TOM MCCLINTOCK "EARLY" DAILY EDITION - 8/26/2003(CA GOVERNOR'S RACE)

[kellynla]

Please post local, regional, national news and views on Tom McClintock. Please, no RINO Rants, Naysayer Negativity and/or inane comments. This thread is for the conservatives who support Tom McClintock and/or those who are interested in learning more about him and his campaign.

[kellynla]

I know this is an early post for Tuesday 8/26/2003. But I am pinch hitting for Rabid Republican. And I haven't heard from him. So I am not sure whether he will be posting in the am. I hope he is okay. I will post this thread early so that you will have an early "heads up" for tomorrow. There are some media events scheduled for Tuesday.

[kellynla]

Media Events for Tuesday August 26, 2003 Radio KSFO 560 AM San Francisco
August 26, 2003 at 7:30AM
Lee Rogers and Melanie Morgan Show Internet listening available at www.ksfo560.com


National Television CNN Judy Woodruff
August 26, 2003 at 12:00PM
Live with Judy Woodruff

[A CA Guy]

Cool, this may be the day where he joins the Republican party by withdrawing and getting behind the electable candidate.
If he keeps pushing this to the end he will become the McSpoiler and will have a very limited future political career IMO.

[kellynla]

LA Times Profile: McClintock Convinced Persistence Will Pay Off
Uncompromising and outspoken, he believes his tightfisted ways will resonate with voters

By Daryl Kelley, Times Staff Writer

Tom McClintock was the bookish kid with a "Reagan for Governor" sticker on his Schwinn bicycle, the wonkish pol who eagerly joined the just-vote-no "caveman" faction of the state Assembly, the maverick state senator who never saw a new tax he could embrace.

Even within his own Republican Party, he has always been an outsider, consigned to counting his victories indirectly — as the instigator of ideas that catch on later, usually with someone else's name attached.

"By the time I got to junior high and high school, the term 'geek' certainly applied, and I'm still pretty much the same guy," said McClintock, 47. "But I do feel I've gone from being a lonely voice to one that people listen to."

Bill Simon's exit from the recall election over the weekend has given McClintock his moment. As the campaign's prominent fiscal and social conservative, he is now poised either to be a spoiler in the Oct. 7 election or, if votes on the long recall ballot are split just so, to replace Gray Davis as governor.

A new Times Poll last week found that McClintock's support has doubled since early July to 12% of likely voters, behind Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Republican movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger.

With California's budget balanced only through borrowing and its credit rating at junk bond levels, McClintock believes he is finding an audience for his conservative fiscal positions.

As governor, he says, he would bypass the deadlocked Legislature, if necessary, to balance the budget through executive order and ballot initiative. He would cap government spending, cut California's bureaucracy, contract out for state services and reduce the state's workers' compensation benefits.

Last year, as the state budget shortfall ballooned, McClintock was the only member of the Legislature to vote against salary and pension increases for state prison guards, a package that costs at least $700 million a year. Davis, who received nearly $1.5 million in his first term from the guards' union, signed the bill.

Witty if a bit stiff, McClintock took his frugal notions to voters last fall as a candidate for state controller, using a fictional Scotsman, "Cousin Angus McClintock," to vouch for his being "as tight as a bullfrog's behind, and that, me friends, is watertight."

Though outspent 5 to 1, he lost by a slim margin and pulled more votes than any other Republican on the statewide ballot, including Simon in his loss to Davis for governor.

"From day one, I've said don't count Tom McClintock out," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a USC political analyst. "He's the true conservative in this recall race. He's a true believer."

Just two weeks into the race, McClintock and Simon were both asked if they would eventually throw their support behind Schwarzenegger to give the GOP its best chance of winning the governor's office. Simon relented Saturday, but a defiant McClintock stood firm.

"Forget it; I'm in this race to stay," McClintock said. "I believe in an election process where we have the campaign first and then the voters get to decide who wins. I know that's at variance with the country-club variety of the Republican Party, but so be it."

Bebitch Jeffe thinks McClintock has the credentials to stay in the race, if not the money. And she said Simon's withdrawal will bring a windfall of free media coverage to "the anti-Arnold."

