The governor
tapped Tom Campbell for his campaign team yesterday, and appointed
Mike Genest as Acting Director of Finance. While Campbell initially inferred that
he would stay in the administration through two budget cycles, he plans to return to the Haas Business School at UC Berkeley in November less than a year after taking leave.
"'Tom's ability to articulate the need for budget reform and his knowledge of the budget make him uniquely qualified to be a fantastic asset to the campaign,' Schwarzenegger said in a prepared statement about Campbell, who had already been on leave as dean of the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business."
The move is an interesting one, as Campbell is certainly one of the brightest people in Sacramento, but is not known to be a
fantastic campaigner. And it reunited Campbell with all of the Republicans who endorsed Sen. Dianne Feinstein when Campbell ran against her in 2000, the last time a university called him home.
The
new Capitol Weekly is on the streets this morning, with a story about
the governor's new campaign headquarters, as the team moves under one roof, and tries to refocus the sagging campaign. There is also an update on the
Senate Republican leadership fight, which seems to be over, at least for now. The paper also includes a story on
ghost voting, a common, but technically forbidden practice among Assemblymembers. Check out the entire issue at
www.capitolweekly.net.
Speaking of tooting our own horn, yesterday, we mentioned that a new poll from the governor's pollster may be forth-coming in the wake of the most recent Field Poll. In fact, we said, "We're looking forward to a release of cryptic notes from the latest McLaughlin poll from the Schwarzenegger campaign sometime later today..."
Sure enough, late last night, we received aforemention cryptic notes, in a memo that indicated that as long as you don't tell voters anything bad about the governor's initiatives, there's a chance a couple of them may pass in November. Let's see if anybody bites.
Meanwhile in the Legislature ...Deciding that the one paragraph veto warning issued in yesterday's papers wasn't enough, the governor's office
formally announced that the governor plans to veto Mark Leno's AB 849, which would have allowed same-sex marriage in California.
"In a careful statement, Schwarzenegger press secretary
Margita Thompson invoked the voter approval in March 2000 of Proposition 22, which said: 'Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.'"
"'The governor believes the matter should be determined not by legislative action — which would be unconstitutional — but by court decision or another vote of the people of our state," the statement said. 'We cannot have a system where the people vote and the Legislature derails that vote.'"
George Skelton
isn't too happy with the governor's handling of the bill. "There are credible reasons to veto it. But he should give a better reason than some vague notion of legislative unconstitutionality. He could say, as U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein did after last November's election, that 'the whole issue has been too much, too fast, too soon and people aren't ready for it.'
But he shouldn't be ducking out of the batter's box and calling for a pinch-hitter. That's like striking out."In other news, journalists were busily preparing football metaphors with tonight's kickoff of the NFL season. Get ready for stories about the governor's team needing to do some basic
blocking and tackling, the need for some
hurry-up offense, or of course, the old
hail mary as Election Day approaches.
Meanwhile, the governor practiced using that veto pen by
nixing a measure by Leland Yee to require candidates that sign the code of fair campaign practices to promise not to gay bash.
That pen will likely spill lots of ink over the next thirty days, including for an expected veto of the
minimum wage hike approved yesterday. While the bill's passage wasn't a surprise, the votes of a few members were.
"Compared with last year's, this year's measure was approved by larger margins in both houses. In the Assembly, where the bill passed 49 to 30 in June, Republicans
Bonnie Garcia of Cathedral City and
Shirley Horton of Chula Vista as well as Democrat
Barbara Matthews of Tracy all abandoned their past year's opposition to support it."
"
Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria), who had voted against last year's increase while he was in the Assembly, supported it in his new seat in the Senate, where it passed Wednesday 26 to 13."
While there were rumblings over the last couple of weeks that
the governor's staff was seeking amendments that would make AB 48 palatable, Democrats refused to remove the "indexing" component, which would provide automatic wage increases in the future, and which will likely bring a veto.
Speaking of bills to be vetoed, the Assembly approved
approved SB 60 last night, which would allow undocumented immigrants to get driver's licenses. Senator
Gil "Cedillo said he included several elements in the bill aimed at overcoming objections from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who last year vetoed a Cedillo driver's license bill. But before the state Assembly took up the new bill Wednesday, there were no indications that the changes would satisfy the governor."
Ted Lieu starts measuring curtains That sound you hear are
the wheels falling off the Mary Jo Ford campaign. " State Assembly candidate Dr. Mary Jo Ford
was once registered in San Diego as a Democrat, voter registration documents show, further eroding her contention that she has been a lifelong Republican and raising new doubts about her political background.
San Diego County voter registration forms obtained Wednesday by the Daily Breeze show Ford was registered there as a Democrat in 1992. The revelation comes on the heels of a controversy over records that show she was a registered member of the American Independent Party when she moved to Manhattan Beach.
Though
she originally denied she was ever registered with that party, her spokesman on Wednesday acknowledged Ford's AIP registration in Los Angeles County but claimed the document was fraudulent."
There does appear to be something fraudulent in the campaign, but we're thinking it's not the documents...
Animal Planet: Our animal story hiatus ends with the
discovery of a second alligator in a Los Angeles lake. A family discovered "Little Reggie" "in a flood control channel behind their Harbor City Estates mobile home park late Tuesday, and called the authorities. It is the second alligator discovered in this port city in three weeks."