Historically, the California Republican Assembly has opposed pre-primary endorsements by the Republican Party. This opposition doesn't change because our friends may be endorsed. Ron Nehring, the current Vice-Chairman of the State GOP has put forth a proposal that would retain the Schwarzenegger endorsement for Governor coupled with an endorsement of Tom McClintock for Lieutenant Governor.

I need to point out that while Mr. Nehring was chairing the County Chairman's Association while they endorsed Schwarzenegger over McClintock, the CRA PAC I headed raised and spent several hundred thousands of dollars supporting McClintock in the recall. So obviously we are pro-McClintock.

The reason CRA members like McClintock is he is principled. CRA will stand on principle on this pre-primary endorsement issue as well.

Mr. Nehring travels the state telling volunteers that the party has a responsibility to register voters, walk precincts etc...

Now it looks like the party will start choosing the nominee.

In 1998, the State Party made a pre-primary endorsement of Dan Lungren for Governor.
Please email me if that looked like a good thing in hindsight.

Recently, the State Party did the same thing for Arnold only to have him reward the loyalty by appointing partisan Democrat Susan Kennedy as Chief of Staff, have some in his administration talk of a tax increases, big bonds, raising the minimum wage etc...

Pete Wilson, Deukmejian, Reagan never needed pre-primary endorsements. George Bush went through the primaries to secure his re-election.

It is a sign of weakness to need the State GOP blessing to run in a Republican Primary.

McClintock doesn't need this endorsement to win. That is the sign of a strong candidate.

I know Nehring and others are trying to appease conservative activists angry over the Governors disloyal actions. However, we have to look at the practical effects of the pre-primary endorsement Pandora's box Nehring is opening.

Why not let the 800 Republicans gathered endorse McPherson any of the other down tickets races? Who decides at what level this should stop?

How do we know any of them will not have a primary opponent? The close of filing is after the state convention.

Why does the party keep the ban on endorsing in legislative races? Instead of picking and choosing where and when to endorse, let's admit that the party should endorse and do it in all these races.

Memo to Conservatives: Don't believe that the party is only doing party building. Now is the time to run for your local central committee or be the nominee for Assembly or State Senate or Congress.

If the Party wants to pick the candidate, then we need to do the picking.

Conan the Appeaser California's political establishment has domesticated Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Last week Washington buzzed about a Newsweek cover story depicting President Bush trapped inside a bubble. The article describes how the president's "defensive edge, a don't-tread-on-me prickliness," inhibits his advisers from making sure he gets all the facts. Mr. Bush heatedly disputed the analogy, but aides privately admit to me there is some validity to it (think Katrina).
Some 2,400 miles away in Sacramento, Calif., the Republican Assembly caucus had much the same concern on Tuesday, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger visited them for an hour-long gripe session about his sudden selection of Democrat Susan Kennedy to be his new chief of staff. Ms. Kennedy was deputy chief of staff to Gray Davis, the Democratic governor who got the boot in the 2003 recall election that catapulted Mr. Schwarzenegger into power. A former executive director of the California Democratic Party, Ms. Kennedy was the day-to-day point man for Mr. Davis as his office mishandled energy shortages and papered over budgetary black holes. "She was more powerful than her title, the person everyone went to," says Bill Leonard, a member of the State Board of Equalization who served as a GOP assemblyman at the time.

Her appointment by Mr. Schwarzenegger stunned California political observers, even though they expected some kind of course correction after voters rejected the governor's reform agenda in last month's special election. Ken Grubbs, a former editor of the Sacramento Union, says the Kennedy appointment "symbolically voids the recall itself." Even moderate Republicans are outraged. "This appointment does more to alienate the governor's solid base of Republican support than anything I could have imagined in my worst nightmare," says Mark Johnson, a co-founder of the New Majority, a moderate GOP group that contributed millions of dollars to the governor's reform initiatives this year.