Even his underfunded campaign treasury has received some help — swelling by Friday to $312,000 in cash and what his campaign said were pledges of $800,000. Analysts say it will take $6 million to $12 million to run a competitive race. He says he can win with $4 million, and is unveiling his radio and television campaign this week.

"I'm not tilting at windmills," McClintock said in an interview. "But I have found it takes a number of years of persistence to get a new idea to fruition."

McClintock's main new idea is actually an old one: to resurrect tax-activist Paul Gann's cap on state spending, so it could only increase as fast as inflation and population growth combined. Had such a cap been in place the past five years, he contends, the state would have seen a healthy surplus rather than a $38-billion shortfall.

"This is not a revenue problem," he said. "Inflation and population grew 21% [since 1998], and revenue grew 25%. The problem is the 40% increase in spending for the same period."

McClintock knows many of his proposals are not popular. But the tart-tongued, abrasive state senator has never been a consensus builder. He has taken shots at what he sees as excessive spending by both parties for two decades.

He criticized Republican Gov. George Deukmejian regularly on a variety of issues. For a decade, he has railed against Republican Pete Wilson for imposing "the biggest tax increase in American history" when he was governor.

Some arguments between McClintock and Wilson were so strong, legislators who attended the Republican strategy sessions said they watched in awe.

"They weren't personal," McClintock said. "Those were forceful arguments against the tax increase, and events proved my arguments correct."

He so angered Wilson that the governor opposed McClintock's first bid for state controller in 1994, drying up campaign contributions, said Tony Quinn, a Republican strategist in Sacramento for three decades.

"Everything in McClintock's career has turned out to be a cul-de-sac: He drives in and there's nowhere to go," Quinn said. "He's very bright, but the number of people who do not like him is very high."

McClintock's positions on social issues are consistently conservative: He is anti-abortion and anti-gun control, although most California voters support both. Last year he opposed construction bonds for schools and affordable housing that voters favored. He also supported Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot initiative that sought to cut off free social benefits and education to illegal immigrants — a plan struck down in court but still popular with voters today.

Ventura County Supervisor Judy Mikels, who opposed McClintock in the state Senate Republican primary in 2000, said she considers McClintock a hypocrite for selling himself as frugal with taxpayers' money while collecting about $26,000 a year tax-free to cover living expenses in Sacramento during the legislative session.

McClintock's family resides in a rented house just 20 miles from the Capitol, she noted, not in his Southern California district. McClintock said the so-called per diem payments, accepted by nearly all legislators, pay for the two homes his job requires him to maintain. The second is a townhouse he owns in Thousand Oaks.

"For Tom to be so far out on balancing the budget, then accept the per diem, that's wrong," Mikels said. "And I am concerned about whether Tom can learn to be a consensus builder in order to show true leadership. He's always been 'Dr. No' up there."

But former Republican Assembly leader Scott Baugh said McClintock has been good in recent years at coming up with ideas that the GOP can rally around.

McClintock's plan to eliminate the state vehicle license fee was adopted in large part by Wilson in 1998. And two years later, McClintock's proposals on water and transportation were core to the Republicans' 2020 program for the future.

"Clearly, he did not march to the Republican Caucus drum," Baugh said. "When he disagreed, he wasn't afraid to say so publicly or privately. But he was a contributing member of our caucus."

The son a New York City ad salesman who moved to California when times got tough and a homemaker-turned-real estate agent, Thomas Miller McClintock II attended his first political event at age 4. He and his mom went to an airport rally that President Eisenhower hosted in 1960 for Vice President Richard Nixon.

"My only memory is looking through the chain-link fence and my mom shouting, 'Look at the bald man, son, look at the bald man.' "

It wasn't until his family's move to Thousand Oaks in suburban Ventura County in 1965 that McClintock started to become hooked on politics. Still a youngster, he supported Reagan for governor and Nixon for president. By age 14, he was writing letters to newspaper editors supporting the Vietnam War.

"Those were momentous times, times of upheaval," he explained. "It seemed to me in those days to be very much a question of supporting the nation."

In 1972, the 16-year-old McClintock helped form a statewide network of Republican high school students. He was elected to his party's county committee at age 19. A year later he began writing a conservative political column, which he syndicated to 10 small papers.

