Capitol Weekly publishes the last installment of its Top 100 list this week, christening numbers 1-50 on its list. Did we get it right? Talk amongst yourselves.
Or send us some nasty email. Your choice.
CW is also out with a new poll, which shows a bit of movement both in the races for governor and U.S. Senate.
"
Former Rep. Tom Campbell has opened up a double-digit lead over his
two rivals for the Republican U.S.
Senate nomination, while Meg Whitman maintains a wide
margin over Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in
the GOP gubernatorial battle.
The results were part of a new Capitol Weekly/Probolsky Research
poll conducted jointly by Republican
pollster Adam Probolsky and Democratic pollster Ben
Tulchin.
Whitman, a billionaire and former CEO of eBay, maintains
a 28-point lead over Poizner, smaller than her lead in recent
public polls. Whitman was the choice of 47 percent of likely Republican
primary voters to Poizner’s 19 percent. More than one-third of
Republican primary voters say they are still
undecided, according to the survey.
You can download the results here.
John Howard reports on a fight bewteen the Legislature and governor that has
turned into a ight between the air resources board
and the public utilities commission.
"Call it a clash of the bureaucratic titans.
"Last year, the Legislature and Gov. Schwarzenegger
wrestled over renewable energy until the closing hours
of the legislative session. Schwarzenegger eventualy
vetoed the Democrats’ bill and tried to do the job himself by ordering
the
Air Resources Board to act via executive order.
"But that order, in part, touched off a bureaucratic war between
the administration
and ARB on one side and the Public Utilities Commission
on the other.
"The squabble is unknown to the public. But its outcome
could have a profound impact on public policy and on
ratepayers’ pocketbooks. To some extent, the dispute is jurisdictional,
involving the Air Resources Board and the Public Utilities
Commission – and the executive level of the administration."
As Goldman Sachs morphs into Enron before our very
eyes, Lance Williams looks again at the Meg Whitman Goldman Sachs connection.
"In a report
Thursday, to which California Watch contributed, the Chronicle
suggested that the Goldman issue might be slowing what
up to now had
seemed an unstoppable campaign.
"A Rasmussen poll released Wednesday showed that Whitman
had fallen
six points behind Democrat Jerry Brown in the expected
November
match-up. Recent polls had shown Whitman ahead of Brown.
Meanwhile, a national poll by Rasmussen showed that
73 percent of
Americans believe it is “somewhat likely” that Goldman was guilty of
fraud.
"For her part, Whitman has declined to comment on her
association with
Goldman. She left the board in 2002, but has kept part of her $1.2
billion fortune with the New York investment bank,
records show. With
the candidate silent, her opponents had the debate
to themselves.
“Meg Whitman made a fortune with Goldman Sachs at the
expense of
millions of financially suffering Californians and
she’s using Goldman
Sachs contributions to lie about Steve Poizner in negative
ads," Poizner
spokesman Jarrod Agen said. “Californians can’t trust Meg Whitman to
rebuild our state when she is entrenched with a company
financially
invested in California ’s failure.”
In other news, Abel Maldonado apears to be headed for confirmation. We think. Steve Harmon reports, "After a
couple months of letting "cooler minds prevail," state
Sen. Abel
Maldonado made a return trip Wednesday to the Assembly
Rules Committee,
hoping that Democrats had softened their opposition
to his nomination as
lieutenant governor.
"Assembly Democrats had rejected Maldonado's
nomination in February, accusing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
of playing
partisan politics in nominating a Republican to a post
previously held
by Walnut Grove Democrat John Garamendi, who vacated
the office after
getting elected to Congress in November."
Susan Ferriss looks at today's meeting to discuss pay for state lawmakers.
"
"The commission that regulates California legislators'
salaries
will consider a proposal Thursday that could slash
lawmakers' pay by at
least a quarter in less than a year.
The Governor's Office, which
appoints the commissioners, is suggesting the panel
won't necessarily
vote immediately.
"Until we're out of this crisis, we all need to
continue to cut back," said Aaron McLear, spokesman
for Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger. "We'll support whatever the commission
decides to do,
but it may be prudent to wait until the May revision
(of the budget) to
decide this issue."
Silly us. We thought it worked the other way around.
And finally, from our when cheese wars go wrong files...
"An Australian woman who ran down and killed a man
who threw
cheese-flavoured snacks at her car was jailed Thursday for
25 years.
Sydney woman Sarah May Ward intended to injure Eli
Westlake for throwing
the snacks at her vehicle, judge Roderick Howie told
the New South Wales
Supreme Court,
describing the 21-year-old's murder as "a senseless act of anger."
And wasted cheese.