Public statements after the meeting between the governor and GOP legislators and a similar one held two days later with the executive board of the California Republican Party were upbeat. Mr. Schwarzenegger left the party meeting claiming Republicans were "one big family." He said he told the GOP leaders: "Don't judge me by who I hire, but judge me by my actions." GOP chairman Duf Sundheim went so far as to claim that "we support his decision" to hire Ms. Kennedy, a conclusion that others who were present openly dispute.

The earlier powwow with the GOP legislators also left unresolved issues. Before the governor arrived, Schwarzenegger aides Richard Costigan and Rob Stutzman briefed legislators, warning them that attacks on Ms. Kennedy would only cause their boss to "dig in his heels." They were advised not to bring up Mr. Davis's 2001 Oracle scandal, in which the computer firm won a $95 million no-bid state contract that bought more software licenses than the state has employees. Every civil servant involved opposed it, but Ms. Kennedy signed off on it. Five days after the contract was signed, a Davis technology adviser accepted a $25,000 campaign check from Oracle in a Sacramento bar. He and two other Davis aides were forced to resign.

Thus when Mr. Schwarzenegger arrived to talk with GOP legislators, the discussion was understandably constrained. After someone brought up Ms. Kennedy, the governor shocked and offended his audience by telling the legislators that "The reason you don't like her is that she's a lesbian, and lives openly with another woman." He explained that he had hired Ms. Kennedy to "make the trains run on time" in his office and that she could devote "24 hours a day" to the job because she didn't have kids. Assemblyman Mike Villines of Fresno then asked if the governor really meant to imply he couldn't hire someone with a family for the top job in his office. The governor then backed down slightly.

"The meeting was incomplete," says Assemblyman Ray Haynes, one of the few legislators to comment publicly on it. "Everybody pulled back because nobody knew how Arnold would react to bad news." In other words, the governor came to the meeting in his own self-contained bubble, which remained intact when he left. Mr. Schwarzenegger's office did not return phone calls about the meeting.

Lawrence Leamer, the author of "Fantastic!," a new sympathetic biography of Mr. Schwarzenegger, says he sees evidence his subject's boundless optimism may finally be failing him. "He despises bearers of bad news and views them as wallowing in negative energy," Mr. Leamer says. "He told me, 'I need always positive reinforcement and then face reality.' " But what worked in bodybuilding and Hollywood may not always transfer over to the political arena. Mr. Leamer calls the governor's reaction to the GOP legislators "frightening" because it may show he is no longer learning from people. "Modern politicians aren't troglodytes; they've worked with gays," Mr. Leamer told me. "To imply they were homophobes misreads them and may mean he isn't facing reality."

The governor may also not be acknowledging how much his administration is already listing to the left. Only a handful of GOP legislators are prepared to back a mammoth $25 billion infrastructure bond he is negotiating with Democrats to put on the June ballot. Alan Bersin, his new education secretary, says the administration is prepared to consider tax increases to address education problems. "We have not heard anything like this from the administration before," Rick Pratt of the California School Boards Association told the Los Angeles Times. The governor's once-vaunted "performance review" of state agencies seems to have become an orphan.

The governor is also making it difficult for Republicans to combat national and state charges of corruption and ethical laxity. One GOP state senator recalls that even former Democratic state Senate president John Burton once told him that "the problem with the Gray Davis administration was that it represented corruption with a small 'c' and incompetence with a big 'I.' " Mr. Burton told me he doesn't remember making such a comment and added that he believes the Davis administration's main problem was "that it lost contact with its base on issues," a mistake many Republicans now fear Mr. Schwarzenegger is now making with his own core supporters.

Indeed, supporters of Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minutemen border-patrol group who won 25% of the vote running as an independent in a special U.S. House election in Orange County this month, tell me he is close to deciding to run against Mr. Schwarzenegger on a "close the border" platform. Were Mr. Gilchrist to get 5% of the vote as a third-party candidate, he could swing the election to the Democratic nominee.

