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THE BEE RECOMMENDS GOVERNOR — Arnold Schwarzenegger LT. GOVERNOR — John Garamendi SECRETARY OF STATE— Bruce McPherson CONTROLLER — John Chiang TREASURER — Bill Lockyer ATTORNEY GENERAL— Chuck Poochigian INSURANCE COMMISSIONER— Steve PoiznerU.S. SENATOR — Dianne Feinstein

Republican state senator trails better-known Jerry Brown in polls. Chuck Poochigian first volunteered in a political campaign in 1977 at a rally where George Deukmejian was ramping up his bid for state attorney general -- and accusing then Gov. Jerry Brown of being soft on criminals. Nearly three decades later, it's Poochigian's turn to run for attorney general -- and accuse Brown, now Oakland mayor, of being soft on crime. [Podcast: Jim Zamora interviews AG hopeful Chuck Poochigian. ] "I guess you could say it's ironic that we're still having these discussions about Jerry Brown and crime in 2006,"...

SACRAMENTO - Experts are pointing stakeholders worried about California's governor race to differences between campaigning and elected office -- a contrast immortalized in "The Candidate," as the victor asked: "What do we do now?" If elected, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides says his California would be kinder to working families, more generous to students and more welcoming to immigrants -- all while keeping books in the black. But political analysts said in interviews that his vision is fiscally unrealistic. Whittier College political science professor Richard Harvey said Angelides "has been in and around politics long enough so that he can...

The Republican candidate for one of California's two seats in the Senate — potentially one of the most powerful legislative positions in the country — walked alone into a banquet room at the Pomona Valley Mining Co. restaurant on a recent morning and looked around. The regular meeting of the California Federation of Republican Women, Southern Division, was underway, and the candidate, Dick Mountjoy, portly beneath a shock of white hair, stood mostly unnoticed. As a woman at the head table talked of plans for an upcoming convention, Mountjoy slipped small stacks of pamphlets and bumper stickers from the pockets...

"It's possible Angelides will sour the downballot races," Republican consultant Mike Murphy, a Schwarzenegger confidante, told me recently. "That's certainly a looming possibility," respected Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, agreed. Angelides, the panicked swimmer, is starting to pull anyone near him under the water. Core Democrats will vote for Democrats for the statewide posts, but the outcomes on Nov. 7 will clearly be decided by tie-breaking, and thus influential, swing voters. Swing voters will decide whether 2006 is a replay of 1994, when Democratic candidate for governor Kathleen Brown badly lost and dragged down her party in statewide races. McClintock is...

His priorities for the next term, Schwarzenegger says, include reforming the state's dysfunctional prisons and another try at fixing California's jury-rigged redistricting system. His previous attempts to address both problems failed miserably. Paradoxically, however, he may be in a better position to address these issues — and others, such as the state's structural budget deficit — because he is a Republican. A little partisanship can be healthy in Sacramento, if it serves as a check on the excesses of the legislative or executive branch. And Schwarzenegger and the Democrats in the Legislature now better understand how they give each other...

If Democrats take over the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi will not just be the first female Speaker of the House. She will be the richest. By far. The liberal Center for Responsive Politics pegs Pelosi's net worth as being somewhere between $14,746,108 and $55,085,000. Gee, remember how libs got all over Gingrich for his $2 million book advance? Of course, no one said squat when Hillary took an $8 million book advance. Pelosi and her husband have vast real estate holdings in San Francisco, where the liberals cry all the time for affordable housing for the working class. That...

Polls Show Democrats Not Connecting With Angelides. Former Assembly speaker and San Francisco mayor Willie Brown on Friday predicted that fellow Democrat Phil Angelides will lose his campaign for governor. Brown's forecast came during a fundraising breakfast for his public policy institute, which drew many of the state's top elected officials, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. With a nod to the Republican governor, who was seated in the audience, Brown told several hundred well-connected listeners that Schwarzenegger will win his bid for a full term next month. "No matter what, I think he'll be re-elected governor," Brown said. Angelides campaign spokesman...

BERKELEY — The congressional fundraiser was at a pub in the heart of this liberal political stronghold. A local band, The Flux, entertained with a tune titled "Impeach the President." The focus of attention: two candidates vying for seats in bedrock conservative districts to the east, currently occupied by Republicans John T. Doolittle of Granite Bay and Richard W. Pombo of Tracy. Although most experts still give them a narrow edge, Doolittle, 55, seeking his ninth term, and Pombo, 45, pursuing his eighth, are in the toughest fights of their political careers going into the Nov. 7 election. Their Northern...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promoted bipartisan dealmaking Friday at a breakfast hosted by Democratic political icon Willie Brown, who then gave his Republican guest a parting gift: a declaration that Schwarzenegger will win re-election "no matter what." Democratic gubernatorial challenger Phil Angelides was noticeably absent from the Moscone Center fundraiser for Brown's nonprofit public service institute, considering the audience of several hundred was heavily Democratic. Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, landed a prime speaking spot between two of the state's most powerful Democrats, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata. Angelides trails Schwarzenegger by double-digit percentage points, according to...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger chuckled at a comment from Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez last month in Sacramento as he signed Núñez's measure to create a discount prescription drug program. SACRAMENTO – Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez is a key figure in a major gubernatorial campaign. But it might be hard to tell which one. Núñez, co-chairman of Democrat Phil Angelides' struggling campaign, has been spending far more time at public events heaping praise on Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger than with the candidate he has endorsed. In a variety of joint appearances, Núñez has lauded Schwarzenegger's “courage” and “leadership” in signing bills to...

