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Tracy Republican Richard Pombo said today he will seek the congressional seat of George Radanovich, who announced last week that he would not seek re-election. Pombo said he will make an official announcement Tuesday afternoon on KMJ radio in Fresno. The decision by Pombo is a potential game-changer, political analysts said. State Sen. Jeff Denham of Atwater and former Fresno Mayor Jim Patterson already have announced their intentions to replace Radanovich, but Pombo has Washington experience and the backing of some influential San Joaquin Valley agricultural interests. Pombo served seven terms in the 11th Congressional District before being ousted in...

WASHINGTON — Local congressman Jerry McNerney, a freshman Democrat, has emerged as one of the Republicans’ top targets in Congress this year, making the race in his district that rarity in California politics — a national battleground contest and a true toss-up. In 2006, McNerney pulled off one of the big upsets of the year when he knocked out Republican Richard Pombo, a committee chairman who earned the ire of environmental groups. Now efforts by the GOP to retake the district, which stretches from Stockton through Alameda County to Morgan Hill, ensures an expensive campaign and one of the state’s...

Registration tilts the GOP's way. A California secretary of state's report from December shows the 11th District is 42.1 percent registered Republicans and 37.5 percent registered Democrats. Carl Fogliani, a political consultant based in the district who worked with Pombo two years ago, said Republicans have every reason to think they'll take back the seat this year. Party registration and Andal's strong name recognition without the baggage Pombo had are two reasons, he said. And there are others. "You have a Congress with lower approval ratings than President Bush, which is what Democrats are always talking about," said Fogliani, who...

WASHINGTON -- If you want to know what Rep. Jerry McNerney has been up to since he won national recognition in November as the Democratic dragon-slayer who knocked controversial House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo out of office, just look at his campaign fundraising reports. McNerney is working around the clock to keep his job. When the House is in session, fellow Democrats are giving him lots of help adding small victories to his growing pile of legislative accomplishments. When he's in his district, which is just about every weekend -- he spent one weekend on a congressional tour of...

So far, two Republicans have emerged as likely challengers: Dean Andal, a former state assemblyman, and Guy Houston, a current assemblyman. Andal served in the legislature in the early 1990s and gained a reputation as a hardline conservative. Wysocki, who is working with Andal, called him "one of the most conservative members who ever served in the state legislature." He is expected to announce his campaign kickoff May 1. With Pombo's loss, Houston is the only elected Republican left in the Bay Area. He has a reputation as a pragmatic conservative. He is term-limited for 2008, and his local state...

Rep. Jerry McNerney, the first-term Democratic congressman from Pleasanton who unseated seven-term lawmaker Richard Pombo in November, is a marked man -- targeted by his own party and the Republicans with the next election almost two years away. McNerney, a wind energy expert by training and a newly elected official by will and circumstance, is a prime beneficiary of what could be called the Democratic Party's Freshman Protection Act. Party leaders have given him prime committee assignments, coveted floor time during legislative debates on ethics and renewable energy in the opening weeks of the 110th Congress, and plenty of strategic...

Pombo: Noon It's bedlam at the Tracy soccer field where Pombo stops to watch Rená, his 13-year-old daughter. Nine games are under way simultaneously on a massive expanse of grass that Pombo helped, as a Tracy councilman, convert from a flood basin into fields. Annette Pombo, his wife, is team mom and missing the game is not an option no matter how close the election. And except for two journalists and an aide looking on, the campaign fades into the background for the next hour. Between plays, Pombo, like any parent, loves to talk about his children. Rená, pronounced Renee,...

7-term GOP congressman seething over tactics of foes - Washington -- This is not what Rep. Richard Pombo expected to be doing in the weeks after the election. He's packing up his congressional office. His wife, Annette, is moving personal items from their townhouse on Capitol Hill. He's preparing to hand his gavel as chairman of the House Resources Committee to a Democrat. His staff will soon turn over files to the man who stunned the political world by beating him, wind engineer and political neophyte Jerry McNerney. The seven-term Republican lawmaker is already thinking about other things, like attending...

Annette Pombo wants her husband home. Because of last week's election, that's right where he's going. "She's got a list, a long list, of stuff that needs to be done," Richard Pombo said with a laugh Wednesday afternoon. For the next six weeks or so, Pombo still will be formally known as Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy. As he has for the past 14 years, he will remain the congressman for a district that now includes parts of San Joaquin County. He'll continue as chairman of the House Resources Committee, responsible for public lands bills that retain a sliver of a...

Around midnight, Jerry McNerney was talking to supporters when a campaign staffer thrust a cell phone in his hand and hustled him out the back door. The crowd at his election-night party started to buzz: was Richard Pombo calling to concede their hard-fought race for California's 11th congressional district? No such luck. It was only Bill Clinton on the phone. "He came out for me," McNerney said, standing alone on a clear night as TV news vans hummed in the lot behind him. "He liked that I offered an alternative view on energy." That might be an understatement. Fourteen years...

