"The Senate elections committee on Wednesday
approved a bill to move California's presidential primary from June to February next year in a bid to give the state more clout in picking nominees," reports Judy Lin in the Bee.
"Sen.
Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, who wrote the bill, said after the 3-0 vote that California, with its large and diverse population, deserves to be a player in national elections. Currently, California is one of several states weighing earlier primaries to leapfrog ahead of others on the calendar.
"'New Hampshire and Iowa, (although) they are really wonderful states, don't reflect the diversity of this country,' Calderon said of the states that traditionally hold the nation's first primary and caucus in January.
"'All the candidates come here for hundreds of millions of dollars for their campaigns,' he said. 'In fact, in the last midterm election, they didn't even spend it here, they spent it in other places. So I think because of that we deserve to have a say in who the nominee is for president.'"
Didn't spend it here, huh? Tell that to
Richard Pombo.
Meanwhile, Dan Walters reports that
Rudy Giuliani is
looking for campaign gold in California.
Giuliani will be the headliner at this weekend's GOP convention in Sacramento, reports CW's Cosmo Garvin.
"He'll also be trying to win over some of the party's conservative base, which has been leery of the pro-choice moderate.
"'He's really got to make his case to the party activists,' said Mike Spence, president of the California Republican Assembly, a conservative branch of the party."
Speaking of making his case, in "his first legislative appearance, prison medical care receiver
Robert Sillen pledged Wednesday that he's
willing to cooperate with lawmakers in fixing the correctional health care system, but only to a point," writes the Bee's Andy Furillo.
"If cooperation results in delay, Sillen said, he will have none of it. He said he would then be forced "to take a different approach," an unspoken reference to his previous threats to use the power of the federal courts to waive state laws and put the arm on the state treasury to bring prison medical care up to constitutional standards.
"'Well, I think we will cooperate to the degree that we can,' Sillen told state Sen.
Mike Machado, D-Linden, the chairman of the budget subcommittee that oversees corrections spending. '
We're all for cooperation and collaboration just like everybody else who says those words is.'
"'But we will not be delayed,' Sillen added. 'That is the critical issue. With all the cooperation and all the collaboration, and all the state processes, both formal and informal and political and otherwise that the state engages in to not get done what needs to get done, that's where we're going to draw the line.'"
Meanwhile, "[a]ttorneys for two California prisoners on Wednesday
asked a federal court to block Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger from forcibly transferring convicts to private lockups in other states.
"The challenge comes less than a week after the governor ordered the mandatory moves to relieve overcrowding, which he said had reached crisis levels in most of the state's 33 prisons.
"Close to 400 California inmates already have transferred voluntarily to private prisons in Tennessee and Arizona under a program that began in November. Schwarzenegger authorized the mandatory moves because so few convicts had agreed to go.
"In papers filed with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Los Angeles civil rights lawyer
Stephen Yagman asked for an order barring the forced transfers of inmates
David Diaz and
Paul Blumberg and others in similar circumstances.
"On Wednesday, a three-judge panel issued an order instructing the Schwarzenegger administration to file a response before a hearing Feb. 20. The order also said the court had been assured Diaz and Blumberg would not be forcibly transferred before then."
"An unusual
new coalition of big employers, labor unions and politicians united Wednesday to push for 'quality, affordable' healthcare for all Americans by 2012," write Daniel Costello and Abigail Goldman for the Times.
"Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation's largest private employer, joined with one of its biggest critics, the Service Employees International Union.
"AT&T Inc. signed on along with its major union. Silicon Valley is represented by chip maker Intel Corp. So are both major political parties.
"'The fact they even got to the same table to talk about this in the first place is pretty amazing,' said
Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, a national nonprofit organization that represents large concerns such as Exxon Mobil Corp., IBM Corp. and Procter & Gamble Co.
"The proposal was short of specifics but had four broad themes: universal health coverage by 2012, better preventive care and disease management; more efficient healthcare delivery, and cost-sharing by workers, employers and governments."
Meanwhile, in California, CW's John Howard looks at
whether health care is inevitably heading to the 2008 ballot.
"And even those who support pieces of the new Schwarzenegger proposal, such as the California Medical Association, are careful to say they back the concepts of his plan, not the specifics--a critical distinction, since the governor's plan is not written down and has no legislative author, yet, willing to carry a bill. And they know that a new referendum battle is a distinct possibility.
"'SB 2 changed the calculation. Now, you're not just legislating for the Legislature, you have to legislate for the ballot. When we did SB 2, none of us ever thought it would be on the ballot,' said CMA lobbyist
Dustin Corcoran."
CW also has a
Q&A with Joe Dunn, the new head of the California Medical Association.
