Posted on 06/17/2006 9:24:16 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
With all the talk about the former red state, Republican state, California, becoming a blue state -- which is not quite as true as some think -- there is someone talking about it becoming a purple state. That is California Republican Party chairman Duf Sundheim, who talked about his hopes for California during last week’s bus tour kicking off Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s re-election campaign against Democratic challenger Phil Angelides.
The Silicon Valley lawyer came on a few years ago to put a moderate face on the party, whose apparatus was traditionally viewed as right wing and increasingly out of step with a more Democratic-skewing state. Billionaire investment banker Gerald Parsky, President Bush’s man in California, and then state Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte, were part of a package deal of sophisticated overseers for the party.
Then Arnold Schwarzenegger came along. The action movie superstar and former Mr. Universe ran for governor years before his anticipated 2006, winning a landslide victory in the dramatic 2003 recall election which ended the governorship of twice-elected Democrat Gray Davis.
For more than a year, as Sundheim tells it, he was ecstatic. Schwarzenegger, who immediately became the most important Republican in California, notwithstanding his maverick views and less than fantastic relationship with President George W. Bush -- his great friend in Kennebunkport, which he once frequented, was the first President Bush, who made him chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness -- was a great success, achieving record levels of popularity.
But then things changed last year. “That was difficult,” says Sundheim of the ill-fated “Year of Reform,” in which the popular movie star governor morphed into a villain in his losing battle with iconic public employees over his special election agenda of four initiatives.
This year, things have been “better,” as he put it, but more complex for Sundheim.
Contrary to the hopes of last year’s victorious Democrats, Schwarzenegger has been in major recovery mode for months. But in recovering his political fortunees, the governor made moves that confounded and infuriated activists from the conservative base of the party. He hired a lifelong Democrat -- a former top aide to recalled Governor Gray Davis and Democratic gubernatorial challenger Phil Angelides, a lesbian married on Maui, no less -- as his chief of staff.
And while he brought on a new political team of hardball players from the Bush operation, they, too, were complicit in his move to the left as he embraced and championed the biggest public works spending program in California’s history.
Sundheim bore the brunt of the attendant rebellions. With his help, and the efficient work of Schwarzenegger’s new political team, the anti-Arnold right-wing revolt at last spring’s state Republican convention in Sundheim’s Silicon Valley home base proved to be much ado about not much.
So now, with the governor running against the Democrat most Republicans preferred as his opponent, Sundheim can dream again about the future. Well, as much as any state party chairman can dream about the future when his party’s incumbent president has the second lowest approval rating in California of any president in the history of polling.
Sundheim hopes, not for a red state future for California, for that is a pipe dream given the state’s emerging demographics, but for a purple state future, a melding of red and blue.
It seems a realistic hope, if not an entirely likely scenario, with Democrats in power proving repeatedly to overreach themselves as they did in the run-up to the recall of Gray Davis. And in Schwarzenegger, Sundheim has, as he puts it, his purple “prototype.”
But who is there on the horizon for Republicans besides the once biggest movie star on the planet? If there was ever a one-off, Arnold Schwarzenegger is it.
Indeed, the governor, who speaks often of change and crossing boundaries in politics, did little in the primary just past to promote a purple state future for his beloved “golden dream by the sea.”
Schwarzenegger, perhaps mindful of the need to avoid further alienating conservatives further, didn’t intervene in the primary to help his allies Abel Maldonado, who very narrowly lost the Republican primary for state controller, and Keith Richman, who lost the primary for state treasurer.
Why not? Sundheim won’t say.
Schwarzenegger did, however, prior to the primary, pluck two strong prospects for November from relative obscurity.
He made Bruce McPherson the incumbent secretary of state when he appointed him to replace Democrat Kevin Shelley, who was forced to resign under fire following several revelations about his mismanagement of the office. The former state senator and Santa Cruz newspaper publisher, the party’s 2002 nominee for lieutenant governor, has acquitted himself well in office and has a decent chance to beat the Democratic nominee, LA area state Senator Debra Bowen, an impressive individual in her own right.
He also made Steve Poizner a major figure in the party. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur ran a close race in an absolutely Democratic district for the state Assembly, spending $6 million from his personal fortune in the process. Schwarzenegger, and Sundheim, came to regard the brainy but rather modest Poizner as the saving grace of Schwarzenegger’s otherwise wholly unsuccessful intervention in the legislative races of 2004. So pleased with Poizner was the governor that he appointed him to the Public Utilities Commission. Notwithstanding the fact that Poizner had so many investments in telecommunications and other related high tech ventures that he could not possibly avoid running afoul of state conflict of interest regulations without divesting himself of much of his investment portfolio.
Although this fact was obvious, neither the governor’s aides nor Sundheim impressed this on Schwarzenegger, so happy was he about having found Poizner. Finally, reality dawned courtesy of Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, who informed Arnold that he couldn’t possibly confirm the otherwise well-qualified Poizner as a member of the PUC. Now Poizner is the Republican nominee for insurance commissioner against Schwarzenegger’s 2003 recall rival, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante.
