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This month, former Gov. Pete Wilson sent out a letter calling on good Republicans to "unite" behind former eBay CEO Meg Whitman's bid for governor. A largely Democratic effort had been formed to raise $40 million to defeat the billionaire candidate, which Wilson argued forced Team Whitman to launch its general election campaign early. It was an arrogant move - calling the GOP primary before a single voter has cast a ballot in the June 8 election. Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner is still in the race. No wonder Poizner recently told me, "She wants to be ordained." After pouring $39...

The Republican primary is still nearly four months away, but former Gov. Pete Wilson on Thursday declared that the general election has begun and that the party needs to unite behind front-runner Meg Whitman as its candidate for governor. Wilson's e-mail to Whitman supporters was sent a day after three Democratic and pro-labor groups said they were ready to raise more than $40 million to begin targeting the former eBay chief in statewide ads. "Meg and our campaign team are beginning the general election today, and we are not wasting time,'' Wilson, Whitman's campaign chairman, wrote. To counter the Democrats'...

<p>Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger is preparing a push to deregulate the state's electricity markets -- a move embraced by business leaders and some energy analysts but criticized by many Democrats and consumer advocates as a return to the failed policies that sparked California's energy crisis.</p>

Is he a rank-and-file conservative Republican? Obviously not, but he never was, and we knew that going in. What so many fail to realize is the remarkable nature of his being elected at all. Some of us are old enough to remember a time when Republicans were competitive not only in that state’s gubernatorial races, but for the Senate seats as well. Those included the terms of Tom Kuchel, John Seymour, and Pete Wilson. But today’s Republicans seem to think of California — and her ginormous chunk of electoral weight — as nothing more than a left coast basket of...

LOL. There was another article this weekend about big donor GOP liberals worried that the party was too right wing and demanding changes in the structure etc.... This story comes around every so often, usually because someone is trying to benefit financially or politically from the effort. Sometimes both. These articles always make me laugh. Why? Because it is all fantasy. The State GOP central Committee is not controlled by conservatives and hasn't been for the over 15 years I've been an actual member. I should point out I've been a member of the Executive Committee of the CRP for...

CRAFT is a 527 committee launched by last year by Schwarzenegger donors Larry Dodge and Paul Folino, and former Gov. Pete Wilson to recruit the "next generation" of statewide Republicans candidates. It is run by former California Republican Party Chairman Duf Sundheim. Moderate GOP pundit Tony Quinn opined at the time that CRAFT's formation "...shows the money people in the party have no faith in the California Republican party. This group would not exist if not for the fact that Republicans can't win statewide elections." Judging by CRAFT's financial disclosure, I'm not sure those involved know how to run a...

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Former Gov. Pete Wilson urged his fellow Republicans on Saturday not to make light of a recall drive against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He told delegates at the California Republican Party's fall convention that they should take the threat from the state prison guards union seriously, even if it isn't likely to succeed. "I hope that I don't have to tell you what an ill-considered idea that is. We did it once; we did not do it lightly," he said, referring to the 2003 recall of former Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, an election that sent Schwarzenegger to...

"The audacity - it's a word that's somewhat in vogue now, along with 'change' and 'hope' and 'unity' - the audacity that Barack Obama is offering to us and to our children, the change that he is offering ... quite frankly, is socialism," Wilson told the breakfast crowd. Individual judgment is to be replaced with central planning. Taxes will skyrocket, and money will be taken from people who work for a living and given to people who don't. "One thing we know for certain is that Barack Obama is going to have a massive tax increase were he elected president,"...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Sen. Tom McClintock are California's best-known Republicans. McClintock is the quintessential Republican candidate for statewide office. He is a middle-aged, upper-middle-class, white, male career politician. He currently serves as state senator for the 19th District, where he hasn't lived in years, and is running for Congress in the 4th District, where he not only doesn't live, but can't even vote. McClintock is completely inflexible and incapable of compromise, and as a result, receives little to no Republican support in Sacramento. He regularly gets beaten in statewide elections, having lost races for state controller, lieutenant governor...

Not content with his legacy of seriously damaging the Republican Party in California during his term in office, former Gov. Pete Wilson has weighed in on the Sacramento-area Tom McClintock vs. Doug Ose congressional primary ... I lived in Sacramento and was deeply involved in GOP politics during the “Wilson years,” and as such think there are a couple of items Republican voters in the 4th Congressional district ought to take into account as they weigh the liberal Wilson’s endorsement of the liberal Ose. * If Pete Wilson had gotten his way, Ronald Reagan would have never been in the...

