San Joaquin Valley is California's hottest political spot

The San Joaquin Valley is one of the few friendly areas for the GOP.

"The Republican Party in California is

no longer a statewide party."

 Allan Hoffenblum

Republican strategist

(Fresno Bee)  -  When it comes to competitive political races, nowhere in California beats the San Joaquin Valley -- at least at the state and federal levels.

Heading into November, this part of the state has two congressional races and a state Senate race that are considered competitive. Three other seats in Congress, the state Senate and the state Assembly could be at play -- if not this year, then likely in the future.

Political experts say the region between Modesto and Bakersfield -- centered on Fresno -- is one of the few parts of California where Republicans can still challenge Democratic Party supremacy.

"The Republican Party in California is no longer a statewide party," said Allan Hoffenblum, a longtime Republican strategist and author of the California Target Book, which tracks the state's elections. "It's a regional party. And you're in one of the regions."

Only the Inland Empire of Riverside and San Bernardino counties can come close to the San Joaquin Valley when it comes to competitive races, political experts said.

This year, the region's competitive races are the 21st Congressional District clash between incumbent Hanford Republican David Valadao and his Democratic Party challenger, Amanda Renteria, the 10th Congressional District race pitting incumbent Turlock Republican Jeff Denham against Democrat Michael Eggman and the 14th State Senate race with incumbent Hanford Republican Andy Vidak and Democrat opponent Luis Chavez.

Each of the seats is held by a Republican, but in the case of Valadao's 21st Congressional and Vidak's 14th state Senate seat, Democrats dominate in voter registration. In Denham's district, Republicans hold a slight edge, though registration for both parties is below 40%.

Add in Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, who is the Republican candidate for state controller, and the greater San Joaquin Valley is certain to see plenty of politicking, whether it's by campaign mailers, television or radio commercials or town hall appearances.

Buying media -- be it television or radio ads -- is also cheaper in the San Joaquin Valley than in places such as Los Angeles and Orange counties. That gives both parties a fighting chance to be competitive, said Tim Clark, a Sacramento-based political consultant who is running Swearengin's campaign.

"The media markets in Fresno and Bakersfield make it easy to have a conversation about politics," he said.

That conversation is likely to start in earnest after Labor Day on Monday, the traditional kickoff of the fall campaign season.

 

The Young Guns Network, a national Republican group, has booked $235,000 in ads in the Fresno and Bakersfield markets before Election Day -- almost certainly aimed at the Valadao-Renteria contest.

In the meantime, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's ad buy is from mid-October through Election Day and totals around $550,000 for the Fresno and Bakersfield media markets.

At the same time, Valadao has raised $1.8 million and has $1.2 million cash on hand, and Renteria has raised $1 million and has $400,000 in the bank, according to their latest campaign finance reports.

Valadao's campaign has also purchased more than $200,000 in television ads in both the Fresno and Bakersfield markets, and that is just for the period from Sept. 9-29.

Renteria is expected to go on television soon.

"The action is in the Central Valley because that is the area that is truly a two-party area," said Tony Quinn, a longtime political analyst in California and former Republican legislative aide.

Other races could be competitive at some point, but might not be this year.

12th State Senate
of GOP Senator Anthony Cannella

They are the 16th Congressional District seat held by Fresno Democrat Jim Costa, the 12th state Senate seat represented by Ceres Republican Anthony Cannella, and the 32nd Assembly District held by Bakersfield Democrat Rudy Salas.

The political territory held by Cannella and Salas has been competitive for well over a decade, and during that time has been held by both Democrats and Republicans. For instance, Valadao preceded Salas in the Assembly seat, though it was then known as the 30th District. Before Valadao, it was another Republican, Danny Gilmore, and prior to him, Democrat Nicole Parra.

Costa's district -- parts of Fresno and Madera counties and all of Merced County -- covers areas long held by moderate Democrats, but one nonpartisan political prognosticator says the district is marginally competitive this year.