After receiving a political science degree from UCLA, McClintock got his start in state government as chief of staff for former state Sen. Ed Davis. (R-Chatsworth). He won a vacant Assembly seat in 1982 at age 26, lost a run for Congress in 1992 and failed in a run for controller in 1994. In the Assembly he was part of a group of lawmakers called the "cavemen" for their staunch conservative politics and their pledge to vote no on all government spending.

He returned to the Assembly in 1996 and won his state Senate seat in 2000, before losing for controller again last fall by fewer than 20,000 votes out of 6.6 million cast. All the while, he forged a reputation as an inflexible ideologue within the GOP.

"I'm a Jeffersonian Republican," he said, "which means I believe the fundamental responsibility of a government is to preserve the liberty of the people, rather than to abridge that freedom for whatever fancies the government in power develops."

McClintock favors strong budgets for public works — water, power and road projects — while hitting hardest at funding for people — state employment, education and public health care.

He acknowledges that public works are his top priority, but he says there's plenty of money to go around if it's spent properly. Forty years ago, he said, California spent one-third as much per person for government services as it does now, after adjusting for inflation. But state services have gotten worse.

That's partly because there are so many state employees — 44,000 more than in 1998 — and they are paid so much in wage and retirement benefits, he said.

If the lean and ramrod-straight McClintock is rigid in his approach to government, he said he is much the same in his private life. He describes himself as a homebody who is tight with the family dollar.

He doesn't travel much outside California and has no hobbies except reading. McClintock's tax returns, which he prepares himself, show that he and his family live on his salary, with $114,600 in adjusted gross income.

Wife Lori is an administrative assistant at the First Baptist Church of Elk Grove, which they regularly attend, and is not far from their two children's public schools.

"I spend most of my time either at the office or at home," McClintock said. "I'm boring."

But he thinks he can be effective.

He sees himself, in fact, as a modern-day Hiram Johnson, the California Republican governor who took on railroad barons and moneyed interests in 1910, then ushered in an era of progressive reforms, including the ballot initiative and the recall of elected officials.

"Hiram Johnson confronted the same problem; he was also a political maverick," McClintock said. "He realized he had to take his case directly to the people, and he did."

If state lawmakers won't curb their spending, McClintock says he'll take his case for reform directly to the people, too.

"Ultimately, the governor, whoever he is, will have to rally the people ... for the fundamental reforms needed to change our state," he said. "The Constitution gives the people the ultimate authority."


This article was posted on the Tom McClintock for Governor website. It appeared in the Los Angeles Times. I assume it is okay to post here. If note please delete. Thanks

[SunStar]

[kellynla]

Fox News: McClintock Resolved to Stay in California Race


Los Angeles — State Sen. Tom McClintock told Fox on Saturday that Bill Simon's decision to withdraw from the gubernatorial race "intensifies" his resolve to campaign to the finish.

"I'm genuinely sorry to see Bill withdraw from the race," McClintock told Fox in a phone interview. "He decision to leave the race only intensifies my resolve to stay in this race. I would not have withdrawn under any circumstances by my desire to campaign has only been intensified by this development."

McClintock, who will be a guest on Weekend Live with Tony Snow on Sunday, then took a swipe at the GOP establishment, which he implied had pressured Simon to quit.

"This race belongs to the people and it should not be left to the backrooms of country clubs across the state," McClintock told Fox. "There are some people who want to chose the winner and then have a campaign. I'm old fashioned. I believe you should have the campaign first and then chose the winner."

High-profile Republicans have been working the phones feverishly in recent days to persuade McClintock and Simon to withdraw from the race. Simon withdrew Saturday but declined to endorse any candidate.

McClintock told Fox he now sees himself as the only conservative Republican in the race and questioned Arnold Schwarzenegger's commitment to cutting taxes and state spending.

"I believe the direction California must take is to reduce taxes and the regulations that are choking our economy," McClintock said. "I'm very concerned about the advisers Arnold Schwarzenegger has surrounded himself with. They clearly hold a contrary view." McClintock said he was referring to Warren Buffett, the billionaire investment wizard and chairman of Schwarzenegger's economic recovery council, and former Gov. Pete Wilson, a Schwarzenegger campaign co-chairman.

Buffett hinted last week that California's property taxes were too low and might need to be raised, a statement the Schwarzenegger campaign quickly rebuffed. McClintock blamed Wilson for raising taxes in his first term in office to balance the state budget.