As a Regional Vice Chairman of the California Republican Party, I take seriously my commitment to stay out of contested Republican primaries for partisan office. As such, it has been difficult for me to sit on the sidelines during the epic battle in the 4th Congressional District, because that primary is really all about defining the heart and soul of the GOP. I will leave it to the Republican voters in this large Congressional District in North Eastern California to decide for themselves whether they want to elect former Congressman Doug Ose or State Senator Tom McClintock. All that said,...

Former Gov. Pete Wilson has lashed out at GOP state Sen. Tom McClintock, saying McClintock couldn't be counted on in the Legislature and should not go to Congress. Wilson, a fellow Republican, made the remarks during a campaign event for the 4th Congressional District GOP primary organized by McClintock rival Doug Ose. The two are battling to replace incumbent GOP Rep. John Doolittle, who is retiring. McClintock was in the state Assembly while Wilson was governor. Wilson said McClintock was the first to criticize but the last to help his own team. McClintock's campaign did not immediately respond to a...

SANTA MONICA – Rudy Giuliani picked up the support Thursday of former Gov. Pete Wilson, an endorsement that could be a mixed blessing for the Republican presidential front-runner because of Wilson's hardline reputation on illegal immigration. “America needs America's mayor to lead us as president,” Wilson said while endorsing the former mayor of New York. Wilson, who served terms as U.S. senator and San Diego mayor, becomes Giuliani's most recognized supporter in the nation's largest state. But the endorsement represents some tricky political calculus for Giuliani, since the immigration policies Wilson championed as governor in the 1990s are widely blamed...

This is on private property no less but even if it wasn't. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK4Tdul9EJk Also see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-UHtfJtZM8

KGO-TV, ABC7 anchor Pete Wilson died Friday night at Stanford Hospital from a massive heart attack suffered during hip replacement surgery, the station reported today on its Web site. Wilson, 62, is survived by his wife, Sandra and son Brendan. "Pete was one of the most valued and respected news professionals in the Bay Area and the country," ABC7 President and General Manager Valari Staab said in the station's account. "For more than 30 years, he was welcomed into the homes of thousands of local viewers reporting on every major news event that touched their lives. This is a deep...

No sooner had immigration reform died in the Senate than dire warnings went out from its defeated supporters: Republican opponents risk political oblivion if they alienate Latinos, the nation's fastest-growing demographic, by continuing to take a hard line on illegal immigration. As usual, the warnings included references to the immigration battle in California in 1994. In that year's general election, voters approved a ballot initiative, Proposition 187, to prohibit the expenditure of state tax money to provide services to illegal immigrants. The most high-profile supporter of Proposition 187 was Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. He had long pressed the federal government...

SAN FRANCISCANS may think of their town as a haven for tolerance, but once again, S.F. supervisors are showing the rest of America how intolerant The Special City can be. Forget a flower in your hair. If you come to San Francisco, be sure to wear a muzzle on your brain. Criticize a supervisor, and some supes will do their utmost to get you fired. Last week, KGO radio talk-show host Pete Wilson made some comments about a child born to Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who is gay, and Rebecca Goldfader, who is a lesbian. As Wilson put it, a baby...

So Bevan Dufty, who is gay and a San Francisco supervisor, is sharing a house with a woman named Rebecca Goldfader, and together they are raising a child named Sidney. For some reason, this situation enraged normally sensible radio talk show host Pete Wilson, who called it an "experiment," partly because Dufty and Goldfader are not in a romantic relationship. Here's the breaking-news non-flash: It's all an experiment. Every adventure in parenting is trial and error, generally performed by people totally unqualified for the task. I think of myself at 23, which is how old I was when my first...

Pete Wilson angered many by criticizing alternative families - Television news anchor Pete Wilson will not lose his job over comments he made during a radio broadcast criticizing nontraditional families. Kevin Keeshan, news director of ABC 7, spoke with Wilson about the controversy Wednesday and Wilson apologized for his "inappropriate comments," Keeshan said. "Beyond that, nothing is going to change. In the five years of working with Pete Wilson as a news anchor who also does a talk show, we've never experienced anything like this. It's highly unusual and highly out of character for Pete and, by his own admission,...

Eye of a storm: Even in the tolerant Bay Area, nontraditional parenting can cause a stir. KGO's Pete Wilson feels the heat after criticizing a gay-lesbian couple for having a child together. Longtime Bay Area television news anchorman Pete Wilson has found himself in the headlines this week after criticizing a San Francisco city official for joining a phenomenon flourishing in the region: the nontraditional family. Controversy over Wilson's on-air comments about Supervisor Bevan Dufty and his newborn daughter shot to the highest reaches of city government as Mayor Gavin Newsom weighed in and several members of the Board...