It all comes down to candidates and money, political experts said. And this year, the challengers in each of the three districts are lacking in money or are not considered to be top-tier candidates.
In the 32nd Assembly District race, for instance, Delano Republican Pedro Rios gave Salas a good fight two years ago. Salas won 53%-47%.

This time around, Rios' campaign is close to broke. It was in the red as of June 30, and late contributions have only managed to bring Rios to around the break-even point. Salas, in the meantime, had more than $630,000 in his campaign account as of June 30, and has been steadily raising money since then.

It's a similar story on the 12th Senate District, which includes the western quarter of Fresno County, all of Merced County and other parts of the northern San Joaquin Valley as well as all of San Benito County and half of Monterey County.

Cannella is being challenged by Democrat Shawn Bagley, who only has around $30,000 in his account -- including $25,000 from the state Democratic Party -- while Cannella has more than $930,000.

Starved for Money
In the landslide Democrat year of 2012 GOP Mayor Pedro Rios pulled
47% of the vote. In this year of a strong GOP tide the party is starving
him of funds.  He is broke.  Treating Hispanic Republicans like this
drives them right into the arms of the Democrats.

Hoffenblum, the Republican strategist, said the district could be competitive if Bagley was better financed, but for now is only being watched because Democrats hold a voter-registration edge of 13 percentage points.

Finally, there is Costa's 16th Congressional District. Again, money is a major issue. Republican challenger Johnny Tacherra's campaign is nearly broke at this point, while Costa has around $760,000.

Without adequate cash, experts say, it is hard for challengers like Tacherra to get their name and message to voters, especially in a district like Costa's, where Democrats hold a nearly 16-percentage-point registration edge.

Under the right circumstances, any of those three districts could be competitive, political experts said. Add those to the three that are competitive this election cycle, and that's why the region is the epicenter of competitive California politics.

"The Central Valley from Modesto down to Bakersfield, it has ebbed and flowed for two decades," Clark said, citing swings in both voter registration and which political party has held a particular seat.

Every Republican knows you have to win big here, he said, and every Democrat knows that if you can beat the Republican Party here, you can win statewide.

Said Clark: "The San Joaquin Valley remains the electoral hot spot in the state."

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/08/29/4095091_the-san-joaquin-valley-is-californias.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

From the Fresno Bee.com

The GOP Drops the Ball Again
GOP Mayor Pedro Rios got 47% of the vote two years ago in this Southern San Joaquin Valley district.  As a reward for his hard work the GOP is starving Rios for funds this year.
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One has to wonder why the GOP even exists.  Why even bother to run candidates if they refuse to back them?  If Republicans won't step up to the plate then maybe the party should dissolve itself or just stop running candidates and let the Libertarians or a new party have a shot.  

Daily water allocation could be next in California

Water Rationing is Coming

• The moronic do nothing People's legislature self masturbates over plastic market bags, bullet trains and the "racism" outrage of the moment but refuses to vote to build desalination plants to create new water.  

(San Gabriel Valley Tribune)  -  You probably know your Social Security number, your driver’s license number and perhaps the latest wrinkle in mattress marketing, your sleep number.

But do you know your drought number?

The latter represents the amount of water you are allowed to use per day. If you don’t know it, you probably should. Not knowing could cost you money. As California’s severe drought moves into a fourth year, state and local water agencies are working on something called “allocation-based rate structures,” a kind of precursor to water rationing that’s all the rage in Sacramento and in some areas such as Santa Cruz, Irvine and Santa Monica.

Here’s how it works: Your local water company, special district or city assigns you and your household a number in gallons — a daily water allocation. Usually, one number applies to maximum indoor water use, i.e. showers, kitchen and bathroom faucets, dishwashers, clothes washers, etc., and an extra allocation is assigned for outdoor use such as lawn irrigation.

Using census records, aerial photography and satellite imagery, an agency can determine a property’s efficient water usage.