"Republican activists are confused by Arnold appointing the enforcer of Gray Davis's deals with campaign contributors just days after [ex-Rep.] Duke Cunningham [of San Diego] pleads guilty to massive bribery," one top GOP party official told me. "He has basically blurred one of the main reasons people threw Gray Davis out of office." Indeed, at a ceremony this month unveiling the official portrait of Gov. Davis in the state capitol, former Davis chief of staff Lynn Schenk triumphantly noted that the Republican governor had recently appointed two top Davis aides to key posts in his office. "I'm sure all of you are as pleased as I am that the Davis administration will continue on here with my former deputy chiefs of staff, Susan Kennedy and Daniel Zingale," she told a nervously laughing audience. "But I thought it was going to be in the Davis administration!"

Some Sacramento observers even worry that the Oracle scandal could return to bite the Schwarzenegger administration. Ms. Kennedy told me that the Oracle matter was merely a misunderstanding that only occupied eight minutes of her time. But Dean Florez, the Democratic legislator who chaired the committee that investigated the scandal, told me in 2002 that the probe had been shut down on orders from Democratic leaders just as it was probing Ms. Kennedy and other top Davis aides. Agents from the state Department of Justice were taken off the Oracle case and reassigned even though they were following many promising leads. One investigator told me that several people in Mr. Davis's office were "either lying about their role in the scandal or were beyond incompetent."

One Republican with detailed knowledge of the Florez probe worries that Mr. Schwarzenegger "failed to exercise due diligence" in hiring Ms. Kennedy. "She is very unpopular with many Democrats for taking a job with a top Republican," he said. "If she is too loyal to his agenda or makes an embarrassing stumble, don't be surprised if Democrats unearth stories about Oracle, Gray Davis and her role in other issues to tarnish the governor's sterling record on corruption." He noted that one of Ms. Kennedy's closest friends is superlobbyist Darius Anderson, who was a close ally of former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and supermarket tycoon Ron Burkle, both of whom have rich reputations as wheeler-dealers in California politics.

Two years ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger stood before 10,000 supporters outside the state capitol in Sacramento, waved a broom and told the cheering crowd, "We're going to clean house!" With his latest moves it appears he's more interested in negotiating an extension of the lease.
Mr. Schwarzenegger insists that he hasn't changed his philosophical direction and that he remains in firm control of his office's day-to-day operations. But his opponents are already seeking to undermine that claim. Mr. Burton, the former Democratic state Senate leader, told me that "Arnold is now having trouble because he no longer has me to hold his hand." Democratic state Senator Carole Migden told the San Francisco Examiner that she envisions her friend Ms. Kennedy as a kind of dual governor: "Arnold can now go out and campaign and Susan will stay at the Statehouse and get things done."

The soap opera that the Schwarzenegger administration has become promises to take even more complicated plot turns now. "He can recover, but his desire to be a transformative governor is in jeopardy," says Mr. Leamer, his biographer. "Right now he looks as if he'll be another in a long line of California governors who didn't really tackle the state's problems straight on." Indeed, California is continuing to slide. This month, Clark Foam, the Orange County firm that supplies most of the world's surfboards, suddenly closed its doors. Surfer magazine reports the closure has created a crisis for surfing enthusiasts. It said that founder Grubby Clark had "repeatedly complained" about "the deteriorating business climate in California" and harassment by state environmental officials.

The domestication of Arnold Schwarzenegger by the Sacramento status quo in two short years couldn't have come at a worse time for the state and its long-term future.

Retired State Senator Dick Mountjoy is thinking of running for the United States Senate.

Dick Mountjoy is a retired State Senator that represented the Eastern San Gabriel Valley during his career in the legislature. Before that he was a councilman in Monrovia.

In 1994 he was re-elected to the State Assembly and elected to the State Senate in special election at the same time. That was the year the Republicans won 41 seats in the Assembly. He couldn’t resign without giving the Democrats the edge. After the Horcher betrayal, Willie Brown threw him out of the Assembly and into the Senate.

In 1998 he ran statewide for Lt. Governor losing the GOP primary. After he was term-limited out of the State Senate, he headed the California Republican Assembly preceding yours truly.

It’s obvious there is no interest in many Republicans in taking on Dianne Feinstein. A Mountjoy candidacy would allow him to travel the state working with Republican grassroots organizations. Something he likes and does well.

