Free Republic

SACRAMENTO – A political newcomer seeking his first elected office faces a familiar figure admittedly nearing the end of his political career in this year's campaign for state insurance commissioner. Republican Steve Poizner and Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante are in an open race that appears to be among the closest of all the so-called down-ballot contests. For motorists, homeowners, business owners and anyone else who buys insurance, the choice may be one of the most important votes they cast on Nov. 7. The insurance commissioner has broad regulatory powers, including the authority to approve or reject the rates on...

Both men running for state controller in the November election have years of government experience -- one as an outspoken legislator and the other primarily in lower-profile roles. Republican Tony Strickland, of Moorpark, made his mark during three terms as a conservative member of the Assembly. No stranger to confrontation and controversy, he once filed a lawsuit against then-Gov. Gray Davis to get him to reveal the terms of state energy contracts. Meanwhile, Democrat John Chiang, of Torrance, has served two terms as an elected member of the state Board of Equalization. Before that, he accumulated experience in the trenches...

Click Here To Watch Debate (CBS 5 / The Chronicle) SAN FRANCISCO--The San Francisco Chronicle Editorial board hosted a 60-minute debate between attorney general candidates Jerry Brown and Chuck Poochigian on Thursday afternoon at the CBS 5 studios in San Francisco. This was the first debate between the two candidates, and is the only one currently scheduled. The debate is presented via streaming video here on CBS5.com and is the first of several Chronicle Editorial board candidate debates that will be offered via live and tape streams here on CBS5.com. Other upcoming debates will include: Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2...

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger outspent his Democratic rival, state Treasurer Phil Angelides, by more than 4-1 over the last three months, according to campaign reports filed late Thursday. But Angelides began October with a slight edge in campaign cash. Schwarzenegger, leading in the polls, spent $14.4 million in July, August and September and had $2.4 million left to begin the last five weeks of the race. Angelides, trailing by double-digit figures in two recent polls, spent $3.4 million during the same three-month period and had $2.8 million left over. He also had a slight edge in fundraising since the...

Mendacious: Given to or marked by deliberate concealment or misrepresentation of the truth. John Garamendi is running for Lt. Governor and to supplement an apparent mendaciousness, he is praying for induced selective memory loss. Some fifteen years ago, as California insurance commissioner, Garamendi seized the assets of the Executive Life Insurance Company. In doing so, he allowed a questionable junk-bond player and a French government-owned bank to realize a humongous windfall despite a bunch of annuities and policyholders getting the short (and dirty) end of the stick. It is beyond troubling that the man who is ‘supposed’ to be the...

Thomasson: “There is now no difference in California law between marriage rights for a husband and wife and marriage rights for homosexuals.” Sept. 30 -- Campaign for Children and Families, a California-based pro-family organization defending marriage, children, and family values, is appalled that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill putting the last nail in the coffin for marriage between a man and a woman in California. On Sept. 30, the last day to sign or veto bills on his desk, Gov. Schwarzenegger signed SB 1827 by lesbian state Senator Carole Migden, a San Francisco Democrat. SB 1827 requires the...

Both major-party candidates vying to be California's next lieutenant governor are longtime officeholders who aspire to be governor, but that's about all the common ground they share. State Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi is a liberal Democrat and former Clinton administration official and state Senate Majority Leader from Walnut Grove who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1982 and 1994 and briefly entered 2003's gubernatorial recall election race. He says his top priorities are improving the state's education system to produce a more skilled work force, protecting the environment and ensuring every Californian has access to affordable health care. State Sen. Tom...

A $37-billion package of proposed public works bonds that has strong bipartisan support in Sacramento is in some peril among voters, along with ballot measures dealing with alternative energy and a cigarette tax, according to a new Los Angeles Times poll. The vast majority of likely voters knew too little about the infrastructure bonds — backed by both Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislators — to express an opinion. After poll respondents were read a ballot summary of each measure, none of the items generated much enthusiasm. Only two eked out a bare majority: those on housing and disaster...

The next state insurance commissioner will be facing industry pressure to back away from some controversial regulations, including new rules that require insurers to base automobile rates primarily on driving records instead of zip codes.Consumer advocates support the new regulations. And both groups are closely watching the contest between Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a veteran Democratic politician who says the job of insurance commissioner may be his last elective office, and Silicon Valley businessman Steve Poizner, a wealthy Republican who is hoping to make it his first.Both candidates promise to uphold the regulations, although insurers contend they are costly and...

SAN DIEGO - Californians electing a new controller in November will choose between an unknown technocrat and an ambitious political insider to be responsible for monitoring the state's finances. Democrat John Chiang, who is hoping to succeed failed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Steve Westly as controller, is a tax lawyer campaigning to be ''hired'' as the state's chief financial officer. By contrast, Tony Strickland, a Republican former state assemblyman with close ties to conservative hero Tom McClintock -- a candidate for lieutenant governor -- is running as a fiscal watchdog committed to rooting out wasteful government spending. ''Basically, Chiang sees this...