At the Irvine Ranch Water District, number of residents, amount of landscaping and even medical needs are factored into a household’s water allocation or water budget.

“We want you to stay within that budget. That way we know you are using water in an efficient way,” according to an instructional video on the Orange County water agency’s website.

While some call it a more equal way to meter out mandatory water conservation, others call it social engineering. Some say the idea simply will not work.

In July, the State Water Resources Control Board passed stage one emergency regulations, giving powers to all local water agencies to fine $500 per violation.

“We were concerned with the lack of alarm we were hearing,” said Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board. “Our reservoirs are low. Half of the state’s storage is gone. It’s a frightening situation.”

Read More . . . .

L.A. forces large hotels to raise worker pay

Democrats Target Large Hotels

• The Democrat L.A. City Council voted to force large hotels only to pay a $15.37 minimum wage.  Smaller hotels are exempt and thus have a marketing advantage over their larger competitors. 
• Democrats are working overtime to drive as many jobs out of the People's Republic as possible.

Workers at big hotels in Democrat run Los Angeles have won one of the highest minimum wages in the United States after a campaign by unions and civil rights groups.
The city council voted on Wednesday night to establish a minimum hourly wage of $15.37 for employees of hotels with more than 125 rooms, a decision expected to boost campaigns for better wages in other industries and cities.

Hotel workers in yellow T-shirts packed city hall and cheered as the council voted 12 to 3 for the ordnance, delivering a potentially landmark victory for the living wage movement and a defeat to business groups who warned of job losses reports The Guardian.

“We’re thrilled that the city has passed such a historic ordnance,” said Ruth Dawson, a staff attorney and reproductive justice fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union of South California, which was part of the coalition lobbying for the measure.

Most of the affected workers – estimated to range in number from 5,300 to 13,500 – were women and many were mothers, so a living wage meant reproductive justice as well as economic, said Dawson. “We hope this decision will extend far beyond LA as an example.”

The city council’s decision followed nation-wide momentum this year to alleviate so-called poverty wages. Eleven state legislatures approved minimum-wage increases. President Barack Obama lobbied to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10. Seattle voted for a gradual rollout of a $15 overall minimum wage. Eric Garcetti, LA’s mayor, wants to raise the city’s overall minimum wage to $13.25 by 2017.

A coalition of neighbourhood councils, advocacy groups and unions such as Unite convinced LA’s city council that workers at dozens of big hotels merited special attention. It cited research suggesting the wage increase would boost the local economy and allow parents, some of whom do two jobs to make ends meet, spend more time with their children.

Opponents said city hall ignored two other reports which warned of job losses. “Today a whole bunch of people in the hotel industry lost their jobs; they just don’t know it yet,” Ruben Gonzalez, of LA’s chamber of commerce, told the LA Times.

Christopher Thornberg, a partner of Beacon Economics, which produced one of the two critical studies, said hotels around LA’s international airport shed 10% of their jobs in the six years after city hall mandated a pay rise for the area’s workers in 2007. Hotels in the rest of LA county, in contrast, gained 10% more jobs in the same period, he said.

Welcome to Socialism

Toyota's Los Angeles area headquarters and its

5,000 jobs are moving to Texas.

See: Toyota & 5,000 Jobs To Leave California For Texas

 

Water "Relief" Spending Filled With Pork

"Corruptus in Extremis"

• The "drought relief" cash being shoveled out by the Democrat Legislature has tons of pork that has nothing to do with creating new water. 

(Associated Press)  -  California water officials on Tuesday released plans for spending almost a third of the $687 million emergency drought relief package approved by lawmakers earlier this year.

More than $200 million in expedited bond funding would benefit 110 projects throughout the state, ranging from the city of Mt. Shasta to San Diego, under the draft recommendations by the state Department of Water Resources. The agency plans to make final decisions by Oct. 31.

The Democrat run Legislature approved fast-tracked legislation, SB103 and SB104, to address the immediate effects of the three-year drought on communities while accelerating bond funding for public works projects that will better prepare agencies for future droughts.

