An opportunity for Independents. Certainly "Republicans" are no threat. The 'leader' of the Calif. GOP recently donated to a radical left LA mayoral candidate.
4/3/14, "California Democrats Await Fallout After 3 Are Caught Up in Scandals," NY Times, by Norimitsu Onishi
"One state senator was charged with conspiring to traffic in arms from the Philippines, and taking bribes from undercover F.B.I. agents including one who posed as a marijuana dealer. Another was accused of taking bribes from federal agents impersonating Hollywood film executives. And a third was convicted of perjury and voter fraud after lying about where he lived when he ran for office.
All
three are Democratic state senators from California, and their recent
legal problems have brought rare bad news to a party that has come to
thoroughly dominate politics in this state but now looks besieged by
high-profile corruption cases.
 |
| Calif. St. Sen. Calderon-D |
The
State Senate voted last Friday to suspend all three men, after the arms
trafficking and bribery charges against Senator Leland Yee of San
Francisco were made public. Party leaders, however, citing due process,
have refused to cast them out, even as Gov. Jerry Brown, also a
Democrat, called on the men to resign.
In one sign that the party is aware of the scandals’ potential political
fallout, Darrell Steinberg, the Senate’s president pro tem and majority
leader, canceled a planned fund-raiser scheduled for this weekend amid
concerns about the appearance of Democrats being seen playing golf with
lobbyists.
Though
there is little chance that Democrats will lose control of the
Legislature in November, the suspensions provide ammunition to
beleaguered Republicans eyeing close elections in swing districts. The
recent string of corruption cases has led Democrats to struggle with how
best to discipline the men and keep Republicans from using the scandals
to gain political traction.
“One
is an anomaly, two is a coincidence, but three?” Mr. Steinberg said,
hinting at the broader meaning of the suspensions before last Friday’s
vote.
Republicans
said the scandal could provide an opportunity for them. “When three
members from the same party suffer, it’s possible people look at things
through a different metric,” said Bob Huff, a Republican and the Senate
minority leader. “It might disenfranchise a lot of voters who feel that
we are all corrupt. But that may make a difference in a few of our tight
seats, absolutely.”
Mr. Yee was arrested last week
after becoming ensnared in a wide-ranging federal corruption
investigation that initially focused on organized crime figures in San
Francisco’s Chinatown. According to the F.B.I.’s 137-page affidavit, Mr.
Yee, desperate to retire $70,000 in campaign debt from a failed run for
mayor of San Francisco in 2011, accepted tens of thousands of dollars
in bribes from undercover agents posing as businessmen seeking to
influence marijuana legislation or buy large quantities of firearms.
After
his arrest, Mr. Yee dropped out of the race for California secretary of
state; his lawyer said that he would plead not guilty.
His troubles followed those of two Democrats from the Los Angeles area. Ron Calderon,
whose district includes parts of Los Angeles and East L.A., was
indicted in February on charges that he accepted $100,000 in bribes and
gifts in exchange for pushing legislation that would benefit various
groups. He is also accused of directing an undercover F.B.I. agent
posing as a film industry executive to donate tens of thousands of
dollars to a private organization controlled by his brother, Thomas
Calderon, a former Democratic state assemblyman. The lawmaker has
pleaded not guilty.
In January, Rod Wright
was convicted on eight felony counts of perjury and voter fraud. A Los
Angeles jury found him guilty of lying about the location of his home
when he ran for office in 2008. California law requires candidates to
live in the district they represent. He is scheduled to be sentenced in
May, but is expected to appeal.
The
Democratic-controlled Senate at first dealt leniently with Mr. Wright
and Mr. Calderon, allowing them to take paid leaves of absence from the
Legislature. Their departure cost the Democrats their two-thirds
supermajority in the chamber.
But
last Friday, two days after Mr. Yee’s arrest, the Senate voted to
suspend all three men — the first time any member has been suspended in
the chamber’s history. The suspensions bar them from engaging in
legislative affairs but allow them to receive their salaries.
Critics
described the suspensions as slaps on the wrist meant to minimize the
scandals’ political fallout and called instead for expulsion. For
Democrats looking at the forthcoming primaries and general elections,
the expulsion process would draw unnecessary attention, especially to
Mr. Calderon and Mr. Yee, who must give up their seats at the end of the
year anyway because of term limits.
“We
are expecting low voter turnout in the primaries and general elections,
which means that you have an electorate that is smaller and more tuned
in to the news and issues surfacing in state politics, and so it may end
up having an impact on races at the local level,” said Mark Baldassare,
president of the Public Policy Institute of California....
Steve
Boilard, executive director of the Center for California Studies at
California State University, Sacramento, said the scandals may
accelerate a trend in which losses for Democrats amount to gains not for
Republicans but for independents.