Up and down the November ballot, Californians face choices about vast sums of money: how much to spend, how much to borrow, how much to generate by raising taxes. Together, the proposals would open a $46-billion gusher of spending on highways, schools, levees, hospitals, housing, parkland and more. They would add $84 billion in debt and interest to state budgets over the next 30 years. Taxes, mainly on oil and tobacco, would rise by more than $3 billion a year. The torrent of money on the ballot gives voters a chance to set California's fiscal course for decades: They could...

Voters may best remember state Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, from the surreal 2003 recall election in which voters removed former Gov. Gray Davis and replaced him with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. McClintock, who many wags viewed as the most qualified candidate, came in a respectable third place behind Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and well ahead, we might add, of the likes of former child star Gary Coleman and porn king Larry Flynt. But instead of engendering bitterness, or disappearing from the radar (but not the payroll) like Bustamante, McClintock went to work with Schwarzenegger on scrapping the car tax. McClintock,...

The state Republican Party has launched a television ad attacking state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi for mishandling the collapse of the Executive Life Insurance Co. The ad targeting Garamendi, a Democrat running against Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, for lieutenant governor, began running Aug. 28 in the Sacramento and Los Angeles media markets. (snip) ANALYSIS: The GOP advertisement attempts to weaken Garamendi, a former gubernatorial candidate and statewide officeholder, by exploiting what is perhaps his greatest political vulnerability. Garamendi has long been dogged by criticism for allegedly mishandling the collapse of the Executive Life Insurance Co. In 1991,...

Like a lot of voters, 50-year-old Lee Steele of Mountain View is increasingly concerned about the bite health care premiums take out of his paycheck. But he was especially concerned to learn Tuesday that both of the major party candidates for California governor don't support a bill pending in the Legislature that would create a state-run universal health care system. The bill, authored by state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, would replace -- if fully implemented -- private health care plans with a statewide program that would cover all Californians. It would establish a commission that would develop a plan...

SACRAMENTO — It's been a decade since legendary Hollywood fixer Sidney Korshak was buried following a half-century of rubbing elbows with mobsters, movie executives and politicians. Now tales of the late lawyer's colorful career — relegated to newspaper archives and dusty FBI documents — could reemerge as political fodder in the contest for California attorney general. A book scheduled for release next week revives decades-old allegations... Brown's opponent in the attorney general's race, Republican state Sen. Chuck Poochigian of Fresno, intends to shine a spotlight on the book, "Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power...

For all their differences, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Democratic challenger, Treasurer Phil Angelides, have at least one thing in common. Each man continues to struggle with his positioning in the political marketplace. Schwarzenegger has famously shifted left since his disastrous “Year of Reform” special election debacle last year. Is the super-rich former action superstar back where he was when he entered politics, prior to embarking on a foolhardy path in 2005? Or is he, as many Democrats and a few Republicans argue, simply being an opportunist who will say or do anything to regain his popularity? Angelides, a rich...

Those who believe in nothing will fall for anything, as the old saying goes. So it's only fitting that a Republican Party that has ceased to believe in anything has fallen for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Maybe in the early days of his administration, and through the defeat of his reform agenda last November, it was defensible to support him. But no more. Yet many Republican leaders at the state GOP convention in Century City were still atwitter over the Terminator's tired clichés and faux tough talk. --snip At Century City, Schwarzenegger blasted the Democrats: "Our friends in the other campaign...

The San Francisco Chronicle Blog "broke" the story and now the Associate Press is now running with it: Mel Gibson wrote a fundraising letter for Tom McClintock. Gasp! And McClintock stopped using it earlier this year. Uh, gasp? No gasp? Nothing? Meaningless? Well, if Gibson writing a fundraising letter for McClintock carries any weight of significance, then surely it is significant to point out that John Garamendi, McClintock's opponent in the race for Lt. Governor, benefited from a fundraising letter written by Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary fame. Yarrow, you may or (probably) may not recall, was convicted...

California has two once and future candidates for governor running for lieutenant governor this year. One of them backed, until recently, by the now radioactive Mel Gibson. The other nearly backed, but for a shortsighted advisor, back in the 1980s by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Republican Tom McClintock ran for governor in the 2003 recall. Democrat John Garamendi ran for governor in 1982 and 1994, finishing second in the Democratic primary both times, and pulled out of the 1986 race. He even thought about running in the 2003 recall. Though he did not gain the notoriety he would have in that race,...

Californians deserve a spirited campaign not just for the governorship, but for the other six "down ballot" partisan statewide offices. But as the most recent poll numbers indicate, the races have a notable leftward tilt, and Republican candidates for the offices other than governor are in danger of being swept at the ballot box in November. This could be the continuation of a trend. In 2002, no Republican won a statewide race. In 1998, two Republicans won. Then, in 2003, the recall election brought Republican Gov. Schwarzenegger to power; he later appointed a Republican secretary of state after the incumbent...