"If I don't get it this time, I'll have to fire my pollster," McClintock said with a laugh. McClintock, 50, is not known for jollity. The stiff, bookish and somewhat iconoclastic lover of tax-policy debates is the un-Garamendi. . . . He is a darling of conservative talk radio, with his erudite railings against government spending and illegal immigration. And there is a sense that he has fashioned an image as a refreshingly unglamorous Mr. Straight Shooter, whose appeal transcends his philosophical base, intriguing independent voters who disdain everything slick and opaque in politics. "He doesn't come off as a...

LOS ANGELES - California - often regarded as the Democratic promised land, the bluest of blue states - is confounding a national trend this year as Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appears headed for re-election while several other GOP candidates are making strong runs at statewide office. As national Republicans struggle in a political climate soured by an unpopular war, high gas prices and the congressional page scandal, independent voter surveys show Schwarzenegger holding a comfortable advantage over his Democratic rival, state Treasure Phil Angelides. The race for California's lieutenant governor appears even, and GOP candidates are in competitive contests for...

The choice for attorney general is a slam dunk -- State Sen. Chuck Poochigian, R-Fresno. Throughout his years in public life, Poochigian has been a steady, thoughtful and effective lawmaker. His opponent, former Gov. Jerry Brown, who went on to become Oakland's mayor, has been a policy gadfly on more sides of more issues in more state offices than anyone in recent memory. Poochigian's credentials to be the state's "top cop" as attorney general make Brown's laughable by comparison. As a three-term legislator from Fresno who at times represented parts of Kern County, Poochigian has been a strong supporter of...

Worried Democrats said Sunday that Phil Angelides failed to achieve the breakthrough he needed in the sole gubernatorial debate and expressed fear that his campaign's trajectory threatened others on the statewide ticket. Fellow Democrat John Garamendi, in a tight race for lieutenant governor against Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock, has started to distance himself from Angelides. He said in a television interview aired Sunday that he disagreed with an Angelides plan to raise taxes on corporations and the well-to-do.[snip]On Sunday, the example cited repeatedly by Angelides' disappointed party brethren was the 1994 election, when then-Treasurer Kathleen Brown lost in a...

To hear political pundits up north tell it, attorney general candidate Jerry Brown is a changed man. Editorials and commentaries in recent months have declared ad nauseum that Brown is no longer the flaky "Governor Moonbeam" of yesteryear, but a hard-nosed, git-er-done kind of guy when it comes to crushing crime in California. Tell that to the people of Oakland, where Brown is mayor. Folks up there must be pleased as punch with their city's crime rate, which includes the murders of 118 people, in a city of only 300,000, so far this year. Intrigued by the notion of a...

Controller Candidates To Debate Live On CBS5.com * Watch LIVE At 2 p.m. (today)* (CBS 5 / The Chronicle) SAN FRANCISCO The San Francisco Chronicle Editorial board will host a 60-minute debate between state Controller candidates John Chiang (Democrat) and Tony Strickland (Republican) today at 2 p.m. at the CBS 5 studios in San Francisco. The debate will be presented via Live streaming video here on CBS5.com and is the second of several Chronicle Editorial board candidate debates that will be offered via live and tape streams here on CBS5.com.

Parrish for treasurer He promises to reduce interest payments, issue state bonds and challenge Wall Street. Two qualified men with strong Long Beach ties are running for state treasurer in the Nov. 7 election. We met with Bill Lockyer, the Democratic state attorney general, who lives in Belmont Shore, and Claude Parrish, a Republican who keeps his state Board of Equalization office on Broadway and Pine Avenue downtown. We liked both men and found ourselves wishing that term limits weren't eliminating their current jobs, which we view as appropriate to their respective skill sets. But since the position of treasurer...

Campaign funding sets new records Voters are turned off by the huge amount of spending, activists say SACRAMENTO - With a month still left before the election, this year's ballot measures have already shattered fundraising records as wealthy corporate interests dig deep to fight billions of dollars in potential new taxes. And in the governor's race Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger already enjoys a comfortable margin in public opinion polls and maintains a spending edge over state Treasurer Phil Angelides, according to new finance reports. Schwarzenegger has raised about $32 million this year, spent $31 million and had $2.4 million cash on...

Senator Tom McClintock will be visiting with Republican Volunteers THIS TUESDAY, October 10th at 4:00 PM at the Covina Victory '06 Headquarters (McClintock Bio here: http://republican.sen.ca.gov/web/mcclintock/biography.asp) This is FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Don't miss this chance to meet and spend some time with Senator Tom McClintock. Senator McClintock is the Republican candidate for Lt. Governor, the second-highest state-wide office in California. He will be discussing the state of the race, and will encourage volunteers and lead us in a POWER PHONE BANK to make sure Republicans in the 57th, 49th and 59th AD’s Get Out AND Vote, on...