Tag: California

Dems Building Firewall in California? Brown, Boxer Leading – U.S. House Generic Poll Gives Dems 13 Point Advantage Statewide

Jon Ponder

In the race for California governor, Democrat Jerry Brown, the state’s attorney general and former governor, has led billionaire former eBay executive Meg Whitman slightly in three out of four recent polls and the fourth was a tie. In the Senate race, Democrat Barbara Boxer has seen her lead over the Republican candidate, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, grow incrementally in three recent polls.

Results from the new Los Angeles Times/USC poll out today show that, in the race for governor, Brown is ahead by 5 points, 49 percent to 44 percent. Whitman has spent $120 million of her money on her campaign, so far, while Brown has only spent what amounts to a fraction of that.

While generic polls on House races nationwide show the parties even or Republicans a few points ahead, in California Dems lead in the generic by 13 points, with 51 percent for Democrats and 38 percent for Republicans.

The same poll found that Boxer’s lead over Fiorina appears to be expanding when compared with other recent polls. In the Times poll, Boxer is ahead by 8 points, 51 percent to 43 percent. (Boxer’s 51 percent represents the first time any of the four candidates for the two big offices has been over 50 percent in the past few weeks.)

A SurveyUSA poll [PDF] conducted on Sept. 19 for a consortium of local TV news channels statewide, including KABC in Los Angeles, found Brown with 46 percent and Whitman with 43 percent.

The same poll put Boxer at 49 percent and Fiorina at 43 percent — the same result Fiorina received in the new Times poll. (This was a reversal from the previous SurveyUSA poll, which had Fiorina in the lead 48-46.)

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CA Gov: State Agency Says Whitman Ad Claiming Brown Raised Taxes Is False – Whitman Refuses to Take Ad Down

Jon Ponder

Los Angeles Times:

A claim in a Meg Whitman television ad that state taxes went up when Democratic rival Jerry Brown was governor from 1975 to 1983 is false, according to the state Department of Finance.

“Taxes went down, by this yardstick, yes,” said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the department, who added that the figures are the result of an impartial, nonpartisan analysis of the data. “The data you have in front of you does not have an R suffix or a D suffix after them. The Department of Finance calculated these numbers in a consistent manner over Republican and Democratic administrations.”

…Brown took office in January 1975, midway through the 1974-75 fiscal year. The first budget under his command covered the 1975-76 fiscal year. The CNN report appeared to use the 1973-74 year at its baseline.

According to Department of Finance data available in 1992, total state taxes when Brown took office were $7.03 per every $100 in income. He left office in January 1983, so his last budget covered the 1982-83 fiscal year. Taxes then were $6.83 per every $100 in income.

The Whitman campaign rebuffed Brown campaign demands that they stop running the false ad. “That’s ridiculous,” said Whitman spokesman Darrel Ng.

Prop 19: Legalizing Cannabis in California Could End Mexican Drug War

Jon Ponder

ad-yes-on-prop-19From a Washington Post op-ed Hector Aguilar Camín, editor the Mexican magazine Nexos, and Jorge G. Castaneda, a former Mexican foreign minister and now a lecturer at NYU:

On Nov. 2, Californians will vote on Proposition 19, deciding whether to legalize the production, sale and consumption of marijuana. If the initiative passes, it won’t just be momentous for California; it may, at long last, offer Mexico the promise of an exit from our costly war on drugs.

The costs of that war have long since reached intolerable levels: more than 28,000 of our fellow citizens dead since late 2006; expenditures well above $10 billion; terrible damage to Mexico’s image abroad; human rights violations by government security forces; and ever more crime. In a recent poll by the Mexico City daily Reforma, 67 percent of Mexicans said these costs are unacceptable, while 59 percent said the drug cartels are winning the war…

Proposition 19 changes this calculation. For Mexico, California is almost the whole enchilada: Our overall trade with the largest state of the union is huge, an immense number of Californians are of Mexican origin, and an enormous proportion of American visitors to Mexico come from California. Passage of Prop 19 would therefore flip the terms of the debate about drug policy: If California legalizes marijuana, will it be viable for our country to continue hunting down drug lords in Tijuana? Will Wild West-style shootouts to stop Mexican cannabis from crossing the border make any sense when, just over that border, the local 7-Eleven sells pot?

Is Prop 8 Dead?

Jon Ponder

Judge Walker
Judge Walker
Yesterday, I characterized Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision to keep the ban on gay marriage in place in California for another week as “whiffing” the stay. My immediate take was that Walker had postponed giving cities across the state the green light to resume issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in order to give the gay marriage opponents time to find a way to keep the ban in place until the issue had been decided by the U.S. Supreme Court — a decision that nearly everyone agreed was at least two years off.

I was wrong.

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Judge Whiffs Ruling on Gay Marriage Stay – Will Be Lifted on Aug. 18, But That Gives Haters Time to Reinstate Stay

Jon Ponder

photo-kiprngs-roprad-paprrk

Update 3: 12:39 MSNBC is reporting that Judge Vaughn Walker has whiffed his stay. It will be lifted on Aug. 18, but that gives opponents plenty of time to find a court that will re-impose the stay. However, since the state is not opposing the judge’s ruling, there is a question about whether the private hate groups who support Prop 8 have legal standing to seek an appeal.

Update 3: 12:38 Source: Gay Marriage Ruled Legal in California.

Update 2: 12:31 Sites reporting that stay has been lifted and marriages can resume.

Update: 12:26 p.m. Twitter feeds say crowds are cheering outside the courthouse in San Francisco where the ruling will be announced.

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