His campaign would focus on illegal immigration—He wrote Prop. 187. This would help keep Republicans on board in light of the Gilchrest for Governor rumors.

And let’s be honest. Could he do worse than Bill Jones?

The following was written by Assemblyman Ray Haynes

If you assume, as I do, that the purpose of the political process is to persuade people to entrust you with power, the solution to the losses the Governor faced in November is simple. It is also hard work. And it is the solution the Governor seems to be avoiding.

If I have any complaint with many of my Republican colleagues, it would be that they think they can outsmart, outwit, or outmaneuver the Democrats. They believe that if they can find just the right issue, or just the right tactic, they can slick their way into a majority in the legislature. They are wrong.

The press, the Governor, the pollsters, and many others are right when they say that a majority of Californians do not agree with the Republican agenda of smaller government, less taxes, more freedom, stronger families, and stronger communities. The liberals in this state start with that advantage in any election. Today, more people agree with them than agree with most of the Republican officeholders in this state.

However, it is a big mistake to then capitulate to that fact. The great thing about good ideas is that, while people may be misled for a while, they are not misled forever. They will follow those with good ideas when they are persuaded that those ideas are good for them personally and for society in general.

Polls represent facts. We may not like the facts, but they are important for assessing a successful political strategy. If the sole purpose of politics is to obtain power, then polls will drive policy. But, as Gray Davis discovered, people are fickle. If they think all a politician wants is power, they will deprive him of that power as quickly as they entrusted him or her with it.

That is why it is important to develop a cohesive political philosophy. There really are only two cohesive political philosophies available to anyone running for office. One is the collectivist theory (upon which socialism, fascism, and communism is based) and the other is the individualist theory (of freedom, free enterprise, and representative republics like ours). Each has a set of principles that cannot be violated, and there is no middle ground between the two. There is no “moderate” socialism, and no “moderate” freedom. A ruler either embraces one or the other as his or her guiding philosophy.

Then that ruler seeks to set about to convince people that his or her guiding philosophy is what is best for each citizen and for society in general.

I happen to believe that the individualist philosophy and the principles that surround it are what are best for society, and for every person in society. I also believe that I have to spend whatever time it takes persuading a majority of the people in this state that my philosophy, and the principles that implement it, are the right ones for them. I will obtain power when I have convinced enough people to agree with me. I can’t trick them into believing me, I can’t market them into believing me; I can only convince them. And that takes work.

I won’t win by hiring a collectivist from the other side, and trying to use that individual to implement my agenda freedom and free enterprise. I will only win by talking to enough people, in groups, or one on one, to change enough minds, to get a majority.

Ronald Reagan got it. He had enough faith in his ideas that he did not take his special election loss of 1973 as a signal to capitulate to the Democrats, or to get one of their operatives as his chief aide. He just got to work changing minds. He saw with a remarkable clarity the job that he had to accomplish. And he changed the world.

Ed Laning, the California Republican Party's Vice-Chairman for the Inland Region has announced his resignation effective 5 p.m. today in protest of the appointment of partisan Democrat Susan Kennedy to the post of Chief of Staff in the Schwarzenegger Administration.

Here is the text of the email he sent the CRP Board of Directors, December 4.

"If the Governor doesn't withdraw Ms. Kennedy as his pick
for COS by the end of next week 12-9-05, I will resign in protest."

Why does the Governor choose Kennedy over hard working activists like Laning?

Laning was a candidate for Congress and is one of the top leaders in registering voters in the fast growing San Bernardino County.

See his letter here.

Why pull the pre-primary endorsement? Recently, this is the question I get asked the most.

So let me make this very clear. Our goal is simple - we want Susan Kennedy gone as Chief of Staff. "Firewalls" and more clarifications won't solve this problem.

Whether there is an orchestrated resignation, or a termination, it isn't an option. Obviously, if Ms. Kennedy cares about the Governor's agenda, she would resign.