After an unexpectedly topsy-turvy time Sundheim pronounces himself satisfied and hopeful about the fall election. Although most of the Republican nominees are conventional types whose prospects are uncertain at best, the party seems poised to make some more gains beyond its shutout status after the last general election four years ago.
That's all the (M)ilk have is vile attacks, they twist anything siad in reply to their remarks and then lambaste you when you show them where their arguments fall flat.
I wouldn't waste any time on them, they wouldn't admit they are ever wrong, has Castro?
All they want to do is bait folks and hope they can trip somebody up, a pretty low rent way to operate but it fits them to a T.
All they know how to do is make scurrilous insinuations and character assassination and try and use guilt by association to score points, not realizing that they have already pooched themselves early on in the thread themselves with their wild-eyed behaviour and indifference to the platform , inm fact embracing anything to win, o matter the cost socially or fiscally. That speaks volumes in itself and syas a lot about who they 'work' for..
No surprise
no matter
Talk about tin foil ...
I don't want to bait anyone. I'm perfectly content sharing my fifth columnist perceptions of your campaigns to divide the republican base.
Democrats In Conservative Clothing.
Demoralizing Imposters Creating Contempt,
Dividing Intelligent, Concerned Conservatives.
They want voters to ignore the fact that Tom McClintock,
the most respected conservative candidate in California,
supports Schwartzenegger.
Who's running a campaign?
If shafting the conservative base is good for the Republican party, your earlier comments only reinforce that impression.
Your lack of willingness to critically assess the New Majority and it's own Progressive Big Tent agenda in California speaks for itself.
Fine, support the demoncraps all you like ...
Have I ever said I support democRats?
How convenient you and others keep insinuating that little lie that if you take issue with your own party, you are working for the other. What a load of patootie.
The CA GOP will likely have to crash and burn before it can be saved, this illusion that we are winning with a moderate who has nothing but name recognition going for him as its go to guy is going to kill the party and that seems to be OK with you and your compadres.
No matter how much he spends, who he appoints, you remain committed to that path, that is troubling indeed. It may even be making the dems wonder where it will end and will they be absorbed by the BilderBORG too.
Thanks for the bumps and the illuminating earlier comments.
Deft Impostors Cultivating Communism
by shafting anyone shafting the Democrat base.
The politician who made the 'Twilight Zone' commercials had it right, but I don't share his optimism that it'll be fixed. May your chains hang lightly ...
You said it, ma'am.
Your own little agenda is clear, it's called rollover for anything with an R by his name. You actually think we have moved the state forward the last 3 years? Yeah, more debt, more spending, more more more,, and it's only June,, can't wait for your October rhetoric.
Attacking Republicans means you arer supporting dems? How so when you look mat the Gub's record,, So questioning someone who appoint gays and signs a ple of domestic partners legislation, signs off on land grabs, signs "sniper rifles" bans, brokers sweetheart alternative energy deals thru "blind trusts" , and generally flips and flops as frequently as Kerry upsets you and makes me a dem supporter.. lol.. nice try, grunt.
Oh, btw, I have said it before, it's the Gubby to lose, if you think a few folks here at FR swapping virtual spitballs will make the difference, you'd be better off spending your time working the neighborhoods, imo.
Like I said, may your chains hang lightly ...
I seee Your leash is secure... in the hands of R(inos).
Or worse. Remember, you're talking to the guy that voted for Jimmy Carter and Jerry Brown.
How typically vicious and divisive of you. Yes, I've admitted to voting for the peanut farmer and the moonbeam. I've also said these were my only two voting mistakes. I blame it on youth and naivety. Still, its refreshing when you display your true, ugly colors. Is it divide and conquer or simply divide at any cost, divide to neutralize?
I think you drew blood.
Let's talk ugly. The things you said about Republicans and conservatives come to mind:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/990133/posts?page=287#287
Protagoras : "Liberalism has a bitter taste. You seem to have grown to like the flavor."
Grunt: "Yep, I wanna win! I want the x-tremes put in their place! I want the intolerant and bigoted to know their bile and falsehood and fear and empty threats are now impotent, their day is over. Republicans will not be identified as racist, intolerant brown-shirted totalitarians. We will capture the great middle ground. The middle ground which we lost due to the x-treme's gross intolerance causing the flight! Time for them to regroup. What are you going to do?"
Truth tends to do that with the Purple Platoon.
I don't think I had my epiphany about the true nature of the ilk herd had happened yet, then, and at that point the fifth columnists had indeed fooled me into thinking they were true conservatives, albeit x-treme. You won't catch me baggin' on conservatives anymore, they've got enough problems, but my opinion of you and the ilk herd remains constant. You exist to divide.
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