"As long as Schwarzenegger maintains the advisers he had around him now, I have no faith in his willingness not to raise taxes," McClintock told Fox.

[Howie]

Thanks for the flag and the effort you put into these posts.

[kellynla]

To read the columns, speeches and/or positons on or by Tom McClintock please go to http://www.tommcclintock.com You can also hear the radio ads and watch the television interviews. This website is updated often daily so check it out.

[kellynla]

You are quite welcome, Howie. I do what I can. Please check http://www.tommcclintock.com often during the day as it is updated often daily. And feel free to post any articles and/or media events as they develop. Let's try to keep this an informative sight free of personal attacks, slander, rants, raves, inane comments and flames! The Tokyo Rose propaganda "you can't win" died in 1945! Thanks, Kelly

[fight_truth_decay]

"The old parable of the ant who stores a surplus in the summer to endure the winter while his cousin the grasshopper first feasts then starves is as true for governments as it is for families and businesses. Frugality in good years softens the bitter choices in the lean ones." -Tom McClintock from A Tale of Two Budgets

[kellynla]

Excellent. Please post the entire article. Thanks, Kelly... I am offline for the night. NYTOL

[Blake#1]

In 1964 I was county chairman for Goldwater, presided and followed by Rafferty and Reagan and every Republican since. Mclintock is the real "thing" and will gain support as we get near the election. Sometime in late September Arnold could be pressured to withdraw if the numbers are right. If not, then Tom will withdraw. The next seven weeks will be verrrrry interesting. By the middle of September Tom must be ahead of the Democrat.

[fight_truth_decay]

From The Office of Senator Tom McClintock
http://republican.sen.ca.gov/web/mcclintock/releases.asp

[SunStar]

Cool, this may be the day where he joins the Republican party by withdrawing and getting behind the electable candidate.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's liberal social views will earn him 10-15% of Democratic votes. Therefore, we should be voting our conscience as conservatives. This recall is not like a primary election. There are 143 candidates, all who will receive votes of varying degrees. The media can't predict this race, because it is a grass-roots effort. It can be won with 35% of the vote. If all conservatives vote for Tom McClintock, he can win. Period.

So spare me the insulting posts on every McClintock thread. We're either conservatives, or we're not.

	Tom McClintock	Arnold Schwarzenegger
Energy Contracts	Will void on first day of office	???
Workers Compensation	Will cut by 2/3 on first day of office	???
Illegal Tripling of the Car Tax	Will repeal executive order on first day of office	???
Government Waste	Will cut government spending	May cut government spending
Border Security	Will act to protect border	???
2nd Amendment	Supports Gun Rights	Supports Gun Control
Prop 187 (Deny social services to illegal immigrants)	Will act to enforce 187	???
Ward Connerly's Racial Privacy Inititive (on the Recall ballot!)	For	Against
Abortion	Pro-Life	Pro-Choice
Abortion (Late Term)	Pro-Life	???
Gay [Special] Rights	Against	For
Gay Adoption	Against	For

[fight_truth_decay]

A Tale of Two Budgets

By Tom McClintock
{Appeared in the July 18, 1996 edition of the Los Angeles Times}


"[The Governor] was aided in his [budget] by the strength of California's economy, which gave him more new money to distribute than he had a year ago," reported one major newspaper. Education was a big winner, said the state Finance Director, simply reflecting "that the budget is roomier this year…and that the Governor will devote more money to education whenever he can." There were expressions of bi-partisan support, with the Senate Democratic leader calling the budget "relatively generous in terms of funding for the status quo."

Again of the state budget, a major newspaper said, "[it is] a big-spending document made possible by rising revenues from the state's recovering economy." Another crowed, "The biggest winner…was--as it should have been--education." More expressions of bi-partisan support heard. Said the Assembly Democratic leader, "When you look at this budget from the standpoint of working men and women, seniors and children, this budget does the best we can for them."

Same show. Different years. The first observations were made eight years ago when George Deukmejian unveiled his 1988 spending plan; the second were made this week, when California's 1996 state budget was adopted. We have heard this song before.

