Election Day, Part II
This is Election Day in California, the one that really matters. It's the day the Electoral College meets in the Assembly chambers and casts the only 55 votes for president that matter in California. All involved were doing their best to infuse the moment with a sense of importance and solemnity. The National Anthem was played outside the Capitol at 10 a.m., as electors and their guests began to check in at the Governor's Council Room to sign official documents.
At 2 p.m. they were scheduled to convene, called to order by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and to take an oath of office.
But for all the ceremony, the fact remained that they are a group of 55 dispirited Democrats. At least four years ago there was a sense of suspense, however slight. Would one or two Republican electors somewhere around the country — perhaps a Floridian uncomfortable with the state's voting processes — break ranks? (Electors are free to vote their conscience, with is why they are carefully chosen by party operatives to assure only true loyalists will cast votes.) Also lacking this time was the historic sense of futility that came with the knowledge the Electoral College would decide the election in favor of the candidate who lost the popular vote.
This time, it had the feel only of a group of Blue State electors, doing their constitutional duty and feeling blue.
Posted by Timm Herdt at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)
It's never too soon
One effect of term limits has been to make known well in advance the date of future openings in the Legislature. When a new member is elected in a safe district -- which nearly every district is -- dozens of political calendars are flipped ahead six years. It's never too early to start plannning.
With the 2004 election passed, it is no surprise, then, that the public jockeying for seats that will open in 2006 has begun.
One prize seat is the 41st Assembly District, which is not only safely Democratic but also has statewide cache because of its wealth, its celebrity constituents in Malibu and the Malibu Hills, its reputation as a center of environmental activism and the district's all-star alumni club: Tom Hayden and Sheila Kuehl.
Late last week, longtime Democratic activist Kelly Hayes-Raitt of Santa Monica formally announced her candidacy and scheduled two fund-raisers. Hayes-Raitt, a one-time environmental aide to Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy, has played a lead strategic role in campaigns to save bilingual education, to enact laws protecting homeowners whose property is contaminated by toxic molds, to phase out air-polluting diesel school buses and other notable causes. More recently she has made two trips to Iraq to advocate for Iraqi women. For those efforts, the Los Angeles County Commission on the Status of Women named her a Los Angeles County Woman of the Year for 2004. She has never before run for elective office.
Other candidates will certainly be coming forward in the weeks and months ahead. Among the leading possibilities: Calabasas City Councilman Barry Groveman, an environmental lawyer and former assistant L.A. city attorney; and former Agoura Hills City Councilwoman Louise Rishoff, who is district office director for incumbent Assemblywoman Fran Pavley. There is also the wild-card possibility of newly elected Santa Monica City Councilman Bobby Shriver, the brother of California first lady Maria Shriver and brother-in-law of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The last time the seat was open, Pavley prevailed in a remarkably fractured, five-way Democratic primary in which four candidates each received at least 15 percent of the Democratic vote. Pavley prevailed with 32.7 percent, ahead of former Los Angeles Department of Water and Power General Manager David Freeman.
Posted by Timm Herdt at 11:45 AM | Comments (2)
The day the music died
Every election cycle in California there emerges at least one person who decides, for the good of the state and to advance public policy, to spend millions of dollars. The expenditure typically accomplishes nothing, because it is an exercise not in philanthropy but in vanity. These folks spend their millions to try to get themselves elected.
Well, here's a better idea for what Al Checci, Jane Harman, Bill Simon, Steve Poizner, Darrel Issa, Steve Westly and Michael Huffington (if he has any left), might do with their money to advance public policy in California. They could underwrite a nonpartisan foundation that would publish a lively, provocative magazine on California government and the issues that confront it.
As it happens, just such a magazine has existed for the last 35 years. It's called California Journal, and on Wednesday it was placed on life-support. Its board of directors voted to suspend publication in the absence of sufficient private financing to subsidize the magazine's continued operation. About half of California Journal's annual $850,000 budget is covered by subscriptions and advertising. The rest comes from foundations and private underwriting.
Editor A.G. Block holds out hope that a funding source will be found within the next few months so that the magazine can resume publication and be rescued from its deathbed.
It seems a terrible irony at a time when the entertainment press and others are focused on Sacramento to provide gossipy coverage of the comings-and-goings of the state's celebrity governor, that a serious journalistic institution that has long provided thoughtful and substantive coverage of the Capitol would be so threatened. If the Journal folds, somehow Variety just won't fill the void.
Posted by Timm Herdt at 11:58 AM | Comments (9)
The Ventura County Star's Sacramento Bureau Chief Timm Herdt on state issues and politics from Sacramento to Ventura County. He can be contacted at 