LOS ANGELES - GOP Rep. Richard Pombo, the powerful chairman of the House Resources Committee, plunged to stunning defeat at the hands of an almost unknown Democrat, Jerry McNerney, as Democrats wrested control of the House from the GOP. GOP Rep. John Doolittle beat down a strong challenge from Democrat Charlie Brown in Tuesday's midterm election, surviving a boisterous campaign that focused on the incumbent's ties to a congressional corruption investigation. San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi was in line to be the first female House speaker ever as Democrats captured more than two dozen GOP-controlled seats around the country. McNerney,...

This just in: Actor and stem cell research activist Michael J. Fox has endorsed Democratic nominee Jerry McNerney of Pleasanton for congressional District 11. McNerney is in a tight race with GOP incumbent Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy. Fox has been actively campaigning this year with the Democratic Party for embryonic stem cell research. Pombo, along with many conservative Republicans and President George W. Bush, oppose the practice because it involves the destruction of human embryos. Here's the text of the Democrat's press release: MICHAEL J FOX ENDORSES JERRY MCNERNEY FOR CONGRESS Cites Support for Stem Cell Research Today Michael J....

Republican Rep. Richard Pombo, who has faced of wave of attack ads from national conservation groups, is an "enthusiastic steward" of the environment and a friend of wildlife, first lady Laura Bush told GOP supporters Friday. The first lady defended the environmental record of the seven-term congressman, seeking to give him a boost in his unexpectedly tight re-election campaign. Environmental groups have spent heavily to defeat Pombo, angered by what they say are anti-environmental policies he has championed as chairman of the House Resources Committee. Appearing with Pombo at a campaign rally, Bush told supporters that the congressman has led...

The first independent poll in Congressional District 11 shows incumbent Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, and Democratic challenger Jerry McNerney locked in a statistical dead heat. In another sign of the tight campaign, the Cook Political Report, which tracks congressional races, has upgraded its ranking of the race to a tossup. "This doesn't mean that we're saying McNerney is going to win," said analyst Amy Walter at the Cook Report. "But it's close enough that we can no longer give Pombo the benefit of the doubt." The Cook decision was unrelated to the poll because "it was an automated poll," Cook...

The GOP has launched a rescue mission in the final weeks of the campaign to save two powerful northern California Republican congressmen hurt by deep discontent over the Iraq war and corruption in Washington. President Bush attended fundraisers for both Rep. Richard Pombo and Rep. John Doolittle, and first lady Laura Bush plans to campaign for them later this week. The GOP's House campaign committee recently pumped in more than $1 million to help Pombo on next Tuesday's ballot. But the non-partisan Cook Political Report this week shifted the Pombo race from ``leans Republican'' to a tossup, and a poll...

First Lady Laura Bush will visit Northern California later this week to campaign for two GOP incumbents in hot re-election races, John Doolittle and Richard Pombo. Her trip comes on the heels of a fundraising swing President Bush made for the two candidates at the beginning of October. The first lady will appear at a get-out-the-vote rally for Doolittle on Thursday evening in Rocklin. She'll do a rally for Pombo in Pleasanton Friday morning.

STOCKTON-Richard Pombo, clad in a beige polo shirt and jeans, is leaning back in a folding chair, his trademark ostrich-skin boots under a table. He's bantering with a reporter and an aide, and appears at peace. But he really isn't. Pombo, a seven-term Republican congressman, is in the tightest race he has seen in more than a decade to hold on to his once-safe seat -- and he knows it. Despite the comments of his Democratic opponent, Jerry McNerney, and the accumulated evidence of national voter surveys, Pombo thinks his troubles have nothing to do with Iraq, ethics or the...

Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, has demanded a Sacramento area cable company pull a campaign ad placed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The television spot said Pombo voted to hike his congressional salary eight times while voting against a $1,500 bonus for troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. "The ad is entirely false," wrote Pombo campaign consultant Wayne Johnson in a letter to Comcast, which broadcasts in the San Joaquin County portion of District 11. "The advertisement contains patently false and deliberately deceptive information that is little more than a smear and should not be allowed to air." The Democratic...

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has entered the contentious race between Democratic nominee Jerry McNerney and GOP Rep. Richard Pombo, signalling that the party's internal polling may be favorable for the challenger. An ad funded by the committee starts running today in the Sacramento TV market, according to spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield. The cost won't be known until the committee posts its expenses on the Federal Election Commission website, per 24-hour reporting rules. Click here to view the ad. The spot accuses Pombo of voting to raise his own salary eight times -- worth $31,000 -- but voted in 2003 against...

by Mark Finkelstein October 19, 2006 Shades of Jimmy Carter! The NY Times editorializes this morning against the proposal by California congressman Richard Pombo to lower the federal royalty on oil-bearing shale, condemning it as "an extraordinary giveaway of federal revenue . . . and a huge incentive to wreak environmental damage." The Times apparently can't stand the thought of oil companies making a profit, even if in return we can significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil. As the paper acknowledges, "the estimate of the petroleum locked up in these deposits is enormous: perhaps 800 billion barrels of recoverable...