Capitol Weekly's John Howard remembers what it was like to cover Brown's governorship.
"Indeed, Brown frequently called reporters on the phone or confronted them in person to complain about their stories or try to shape them – or both. Part of the ritual of a new reporter assigned to the Capitol included a meeting with Brown.
"Why are you writing it like that?" he once asked me
as I filed a wire-service story from a long-forgotten campaign stop in Fresno where he hoped to
tout his transportation policies. "Why are you writing
about welfare cuts? What’s going on? Where’s the transportation program?”
And if Brown wins, his next press secretary has big shoes to fill.
"When Davis left Brown to run for the Assembly in 1982, he was replaced by the flamboyant and blunt-spoken B.T. Collins, a Republican, who had lost an arm and leg in the Vietnam war. Collins once made national headlines by drinking a glass of the Medfly-eradicating chemical malathion to show it was safe for humans.
George Skelton remembers, too. The bottom line -- watch your french fries. Or as we still call them -- freedom fries.
Cathleen Decker looks at how Brown and Meg Whitman are already battling for the political center.
"What both Whitman and Brown are doing is waging the general election campaign. That's the bottom line," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political scientist at USC. "That certainly means not getting caught too far on the extremes."
Meanwhile, Steve Poizner locked up the endorsement of the California Republican Assembly, and is now running hard to the right. Ken McLaughlin reports, "
When
Republican Steve Poizner ran against Ira Ruskin in
a heavily Democratic
state Assembly district in 2004, Poizner assured voters he was against
the war in Iraq, was 100 percent pro-choice and would stand up to
"Republican Party bosses.'' But six years after narrowly
losing that
Peninsula race to the liberal Ruskin, Poizner — who now wants to be
governor — is painting himself as the only "true conservative''
in the
GOP primary. "As California Republicans head to Santa Clara this
week for their spring convention, Poizner's new battle
plan puts him in
a unique position among the three gubernatorial contenders
because both
his GOP rival, Meg Whitman, and Democrat Jerry Brown
have veered toward
the political center. In making his strategy clear
this past week,
Poizner said he'll do everything possible to prevent
the "coronation''
of the "extreme liberal'' Whitman, the former eBay
chief."
Ironic that Whitman, a former Mitt Romney adviser, seems to be running against a candidate who's running a play out of the Romney presidential playbook...
Robert Salladay looks at the effort to repeal AB 32.
"Two Texas oil companies have been evasive about whether they are backing a California ballot initiative that would suspend the state's landmark global warming law, signed with fanfare by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006.
But it wouldn't be surprising if Tesoro Corp. and Valero Energy Corp. were behind the initiative to delay AB 32. The Texas companies – which operate refineries in Benicia and Wilmington, Martinez and Los Angeles, and hundreds of gas stations throughout California – have been well-known players in the fight to weaken global warming legislation at the federal level, and they are major donors to state politicians working for the same goals."
Patrick McGreevy reports additional overtime pay may be limiting savings from state worker furloughs.
"Despite Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision to furlough workers three days a month to save money, many employees are taking home paychecks fattened by overtime -- more than $1 billion of it last year.
"The total overtime paid in 2009 actually dropped slightly, by $64 million from the year before. But it was up from the $808 million paid in 2005 and $598 million in 2004."
And finally from our Political Correctness Run Wild files, Retuers reports Canada may be looking for a new national anthem -- one that's gender-neutral. ""O Canada," the country's national anthem, has included the line, "True patriot love in all thy sons' command," for nearly 100 years.
"Ottawa now wants to start a public discussion on whether Canada should adopt a gender-neutral version of the song.
"As part of a policy speech unveiled on Wednesday, the minority Conservative government said it would ask Parliament to look at the original lyrics to the anthem."
A quick humming of the Star Spangled Banner seems to indicate we'll pass the PC police test, unless they've got a problem with the whole war thing...