“I wonder if that’s the real beneficiary is of these kinds of scandals — independents,” he said." image of St. Sen. Ron Calderon, AP via NY Times
=====================
Calif. GOP no threat:
3/9/13, "California’s New GOP Chair Donates $1300 to Democratic LA Mayoral Candidate," Legal Insurrection, Leslie Eastman
"As a Democrat, I am often grateful to the support shown to me by Republican friends. However, California’s new Republican Party chairman may have taken support for a Democrat one step too far for the comfort of his party’s membership and the GOP contender in a local race.
A campaign committee controlled by the newly elected chairman of the state Republican Party donated $1,300 to Democrat Wendy Greuel’s Los Angeles mayoral bid.Brulte also insists he will “not wade into incendiary matters like immigration, climate change or same-sex marriage“. With leadership like Brulte’s, I project that there will be a dramatic change in the number of registered Republicans in the state, which now hovers around 29 percent. And it won’t be an upward trajectory.
Jim Brulte, who was elected chairman Sunday at the party convention in Sacramento, said he made the donation before he realized Kevin James was a viable Republican candidate.
“That was before I thought Kevin James had a great shot,” he said of the September donation. “At the end of the day, look at what the Democrats have done to that city. And I think Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry, who are good people, would be more of the same. Sometimes you have to find the least objectionable alternative.”
Dr. Gary Gonsalves is a physician-turned-activist in 2009 and is involved with one of the large Southern California citizen groups, Stop Taxing Us. He says Brulte’s donation is one of the many reasons Californians need to become involved outside the traditional political party structure.
I’m not sure what is more objectionable; the idea that this “leader” was unaware of good candidate, that he donated to a democrat, or that he is stuck in this idea of labelling people as viable versus non-viable candidates. If we don’t all start looking outside the box and start supporting non-traditional candidates, our republic is doomed.Tuesday’s election in Los Angeles resulted in Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel pushing ahead of six other candidates, including the Republican hopeful and entertainment lawyer Kevin James. Greuel, 51, would be the first female mayor of the city if elected; Garcetti, 42, is a fourth-generation Angeleno whose father, Gil, served as Los Angeles County district attorney from 1992 to 2000. The runoff election is in May.
No matter the final result, it’s hard to imagine anyone would be less suited to the job than current office-holder, Antonio Villaraigosa. In fact, Los Angeles Magazine (no conservative publication) has deemed the Villaraigosa a “failure”.
The subhed: “So Much Promise, So Much Disappointment.” It’s a common enough sentiment around town, even among Democrats, but a pretty startling turn given the early pro-Antonio leaning of the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Kit Rachlis. When my profile of Villaraigosa ran in December 2006, the headline read Pop Star Mayor and the editors put him on the cover. Villaraigosa was only 18 months into the job then and still seemed to be maturing into the role. Now writer-at-large Ed Leibowitz pens an open letter to Antonio that draws a line from his betrayal of his wife to the betrayal felt by voters “who believed you could love this city more than you love yourself.”To rework a quote from Nietzsche applicable to my state: Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in California, it is the rule."
==================================
California GOP $500K in debt, can't afford offices, decides Karl Rove is the answer, Calif. GOP chief 'first move' was to get Rove to speak at convention:
.
"Having sunk to its lowest depths in its 159-year history, the California Republican Party's first order of business at this weekend's convention will be to lick its wounds. The state party is still reeling from humiliating defeats in November that gave Democrats two-thirds majorities in the Assembly and state Senate.
It's $500,000 in debt and doesn't even have offices for its staff, which has dwindled to a handful of employees who work from home. The GOP's only gubernatorial prospect for 2014 is a conservative assemblyman who was once a border vigilante. And Republican voter registration in the state is at an all-time low of 29.3 percent.
Into all that gloom rides Jim Brulte, a former Republican leader in the Assembly and state Senate, as the presumptive new party chairman....
"Nothing focuses a party like a shellacking, and we got shellacked," Brulte said in an interview with this newspaper as he prepared for the weekend festivities, which begin Friday with the arrival of 1,000 GOP delegates, family and friends at the Hyatt Regency and Sacramento Convention Center....
Brulte's first move was to secure Karl Rove, the Republican uber-strategist, as the lunchtime speaker at the convention Saturday, a not-so-subtle message to conservative activists that he's seeking a pragmatic way out of the GOP's political morass.
It was controversial pick. Rove didn't endear himself to conservatives when he recently formed a new political group that he said would drum extremist candidates out of GOP primaries -- including those from the tea party -- as a way to appeal to the center.
Rove was himself at the center of GOP failures in the fall: His American Crossroads super PAC spent $300 million on mostly losing candidates.
In a nod to party activists, GOP officials hastily added conservative blogger Ben Shapiro as the convention's keynote speaker Saturday night, while moving Rove to the Saturday afternoon slot. But the strain between the activists and pragmatists remains."....
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2/20/13, "As Country Club Republicans Link Up With The Democratic Ruling Class, Millions Of Voters Are Orphaned," Angelo Codevilla, Forbes
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Comment: When Obama was re-elected, Democrats in the media thanked Storm Sandy for putting him over the top. They said nothing about the GOP being bad with Hispanics. The GOP made that up themselves before the results were even in, led by greasy Jeb Bush.
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