Sen. Abe Maldonado will come before the Senate Rules
Committee this
afternoon, as he begins the long, arduous journey toward
Senate
confirmation. As a sort of wearm-up Tuesday, the senator played meet
the press and made his case for why he should be lieutenant
governor.
Timm Herdt looks at how the Maldonado vote is a landmine for Democrats.
"Everything about the Maldonado nomination is political.
He hopes to
use his appointment as a springboard to win the office
at the polls
this fall, and Democrats don’t want to give a potential GOP candidate
the advantage of incumbency.
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger selected Maldonado partly
because the
nomination creates political peril for Democratic lawmakers.
For them
to reject Maldonado would be to risk alienating Latino
voters, a
critical part of Democrats’ political base. For them to confirm him
would be to risk elevating someone who could help boost
California
Republicans’ woeful recent record in attracting Latino votes.
"All this is backdrop for the confirmation process.
Democrats must weigh
which is the bigger risk: rejecting a popular Latino politician because
he’s a Republican, or giving the GOP a figurehead who
could use the
office to broaden his party’s political appeal."
Prepare to hear a lot about oil drilling in the hearing,
and
Maldonado said Wednesday he would vote against drilling
in Tranquillion
Ridge. Definitely.
Absolutely. Positively.
Unless...
Read this report from John Myers and look for the wiggle
room.
""I think it's a non-starter where it's at," he said.
"But Maldonado points out that the U.S. Minerals Management
Service
(MMS) — and not the state — controls the ultimate fate of those
platforms. "How could you vote for that?" he said in
our interview on
Monday. "There is no assurance that those platforms
will come down."
"Maldo's position on the project hadn't been crystal
clear until this
week. While he voted against it during last summer's
budget debate,
that was a version of the project that authorized the
governor to sidestep the State Lands Commission… a version to which even the enviros who struck the
deal were opposed."
In other news, John Burton offered to referree the fight between Steve
Poizner and Meg Whitman.
"State Democratic Party Chairman John Burton released
a statement Tuesday adding a proverbial "amen" to Poizner's
claim that
former EBay chief Meg Whitman was trying to bully Poizner
out of the
governor's race.
"This extortion attempt is only the latest display
of arrogance and
lack of character on candidate Whitman’s part," Burton said. "This is
clearly someone who is used to having things her own
way and has come
to rely on her vast wealth to buy off any and all opposition.
"Whitman’s attempt to buy off her main rival ultimately shows
a
weakness in her campaign. If she’s up by 30 points, and has billions of
dollars at her disposal to outspend her chief rival,
what is she afraid
of?"
"Of course, Burton has a vested interest in watching
Poizner and
Whitman bloody themselves in a costly primary so that
the eventual
Republican nominee will emerge as damaged goods before
the general
election battle with the likely Democratic nominee,
Jerry Brown. And
that was sort of the point that Whitman adviser Mike Murphy was trying
to make when he e-mailed Poizner's pollster about the prospects of
Poizner stepping aside."
While Jackie Speier opted to run for reelection, a new private poll seems aimed at dragging Gavin Newsom into the lieutenant governor's
race.
"The poll of 600 likely Democratic voters statewide, conducted last
month by San Francisco pollster Ben Tulchin, shows Newsom clocking in with 33 percent of the vote, giving him a big lead over Los
Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, at 17 percent, and state Sen. Dean Florez of Shafter (Kern County), at 15 percent. Both Hahn and Florez are declared candidates
for the June primary"
"Pressed afterward about the lieutenant governor's
job, Newsom said
it was "not my focus" but quickly added, "I shouldn't
ever say no."
Of course not. If you say no, they stop talking about
you...
And finally, from our Big Love Files, "A Huron County judge who sent a woman to jail for
polygamy and gave
her six months to divorce one of her husbands. Lorri L. Freesland of
Kinde pleaded guilty to the charge in December.
"Authorities have said she wasn't divorced from the
man she married in 2000 in Macomb County's Clinton Township when she married her second husband Aug. 3, 2007. Her first husband moved to Alaska in 2006. Prosecutor
Timothy J. Rutkowski said that Circuit Judge M. Richard Knoblock on Monday sentenced the 43-year-old Freesland to 15
days in jail and one year of probation. He also told
her she had six
months to resolve her marital status."
We see an epic reality show in her future...