"There's many ways we can better use the water we have," Brown said when announcing the legislation. "You can't manufacture water."

(Translation - Brown is a fucking idiot. Water is manufactured every day. It is called desalination.)

For example, more than 100,000 households received boxes from food banks while 2,000 farm workers received help to pay the rent, according to the Department of Social Services and the Department of Housing and Community Development.

The package also has funded work for young people through the California Conservation Corps. The agency says it has used money to pay for programs to clear brush and other wildfire hazards across the state, including at Silverwood Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California and Mount Tamalpais in Marin County.

Jerry Brown:
"You can't manufacture water."
.
A senile Jerry Brown appears not to know that nations from Australia to Saudi Arabia actually manufacture water for their needs. It is called desalination. 

Write-In Votes Continue to be Banned in California

Banned in California
Lisa Murkowski won a write-in vote in Alaska.

"Corruptus in Extremis"

• The corrupt Democrats and Republicans forced through a law banning all write-in votes in November. 
• As a "bonus" all small opposition political parties are prevented from appearing on general election ballots so the voters are FORCED to vote for the special interest funded major parties.

(Ballot Access News)  -  U.S. District Court Judge David Carter refused to require California to show write-in space on ballots for the November 2014 election. Milonopoulos v Bowen, central district, 2:14cv-5973.

The denial of injunctive relief is mostly based on the 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision Burdick v Takushi, which upheld Hawaii’s ban on write-in space on ballots. The order denying injunctive relief does not take into account that Hawaii ballot access to the general election was far, far easier than California’s current access to the general election, for Congressional elections.

 In Hawaii, a minor party candidate for Congress could appear on the general election ballot if his party was a qualified party and the candidate won his party’s primary, which could be accomplished with a single vote if no one was running against that candidate in that party’s primary.

By contrast, in California, no one can get on the November ballot unless he or she places first or second in the June primary. Even a candidate supported by 30% of the voters may (depending on how the other candidates poll in the primary) fail to qualify for the November ballot.

United States Senate election in Alaska, 2010
Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Write-in	Lisa Murkowski (Incumbent)	101,091	39.06%
	Republican	Joe Miller	90,839	35.11%
	Democratic	Scott McAdams	60,045	23.21%
	Libertarian	David Haase	1,459	00.56%
	Independent	Timothy Carter	927	00.36%
	Independent	Ted Gianoutsos	458	00.18%
	Write-in	Other write-in votes	1,143	00.44%
Invalid or blank votes			2,784	01.08%
Totals			258,746	100.0%
Voter turnout			52.3%

See more at United States Senate election in Alaska, 2010 

Sample of a FREE Election

Eight parties in the new Swedish Parliament. Freedom. What a concept.

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A Warning to American Readersk
American readers, please do not be frightened by the chart above showing many different political parties.  This is something that the rest of the world calls a free election.  Free elections have not existed in the U.S. for multiple generations.
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The United States stands almost alone in the world where the same two corrupt Washington D.C. funded parties magically win 100% of all elections to our House of Representatives.  Other nations where the same parties win 100% of the elections are North Korea and China.
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Unless the American people rise up and demand real election reform we are doomed to be ruled over by a corrupt, centralized and criminal oligarchy.

GOP State Controller Candidate Ashley Swearengin May Vote For Jerry Brown

GOP Mayor Swearengin to Support Brown?

The rats are jumping from the sinking California GOP ship.


It was a double indignity for Neel Kashkari this weekend when not just one but two fellow Republicans on November's statewide ballot declined to endorse his campaign to oust Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown.

When Kashkari reached for an analogy Saturday to describe the party fracture, he invoked the Costa Concordia cruise ship that ran aground off Italy in 2012, killing 32 people.

"When a ship hits the rocks, it's a human tendency to run for a lifeboat," he said. "I understand that. I'm trying to keep everyone in the ship, and right the ship, and get the ship moving again," reports the Los Angeles Times.

