Tired of all that campaign advertising? Well, too bad.
Mark Barabak reports that allies of Jerry Brown are
planning a multimillion-dollar ad blitz right after the June primary election.
"With election day less than two weeks away,
Democrats and their allies are quietly preparing a
TV blitz aimed at Meg
Whitman, presuming she will be the GOP gubernatorial
nominee against
state Atty. Gen.
Jerry Brown . The targeted launch:
June 9.
“She’s ready to unload on Jerry Brown right out
of the gate,” said Roger Salazar, one of the strategists behind
the
labor-backed independent expenditure campaign. “We can’t cede June and
July.”
The (inhale) California Working Families for
Jerry Brown for Governor 2010 committee (exhale) claims to have $17
million in pledges toward a goal of $34 to $40 million, which is a good
bit of cash even by California’s exorbitant election
standards. The expectation among strategists—who, legally, must operate
independent of Brown—is that the Democratic nominee will eventually
pick up the slack and begin his own paid TV spots somewhere
around Labor
Day.
“We want to provide some assistance for Jerry and
hit her so it bridges that gap,” Salazar said.
"The committee has about a dozen TV spots it is
testing and (spoiler alert!) the flavor can be divined from two that
veteran consultant Larry Grisolano has been showing
prospective
contributors around the state. One uses clips of Whitman’s
testy appearance at a September 2009 news conference, where she
apologized—but failed to explain-her sketchy voting history. The other
parses Whitman’s glossy campaign manifesto and suggests, lo, it’s the
George W. Bush administration all over again!"
George Skelton, for one,
has had enough of the negative campaign advertising.
"It's hard to know whether to laugh or hit the mute
button and curse.
"There is humor in some of these TV ads the two Republican
gubernatorial
candidates have been running in an attempt to outflank
each other on the
right.
"When Meg Whitman, for example, runs her ad that raps
rival Steve Poizner
with the Republican pejorative "liberal" and accuses
him of supporting
"taxpayer funded abortion," opposing "the Bush tax
cuts," donating
$10,000 to Al Gore in 2000 and favoring elimination of the two-thirds
legislative vote requirement for budget passage, what's
a good Democrat
to think?
"I envision some Democrat who hasn't been paying attention
thinking that
Poizner sounds like just the kind of leader California
needs."
This week's budget positioning could portend a long summer standoff.
Capitol Weekly reports, "
The battle lines have been drawn for this summer’s budget fight, with
Senate Democrats touting plans
for new tax increases and cuts and Assembly Democrats
unveiling an elaborate budget maneuver that leads to
new taxes on oil production and virtually no cuts to
the state’s safety net. The trick, now, is figuring out which
pieces of these proposals - and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s May budget
revision - are real.
"Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles, and his staff came up
with the most creative
of the budget proposals, revealed in a press conference
this week in the Capitol.
"The Perez plan would essentially create a
new 10 percent tax on oil production - known in the Capitol as the oil
severance tax. Through
a complicated series of budget maneuvers involving
Wall Street loans and the state’s recycling fund, the state would, in
essence, immediately
borrow against the first 20 years of that anticipated oil revenue to
backfill
cuts in Schwarzenegger’s budget proposal, and make scheduled debt
repayments
to public schools and local governments."
Malcolm Maclachlan looks at Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson's high-powered harem of volunteers.
"Veteran consultant David Townsend managed Johnson’s successful
2008 campaign to become mayor. Adam Mendelsohn, a partner
in Mercury Public Affairs and a former deputy chief
of staff to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a key
advisor. Steve Maviglio, a top staffer to both a governor
and an Assembly Speaker, served as Johnson’s campaign spokesman during
the 2008 election, still consults occasionally for the mayor
and is now working with a trio of city council candidates,
including one who is a key Johnson ally.
"And they’re all doing it for free."
The CalPERS scandal keeps getting better and better.
Dale Kassler reports, "Alfred Villalobos, the former CalPERS board member accused of
bribing pension fund officials, has squandered $68 million of his
fortune and owes more money to one casino than he has
in cash, the state
said Wednesday.
"In a court filing, the state revealed fresh
allegations about Villalobos' spending habits in an
effort to maintain a
court-ordered freeze on his assets. It is suing Villalobos
for $70
million, saying he lavished gifts on three CalPERS
officials to
influence investment decisions.
"If the freeze is lifted, as
Villalobos has demanded, the state said he could waste
his money on
gambling or transfer it overseas before the state can
pursue its
lawsuit."
Carly Fiorina talked about being
fired from HP during a campaign stop in El Dorado Hills.
" 'I got fired from
HP, O.K. guys? It’s O.K., you can say it.'
"After a describing the argument that immediately preceded
her firing,
which was over board members leaking information about
the board’s
discussions to the press, Fiorina defended her tenure
at HP, ticking off her accomplishments and noting that
she led the
company through the "dot com" bust.
“I will run on that record all day long,” Fiorina said. “And what you
can take away is—I do know something about politics. Believe it or not
you all, it exists in the real world too.”
President Obama was in Northern California on Wednesday,
touting solar energy and talking about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
"After touring a solar panel factory in the San Francisco
Bay Area
suburb of Fremont, Obama decried the risks taken in
deep-water oil
drilling, noting that “part of what’s happening in the gulf is that oil
companies are drilling a mile under water before they
hit ground and
then a mile below that before they hit oil, with increased
risks and
increased costs."
“We are not going to be able to sustain this kind
of fossil fuel use,” he told workers at Solyndra Inc., who had gathered
in the company’s half-finished factory, which is being built with the
help of a $535-million federal loan guarantee.
Seema Mehta checks out Steve Poizner's "tween town hall."
"Gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner visited the
South Bay on
Wednesday, but his town hall was not made up of the
usual supporters or
undecided voters that such events tend to attract less
than two weeks
before election day.
"The crowd was mostly made up of 60 students from the nearby St.
Anthony School, who were invited by a local councilwoman
to take a break
from their studies to hear the candidate speak. As
they entered the
darkened meeting room at the Embassy Suites in El Segundo,
most of the
students were handed Poizner campaign T-shirts that they wore over their
uniforms.
“Were you excited when you heard you didn’t have to go to school
today?” Poizner asked. “I’m glad to be of assistance today.”
Poizner then asked if any of the kids were in the country
illegally, and had three kids deported.
And finally, from our Alternative Bathing Methods files, "A Persian kitten gave her owners the shock
of their lives when she
emerged from the washing
machine, dizzy and bedraggled after surviving a full cycle.
"Brendon Rogers, from Manly Vale, Sydney, said four-month-old Kimba, a
white, fluffy kitten, must have climbed into the front-loader machine
when the door was open and curled up on the dirty clothes
-- unbeknownst
to his father Lyndsay who turned the machine on for
a cold wash.
"They were both amazed when the cycle -- including a high level spin --
finished and they opened the door to pull out the clothes
to find Kimba
in the machine."
The cat then went to dry itself in the microwave.