"The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the source of much of the state's drinking water,
faces economic and environmental collapse, according to a public policy group that this morning recommended a radical shift away from the water management policies of the past 70 years," reports the Chron's Glen Martin.
"The
report by the Public Policy Institute of California suggests five possible fixes for the beleaguered delta, a 1,250-square-mile expanse of farmland, sloughs and marshes connected to San Francisco Bay.
"All alternatives involve abandoning the policy of managing the delta as a freshwater body -- as has been the case for the past seven decades -- to a system that fluctuates between fresh and salty conditions. That could help native species recover, experts said.
"Investment costs for the alternatives vary from $700 million to 'several billion,' with annual costs ranging from less than $30 million to $100 million."
"The state
would launch a major, coordinated effort to prevent suicides — such as those occurring with greater frequency as people leap off the Golden Gate Bridge — under a bill introduced Wednesday by a Bay Area lawmaker," reports Steve Geissinger in the Oakland Tribune.
Bridge authorities say 34 people jumped from the internationally known landmark last year, a startling spike compared to the average of 19 annually. Prevention efforts and media coverage are being questioned as possible contributing factors.
"Assemblywoman
Mary Hayashi — a Democrat newly elected to the 18th Assembly District, which stretches from Oakland to Pleasanton — has long been involved in suicide-prevention efforts statewide.
"'Each year, California reports more than 3,000 deaths caused by suicide,' Hayashi said in a statement. 'To put this into perspective, we have more people who die from suicide in California annually than the number of individuals who lost their lives in the 2001 terrorist attacks.'"
CW's Colin Rigley profiles
one of the Capitol's longest-serving staffers.
"
Cathleen Gardella, who stumbled into the Capitol by accident in 1967 because "it paid better than babysitting," has managed to maintain a humble demeanor after 40 years at ground zero of California's political world.
"During
Ronald Reagan's stint as governor, Gardella says, "I used to see him in the halls with his makeup on. … He was very visible and very out there unlike some of the more recent governors, who we never saw. He would show up to members birthday parties, Democrats and Republicans."
When
Jerry Brown was in the horseshoe,
partying with the governor was common, she said. "[We would] have a lot of fun. … [Legislators and staff] would come out and drink beer and eat hamburgers, play the juke box."
'I think certainly back in the old days … you saw more [bipartisanship]. We used to play the Republican staff in baseball games. … You used to see members out and about, and [there would] be Democrats and Republicans at David's Brass Rail or Fat's or the Torch Club, and they'd be all together just yakking."
Hey,
what do Steve Westly and Barack Obama have in common? We're sure our Republican leaders have their own answer to that one, but CW's Malcolm Maclachlan finds out the two share quite a bit.
"About fifty people gathered in the Silicon Valley home of attorney
John Roos on Monday night for a fundraiser for Barack Obama. And they had more in common than the means to donate at least $25,000.
"'It looked like a Steve Westly reunion,' said
Wade Randlett, a fundraiser and donor to Westly's Democratic gubernatorial primary campaign.
"The fledgling political machine that nearly brought Westly from relative obscurity to winning the nomination appears to have lined up squarely behind the charismatic junior Senator from Illinois. The crowd at Roos' event included Westly himself, who has endorsed Obama prior to him actually announcing his candidacy this coming Saturday.
"Randlett said that Westly would likely serve as California co-chair for the Obama campaign.
Westly said that he was invited to Obama's official announcement in Chicago on Saturday, but has been traveling a lot lately and decided to stay home with his family."
The Stockton Record's Hank Shaw looks at the guv's new bipartisan panel to look at levee fixes, and
notes some geographic disparities.
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 'blue ribbon' panel charged with the swampy task of developing a fix for the Delta includes no one from San Joaquin County, which covers the largest stretch of the West Coast's largest estuary.
Local officials reacted with shock and anger.
"'Are you serious?' said an incredulous Lathrop Mayor Kristy Sayles. 'Considering that the Delta is in our backyard, we should at least have a seat at the table.'"
And we close the book on Super Bowl XLI with
the story of Bears' fan Payton Manning.
"
Scott Wiese, a die-hard Chicago Bears fan, will legally change his name to that of Indianapolis Colts quarterback
Peyton Manning after signing a pledge in front of a crowd at a Decatur bar last Friday night. He vowed to adopt Manning's name if the Bears lost Sunday's Super Bowl.
"Wiese will now have to advertise his intention in the local newspaper — the Herald & Review — for several weeks and then have a judge give him the OK to become, legally anyway, Peyton Manning.
"'I think I kind of represent all Bears fans,' he said. 'Not that I'm saying they're all idiots like me, but I represent their passion because I really care about my team, you know?'
In related news,
Phil Angelides campaign manager
Cathy Calfo has changed her name to Arnold Schwarzenegger.