With just one week to go until Election Day, it's a
sprint both inside and outside the Capitol. This week
is the deadline for bills to clear their house of origin
(fresh off of last week's suspense file carnage), and the Capitol is sure to be abuzz with long floor
sessions and the commesurate gaggle of lobbyists huddled
in the hallways. And elsewhere, well, if you don't
like campaign commercials, we're afraid you're just
out of luck.
With just one week until Election Day, Steve Poizner has attacked Meg Whitman's campaign spending as "obscene."
Facing new poll results that show Meg Whitman with
a 24-point lead in
the Republican gubernatorial primary, rival Steve Poizner
on Monday
slammed the former EBay chief, saying she has tried to buy the
nomination by spending an "obscene amount of money."
"When people really sit down to fill out their ballots
or go into the
election booth, I think they're going to be disturbed
by the fact she
hasn't voted for 28 years straight, and then all of a sudden she spends
$90 million, four times more than anyone's ever spent
ever in the
history of Republican primaries in gubernatorial politics
— four times
more than me," Poizner said in an interview after speaking
at a Memorial
Day observance in Rancho Palos Verdes. "That amount
of spending is
going to really backfire on her."
Speaking of obscene spending, Marc Lifsher looks at
PG&E's
support for Proposition 16.
"The state's largest electric utility — Pacific Gas & Electric Co. —
says it has lots of good reasons for bankrolling Proposition
16, an
initiative on the June 8 ballot that would restrict the way local
governments create or expand public power services.
"But opponents counter that the advertising blitz is
cynical,
anti-democratic and deceptive. Proposition 16 is all about protecting
PG&E's turf, they say.
"To make those things happen, the San Francisco utility
is spending more
than $46 million of its shareholders' money to deluge television
viewers
with what Pruett described as "a vigorous advertising
campaign" that
touts what the company calls the Taxpayers Right to
Vote Act.
Torey Van Oot looks at what impact, if any, Proposition 14 would have on California politics.
"The primary system overhaul, which does not affect
presidential
primaries, has been praised as a fix for political
gridlock that would
increase voter choice.
"But the experience in Washington so far
offers little evidence that Proposition 14 proponents' promises of
increased turnout and more moderate officeholders will
pan out in
California.
"There was nothing dramatic enough that happened to
make someone stand up and say, 'Wow, this is really
different,' " said
Travis Ridout, a political science professor at Washington
State
University.
Lisa Vorderbrueggen reports the GOP is already looking for a way around the measure.
"If the measure passes, the GOP
will deploy a primary caucus nomination system in
which assigned
delegates will select the party's nominees for Congress,
statewide
offices, the Board of Equalization and the Legislature.
"
If the caucus were
in place today, the GOP would have sided with either
Meg Whitman or
Steve Poizner, and stated its preference in the hotly
contested four-way
Republican primary race in the 11th Congressional District.
"Did
people think parties would fold up their tents and
go away?" said
California GOP Chairman Ron Nehring. "The central role
of political
parties is the nomination of candidates, and if the
primary no longer
serves that purpose, then parties need an alternative
method to see
which candidates the party backs."
A new Los Angeles Times/USC poll shows voters
are split over the issue of marijuana legalization.
"California voters, by a modest margin,
think they should be allowed to
grow and consume marijuana, according to a new poll
that also found more
than 1 in 3 voters had tried pot and more than 1 in 10 had lit up in
the past year.
The Los Angeles Times/USC poll found that voters back the marijuana
legalization measure on the November ballot, 49% to 41%, with 10%
uncertain about it. But support for the initiative
is unstable, with
one-third of the supporters saying they favor it only "somewhat."
"The good news for proponents is that they are starting
off with a
decent lead. The good news for the opposition is that
initiatives that
start off at less than 50% in the polls usually have a hard time," said
Dan Schnur, director of USC's Jesse M. Unruh Institute
of Politics.
In case you missed it, a Los Angeles Times/USC poll released Sunday showed Whitman reopening a 24-point lead over Poizner.
"After plummeting in recent polls, Republican Meg Whitman
has regained
her commanding lead in the race for governor over her
primary opponent
Steve Poizner, but their contentious assaults have
helped reverse the
general election edge she once held over Democrat Jerry
Brown, a new Los
Angeles Times/USC poll has found.
"Whitman leads Poizner 53% to 29%, with less than two weeks to go before
the June 8 primary, the poll found. But head to head against
Brown, she
trails 44% to 38%."
The poll also found California voters split over Arizona's immigration law.
Jack Dolan and Evan Halper look at Whitman's connection to another Wall Street scandal.
"When the Securities and Exchange Commission accused
Wall Street firms of
putting investors at risk by issuing rosy reports
on the stock of
companies the firms were courting for banking business,
the regulators
cited as part of their case a meeting involving Meg
Whitman.
"After the firm Morgan Stanley lost a bid to handle
the 1998 initial
offering of stock for EBay, where Whitman was chief
executive, the
bank's star technology analyst embarked on what regulators
called a
market-deceiving strategy to win Whitman's future business
— which
Morgan eventually did.
"A civil suit filed by the SEC against the bank describes
a meeting
between Whitman and the Morgan analyst at which the
analyst showed
Whitman, who is now running for governor, a draft report
rating EBay
stock as one that would "outperform" the market."
And finally, from our Statute of Limitations Files, AP reports, "A Philadelphia man was found not guilty
on Monday of murdering a
policeman who died 41 years after the defendant shot him.
"The jury acquitted William Barnes after a week-long trial in which
prosecutors tried to argue there was a chain of direct
causation between
his shooting of Walter Barclay in 1966 and Barclay's death from a
urinary tract infection in 2007."