Susan Kennedy has done more harm to the Republican Party as an operative for the far-left than virtually anyone in California. Whether as executive director of the Democratic Party or CARAL or as Gray Davis' Cabinet Secretary and PUC Commissioner she has proven her commitment to the Democratic Party. On the federal level, she donated to the campaigns of Howard Dean, Dianne Feinstein (a former boss), Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi.

Recent claims that she supported Propositions 74-77 are absurd. Where was she when the campaign was heating up and support from a prominent Democrat would have helped the campaign?

Her appointment was a sharp rebuke to the grassroots Republicans who drove the recall effort, and who have backed the Governor in good faith. The Governor would not have received a pre-primary endorsement last year without our sign-off, and he certainly will have to fight very hard and publicly to keep it. It seems like the prudent course of action is to just let her go.

I should add, by the way, that this is not 'Republican infighting' - a primary goal of the CRA is to go after liberal Democrats. Susan Kennedy is a liberal Democrat, and we will go after her as long as she is in a position of influence in the administration of a Republican Governor.

Three presidents of Republican volunteer organizations including CRA co-signed an appeal to Arnold over his bond proposal. Read it here.

The Following is From Ray Haynes

The Canary Is On Life Support In The Schwarzenegger Administration

I am going to apologize in advance for the metaphors to follow, but they do make the point.

Politics is a lot like football. It is a team sport for individuals with similar goals. The team advances its agenda, sometimes in small increments, moving the ball toward “victory.” The only real difference between football and politics is that the players can change positions frequently. Sometimes a politician is the quarterback, sometimes he or she is the lineman. In all cases, everyone wins if they effectively execute the play that is called in the huddle.

I know I am a lineman in the game of California politics. I’m willing to get stepped on, smashed up, or hurt for my quarterback, as long as I know he is going to advance my team down the field to victory.

I have been loyal to our Governor because I have always believed that he was throwing the ball to our team. I have not always agreed with his strategy, but I have been confident we were on the same team. This week, I lost that confidence.

I endorsed the Governor in the recall because I thought, at the time that the best thing for conservatives was to win the recall. We started it back in February of 2003, and we needed to ensure we finished it by defeating Gray Davis. Many Republicans opposed the recall because they believed that it was too risky and that it might ultimately strengthen Democrats. I was told that by prominent Republicans leaders that my early support of the recall was foolish. I thought it was the right thing to do.

At the time I endorsed Schwarzenegger for Governor, he and Cruz Bustamante were tied in the polls. If the recall had resulted in a Governor Bustamante, it would have destroyed the influence of conservatives in California. Schwarzenegger won, running on conservative themes of fiscal responsibility and opposing taxpayer benefits for illegal aliens. The conservatives who began the recall were vindicated.

During my time in the Legislature, I have given this Governor my unqualified support because, despite our differences, I thought he would throw the ball to our team. I would get my fingers bloodied and my nose broken, blocking the bad guys, to advance the ball. I thought the people of California owed this Governor the benefit of the doubt, because I believed he was trying to do the right thing.

Years ago, in the days of less-sophisticated mining technology, miners would take a canary into the cave with them to detect dangerous gases. If the canary dropped dead while they were working, the miners knew to get out of the mine immediately, because they were being exposed to dangerous gases.

The canary is demonstrating serious signs of distress in this administration. It may be too early to draw the ultimate conclusion from the appointment of Susan Kennedy, but Kennedy was at the center of the Oracle scandal, the energy crisis, and the budget debacles of the Davis Administration. She is the hazardous gas we must watch in this dangerous mine of government.

I am always willing to be a lineman on the football team, but only if the quarterback is intending to throw the ball to my team. This week, the Governor deliberately threw the ball to the other team. The “benefit of the doubt” has now been eliminated. Time may ultimately prove me wrong, and this appointment might be a creative strategy that advances the agenda in which I believe, but I don’t trust Kennedy to advance that agenda, and I’m reluctant to put my faith in a quarterback who would put her in charge.

The canary is on life support. It is now time for the people of the state of California to pay attention. We can no longer take it for granted that the ball is going to be thrown to our team.