1987 and 1988 were fat years for Sacramento's budget-writers. In 1987, surging revenues--and polticians' eagerness to spend them--pushed the budget over the state's maximum spending limit for the first and only time. In 1988, state expenditures exploded 10.3 percent in a single year. A billion dollars of new funds for education produced a truce in the feud between Deukmejian and state schools superintendent Bill Honig (although test scores continued to decline).

Everyone but a few conservative malcontents were effusive in praise for their mutual munificence. Sighed one Republican assemblyman as he surrendered to temptation, "I guess we'd better spend all this new money before the big spenders get hold of it."

But in mid-1988, the economy began to turn downward, and within a year red ink was seeping onto the state's ledgers.

California's experience was typical of the states that shopped til they dropped in the 1980's. Writing for the Cato Institute in 1991, budget analyst Stephen Moore summarized the fiscal wreckage of California and other high-spending states with words which should be haunting in 1996: "With few exceptions the states with the most severe deficits today are those that saw their economies and tax revenues grow rapidly over the past decade, but allowed spending to grow even faster."

The growth of California spending, for example, had outpaced the national average by 15 percent during the 1980's. Beneath the "Iron Duke's" dour exterior, it turns out, there beat the heart of a party animal.

According to Moore's study, the frugal states that had restrained their growth in the 1980's as a whole avoided crippling tax increases and massive budget deficits when boom turned to bust. Many ran surpluses.

California, of course, was not one of them. As recession ravaged revenues could no longer maintain the bureaucracies in the style to which they had grown accustomed, lawmakers attempted to fill the widening budget gaps with unprecedented tax increases and borrowing. The record-shattering 1991 tax hike plunged the state's economy from recession to near-depression, while California's total debt skyrocketed from $18.2 billion to $28.6 billion between 1990 and 1994.

Deukmejian at least maintained a three percent reserve until the last year of his administration, without which the state's fiscal plight would have been even worse. This year's budget provides about one third of that cushion.

California's 1996 budget repeats the 1988 experience in almost every detail. State spending will leap nine percent in a single bound, and Sacramento's solons have been able to appease every bureaucrat in town. Three billion dollars more will go to California's public school system this year, although serious proposals to change performance incentives were abandoned.

The old parable of the ant who stores a surplus in the summer to endure the winter while his cousin the grasshopper first feasts then starves is as true for governments as it is for families and businesses. Frugality in good years softens the bitter choices in the lean ones.

Ironically, an administration which has grappled for six years with the harsh consequences of profligacy now sets in motion the same cycle for its successor when the economy turns downward again.

It's the same old song, a familiar California medley: "Let the Good Times Roll," followed by "The Party's Over."

[elbucko]

Thanks for the flag and the effort you put into these posts.

Me too.

[Blake#1]

Sorry about this, I meant to predict that Rush Limbaugh will be supporting McClintock in four weeks. McClintock's rise in the polls because of this support will drive the Libs crazy.

[risk]

Thanks, this table shows why I support McClintock: spending cuts, patriotic on the 2nd amendment, prop 187, workers comp reform, and unwavering support of traditional family unit.

Don't forget 35 intelligent years as a politically active and loyal Californian whose parents moved here to find their dreams of paradise and prosperity. Although I've been away and come back, my parents moved here about the same time (but had to leave for a better job in the early 1970s).

Note: I haven't had a chance to study the racial privacy initiative, but it sounds right on. I've been annoyed by racial checkboxes all my life and maybe this could make them stop.

[dk/coro]

This is a delightfully pretty layout.

The reality, however, in today's California is that a hardline conservative cannot WIN a statewide election to any significant office.

So, what to do....? Go down in flames, carrying the banner high ? And, live with Democrat policies well into the future ?

Or, do the right thing; think of the good of the Party and the State -- and, at a propitious time -- bow out and level the playing field for a candidate that, at least, has a good chance of WINNING !!

We conservatives have a penchant for shooting ourselves in the foot. Let's not repeat past mistakes. Perot comes clearly to mind. *S*

Cheers! And, win one for the Gipper.

[steve50]

Arnold Schwarzenegger's liberal social views will earn him 10-15% of Democratic votes.

Fox had a republican on tonight that claimed arnold is not drawing very many dem/Ind votes at all. Seems to think he'll remain around the 22-26% he's polled at since July.

He also refuses to participate in the debates.

Stick a fork in him, he's done