Such was Kashkari's fate as California Republicans met in Los Angeles for a convention that was supposed to celebrate the party's unity.

The gathering opened on a sour note Friday, when the evening's keynote speaker, state controller candidate Ashley Swearengin, told reporters she was still mulling whether to vote for Kashkari or Brown. "I'm looking at the two candidates like other Californians are," she said.

Part-time James Bond villain and former Obama
supporter Neel Kashkari.

And Pete Peterson, the Republican running for secretary of state, said in an interview that he was not endorsing Kashkari — or anyone else on the statewide ballot — and did not plan to vote a straight party ticket.

The extraordinary display of disunity led Ron Nehring, a former state Republican chairman and underdog candidate for lieutenant governor, to vent his fury in a profanity-tinged email to party brass just before midnight Friday, after news organizations began reporting the dust-up.

"This does NOT help the party, and it distracts from the efforts made to convey a positive theme," Nehring wrote. "The coverage is not of a party expanding its reach. It's about a party that isn't unified because its candidates can't get it together and get on the same page."

Party leaders played down the disagreement. "A lot is being made out of a few tea leaves there," said state party vice chair Harmeet Dhillon.

But for both Swearengin and Peterson, distance from the party could prove to be an asset in a state that has largely favored Democrats for two decades.

Swearengin, the mayor of Fresno, said California "needs some independence when it comes to watching the treasury."

Swearengin has rebuffed Kashkari's efforts to campaign together and broken with him on his signature issue, the bullet train that Brown wants to build between Los Angeles and San Francisco. She supports the project as an economic boost for the Central Valley; Kashkari calls it "the crazy train."

The friction is also partly personal: Kashkari irked Swearengin by not giving her advance warning that he was going to spend a week posing as a homeless man in Fresno in an effort to spotlight poverty and joblessness on Brown's watch.

For his part, Peterson said he was declining to publicly back Kashkari because a secretary of state needs to run state elections in a nonpartisan fashion. He also suggested that Republicans should reclaim the progressive reform traditions of the Theodore Roosevelt era.

"I'm not running for a lifeboat," he said.

Read More . . . .

California voters gather around to see
a rare site - the nearly extinct Republican elephant.

California GOP kicks off convention in Los Angeles

Rand Paul to address GOP

• Once again the California "Republican Party" that represents no one is holding its convention.
• The so-called "delegates" are chosen by Sacramento and Washington Elite interests.  Not one delegate is elected by the rank and file voters of the state.
• REFORM  -  If the GOP gives a damn about their voters (which they don't) then how about holding a convention in every county where Republicans can gather, debate the issues of the day and elect delegates to the state GOP convention?  But that will never happen.  What you believe in has no meaning to the corrupt Elites.

Just weeks before California voters begin casting mail ballots, about 1,000 of the state’s Republicans will gather in Los Angeles this weekend at their biannual convention. This year’s theme: “Reclaim California.”

It’s a tall order for a party that is struggling -- California Republicans remain at a historic low in voter registration, are vastly outgunned financially by their Democratic rivals and are unlikely to elect a statewide candidate in November.

But the state remains critical in national politics, as reflected by the top speakers at the three-day gathering at the Marriott near Los Angeles International Airport.

Sen. Rand Paul, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, will address delegates and guests at a luncheon on Saturday. The Kentucky senator has been spending a lot of time in California, connecting with traditional donors as well libertarian-leaning constituencies as he seeks to plant a flag in the crowded GOP presidential field reports the L.A. Times.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, the second-highest-ranking Republican in Washington, D.C., speaks Saturday evening.

The sole statewide candidate who has a prime-time speaking slot is Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, who is running for state controller. All of the other statewide candidates -- including gubernatorial hopeful Neel Kashkari -- have been relegated to the sleepy Sunday morning general session.

