial uses a new ending tag line: "Endorsed by California's teachers." This ad lays some important groundwork. The message is entirely about education, planting the critical message that the issue is important to him. It uses Angelides' three daughters as narrators, planting the message that he is a family man and a devoted father. And it points out the endorsement of the California Teachers Association, planting the message that those in the know about the important issue of education support Angelides.

This time around, Angelides seems to be focused on building a foundation, rather than assuming that voters know more about him than they do.

Posted by Timm Herdt at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

And the winner is ... Angelides?

At one point during the collapsing negotiations over the failed "big bond" package this week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reportedly told legislative leaders that "we will all be losers" if the deal fell apart.

The deal fell apart and, sure enough, Schwarzenegger and the Legislature look like losers today -- and are being characterized as just that in the press.

But who was the winner? My guess is that is was Democratic Treasurer Phil Angelides. Why? Because without the bond and all the television advertising that measure would have generated in the run-up to the June election, the only remaining items on the ballot are mostly snoozers. Rob Reiner's universal preschool initiative. A small library bond. No action on either side in the U.S. Senate race.

The only real statewide campaign this spring will now be the matchup between Angelides and Controller Steve Westly for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. That's a formula for a substandard voter turnout, which generally means only true-blue Democratic voters will go to the polls. Since Angelides has the support of the party establishment and organized labor, he'll be able to get many of his voters out. Westly is relying more on television advertising, which tends to sway more casual voters. A low turnout helps Angelides.

Add to all that the near certainty that the Angelides-Westly campaign will ultimately turn into an ugly food fight on the state's airwaves. Negative campaigns typically can be counted on to depress voter turnout even further.

Westly now has two tough tasks ahead. First, he has to persuade mainstream Democratic voters that he is the better choice. Then, he has to persuade them that it's worth their while to vote. It's a very tall order.

Posted by Timm Herdt at 9:34 AM | Comments (0)

It is March, after all

Ventura County Republican Central Committee Chairwoman Leslie Cornejo said today she is sticking with her decision to endorse challenger Michael Tenenbaum over incumbent Elton Gallegly in the 24th Congressional District primary.

Cornejo had said earlier in the week that her endorsement was "unconditional," and she reiterated that sentiment now that Gallegly is officially back in the race and willingly seeking re-election.

She said many committee members have supporter her decision to stick to her guns. But for the moment, she said she is appreciating a slight lull after a wild week of political maneuvering and intrigue. She said she planned to watch the NCAA basketball tournament today. "It's a different kind of March Madness."

Posted by Timm Herdt at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

Elton news conference today

Rep. Elton Gallegly has scheduled a 4 p.m. EST news conference in Washington, presumably to announce that he has decided to seek re-election after all. If that's the case, he will find himself in a primary contest made considerably more difficult by the on-again, off-again events of the last week.

Some former Gallegly supporters in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties have already signed on with challenger Michael Tenenbaum, and Gallegly has handed Tenenbaum a great issue: Does the incumbent really want to represent you? Will he serve out his full term? Will he work hard for a final two years or will he mail it in?

Tenenbaum has already shown himself to savvy -- some in Ventura County are saying "calculating." It could get interesting.

At the same time, Gallegly has always been a dogged campaigner. Longtime supporter Peggy Sadler, a member of the Ventura County GOP Central Committee, offered this observation yesterday: "If he decides to go ahead with it, you know Elton: He's a campaigner, and he will run to win."

Posted by Timm Herdt at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)

A stunning afternoon

A stunning afternoon