That’s a notable departure from years past, when top-of-the-ticket gubernatorial and Senate candidates, such as 2010 nominees Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, were lauded at glitzy convention lunches and dinners.



House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield

Nudists accused of stealing water to fill swim pool

The Green Bridge passes over full water levels at a section of Lake Oroville
near the Bidwell Marina on July 20, 2011, in Oroville, California, followed
by current drought levels on Aug. 19, 2014.

That Sinking Feeling

And yet another day passes without the California legislature acting to build a string of desalinization plants.

On the Lighter Side - A nudist resort in the San Francisco Bay area has been accused of stealing water from a local creek during the state's severe drought, according to local news media.

Authorities from the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, which protects wildlife habitat, said the clothing-optional Lupin Lodge had been diverting water, some of which was used to fill the resort's swimming pool, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

 

The lodge, situated near Los Gatos in the San Francisco Bay Area, was stealing about 6,000 gallons of creek water per day for more than seven weeks, Midpeninsula assistant general manager Kevin Woodhouse told the Times.

After discovering the alleged diversion, rangers from Midpeninsula arrived at the camp and ripped out a pipeline that had been funneling water to the resort, said the San Jose Mercury News.

And one nudist who encountered the rangers during his morning hike on Midpeninsula property was threatened with a citation for trespassing, reports the newspaper.

"They said, 'You can't be here. You're on our property,'" said Errol Strider, 70, one of about 50 full-time residents who live in yurts, cabins and trailers on the 110-acre property, which was founded in the 1930s. "I was wearing tennis shoes and my little fanny pack," he told the Mercury News. "I discreetly turned my fanny pack to a front pack where it stayed for the rest of the conversation."

The owners of the resort, Glyn and Lori Kay Stout, told the Times that they have a historic right to the water, which they said they have used since a drought in the 1970s and need to keep an 87,000-gallon water tank full in case of fire and for topping off the skinny-dipping pool near the clubhouse.

(Huffington Post)

And the water levels keep dropping.

L.A. Schools get Grenade Launchers, Armored Vehicle

Every High School Needs One

Los Angeles Unified School District police officials are considering whether they need the armored vehicle and grenade launchers they received from the U.S. military.

The military hardware at the disposal of LAUSD police officers includes a 20-foot-long, 14-ton armored transport vehicles, much like the ones used to move Marines in Iraq combat zones.

The armored vehicle is worth $733,000, and the school district’s police force got it from the government for free reports CBS News.

How would LAUSD use such a vehicle?

“For us? That vehicle would be used for extraordinary circumstances,” LAUSD police Chief Steve Zipperman said.

The armored vehicle, which is stored at a secret location, has been in the department’s possession since July.

The district is also in possession of grenade launchers, which it received for free from the military after 9/11.

We are ruled over by the insane.
The perfect vehicle to patrol the teacher's parking lot.

Proposal to Split California Into 6 States Fails to Make Ballot

The Dream is Over . . . For Now

(KTLA News)  -  The controversial “Six Californias” initiative has failed to make it onto the 2016 ballot, the Secretary of State’s Office said Friday.

According to the Secretary of State’s Office, the initiative simply did not have enough valid signatures when they completed the standard random sampling of petition signatures.

The plan, backed by venture capitalist Tim Draper, was to split California into six smaller states. He says the state is too large to govern efficiently.

One of the states would have been Silicon Valley, which included wealthy San Francisco and San Jose.

Sacramento was lumped in with Marin County to form a northern California state. Los Angeles, San Diego and Riverside anchored three other states.

A sixth state was made up of the northern-most area of the state.

Draper and others who backed the “Six Californias” initiative turned in more than 1.1 million signatures this summer. Friday, the California Secretary of State’s office said “the total number of signatures … filed with all county elections officials is less than 100 percent of the number of qualified voters required to find the petition sufficient”.

A separate plan to group several northern counties, including Siskiyou and Modoc, is in the works to form a 51st state – known as Jefferson.

Breakin' Up Is Hard To Do