New West Notes

** TWO DEMOCRATIC SPINNERS HAVE E-MAILED ME ABOUT SCHWARZENEGGER’S SUPPOSED “REVERSAL” ON PROP 187 IN AN INTERVIEW WITH LA OPINION. In it, he says that he no longer supports the 1994 anti-illegal immigration initiative and thinks it was not such a hot idea.

There is just one problem with this breathless revelation of a “new reversal.” It’s not new. He did it in a question-and-answer session after a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. In 2002. Which I reported in 2002. He repeated it in 2003 during the recall campaign. I have mentioned it in no fewer than four columns, all of them available on this site, this year alone.

SEE THE COMMENTS SECTION INSIDE FOR AN ARTICLE FROM 2003 ON THIS, AND ENRON, TOO.

** 4:15 PM UPDATE: California’s peak electric power demand in the Cal ISO area at 4:10 PM was 49,597 megawatts. This is down from the peak earlier in the day of 49,761 megawatts. And lower than the forecast peak for the day of 50,157 megawatts.

** Sounds like a fairly wild Arnold Schwarzenegger town hall meeting late this morning in La Mesa. According to this report from the San Francisco Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci, there were some magic moments. Schwarzenegger is embarked on his second two-day bus tour of the general election campaign, this time around Southern California.

** 11:30 AM UPDATE: The California peak electric power demand record from last July has just been broken for the ninth straight day. 45,845 megawatts are in use in the Cal ISO area.

** Another day ahead for heat sink California forecast to shatter the peak electric power demand record set last July and broken every day for the past eight days. But the forecast is lower than yesterday’s forecast, which extended the system as never before. Today’s question: Will equipment stressed by this sustained extreme weather event hold up or fail in larger numbers? Check California’s power demand here at Cal ISO throughout the day in near real time.

** My set-up piece for California coverage and analysis at the Pajamas Media network.

** Watch important global and national energy price indicators throughout the day, courtesy of Bloomberg. With Israeli forces finding tougher going than anticipated fighting the Hezbollah in Lebanon, crude oil prices have begun rising again.

** Continuing coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah War, from Pajamas Media.

In a tense and suddenly consequential day, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger survived what has been the worst heat wave/power load in state history, saw his grandly staged health care summit overshadowed, and learned that he has a solid eight-point lead in the Field Poll over his Democratic challenger, Treasurer Phil Angelides.

Schwarzenegger’s health care summit at UCLA and a rival smaller event hastily organized by Angelides were to have been the news of the day. But the record heat wave and resultant drama over the ability of the power grid to keep up with day after day of record peak usage proved dominant.

The best news for Schwarzenegger is how it has turned out so far in this extreme weather event. Rolling blackouts were averted, though businesses in a voluntary cutback program saw their power curtailed. Today’s forecast peak electric power demand is just a few hundred megawatts more than what today’s turned out to be. Which in turn was over 2000 megawatts less than forecast for yesterday. Should the equipment strained by more than a week of a lingering record heat wave hold up, there should be no blackouts.

Still, this should give us all significant pause. The sustained nature of this extreme heat wave around the state has confounded normal utility reserve planning, which is predicated on “once-in-a-decade” events. This is a “once in a half-century event.” With climate change — some of it caused by global warming, some of it by sprawling urbanization, which heats up its environs and keeps them hotter through the night — such rare occurrences may well become regular occurrences. We should plan accordingly.

In the midst of a record heat wave, California has turned into a giant heat sink. Buildings and their environs never really cool off over night, making the air conditioning demand during the day all the greater. By yesterday, stressed equipment — transformers and some power lines — had failed in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas, putting hundreds of thousands without power. LA’s San Fernando Valley topped out at a Death Valley-like 119 degrees on Saturday. Similar grid failure situations exist in New York and other parts of the country. Sacramento’s public library is shut down due to the failure of its air conditioning equipment.

As a result of the heat wave, exacerbated by the heat sink phenomenon, California’s peak electric power usage had broken the old state record — set in July of last year — every day for the past eight days. Yesterday the challenge to the state’s stressed power grid went up dramatically. Very high temperatures over the weekend led to power usage levels greater than the old record for a weekday. But all those office buildings had been sitting there all weekend long, serving as giant solar collectors. Since we’re not capturing that solar energy, it required even more energy to overcome its effects to cool them off. Yesterday the forecast was for peak electric power usage fully 16 percent higher than the old state record set last July.

The state’s utilities are required by law to have a 15 percent power reserve, a requirement which Schwarzenegger had accelerated from 2008 to 2006. But yesterday’s peak demand surpassed that, drawing on already stressed equipment with a heat wave unlike that in decades.

After a day-long drama of constant updates, with the help of conservation efforts, the crisis was averted and there were no blackouts. The new power plants and long-term power contracts initiated by former Governor Gray Davis are partly responsible, as is Schwarzenegger’s shepherding of projects, moving up the utilities’ power reserve requirement, and improvements in power transmission. But California, which has never really resolved the aftermath of the 2001 electric power crisis, just got a huge wake-up call.

Schwarzenegger’s health care summit at UCLA, part of his fresh interest in the issue, featured a glittering array of participants from the health, corporate, and union worlds but did not resolve what the governor’s direction on the issue will be. Meanwhile, his old nemesis, the California Nurses Association, was demonstrating outside, decrying what they see as his election year conversion on several health care issues, use the state’s purchasing power to force discounts from drug companies, something he had previously opposed. And Angelides mounted his own, more modest event, playing up Schwarzenegger’s past opposition to requiring corporations to provide health care and touting other alternatives, including a so-called single payer plan. The cost of which the Schwarzenegger campaign dutifully added to the Angelides tax hike ledger as a $7 billion item.

No sooner had the Angelides campaign pushed a new Zogby Poll purporting to show the treasurer with a two-point lead over the governor than word of the new Field Poll arrived. Which shows something very different, namely a solid eight-point lead for Schwarzenegger, 45% to 37%. Schwarzenegger’s preference level actually lags what is the best news in the poll for him, the recovery of his job approval rating. That now stands at 49% approval, 40 percent disapproval. This is the first time in a year a Field Poll has shown him with a positive job appraisal from voters. Similarly, nearly half see the state back on the right track, a reversal from past pluralities of those seeing California on the wrong track.

(The problem with the Zogby poll is that it is an online poll. Its participants are inherently self-selecting. In some ways, it is like a focus group that takes on a life of its own, with people acting in ways they do not in the real world. Its results are out of line with all other polls, such as Field, in which participants are selected at random by the pollster. The only other poll with similar results is the Rasmussen poll, which is its own kind of gimmick. That’s a robopoll. The robot does not know if the respondent on the other end of the phone is a teenager or a real voter.)

With blackouts averted and a Field Poll lead nearly as large as those in various private polls on both sides of the political fence, Schwarzenegger embarks on another two-day bus tour, this time of Southern California. Although some voters are clearly holding back from him, part of the overhang of his disastrous special election initiatives agenda last year, he is on something of a roll. So long as the power grid doesn’t melt down.

** More about the Field Poll in the morning leader. And other polls being pushed. This is a poll of registered voters, not likely voters.

** 7:10 PM UPDATE: California’s electric power demand has dropped to 48,160 megawatts, as of 7 PM. Tomorrow’s forecast peak is just a few hundred megawatts more than what today’s turned out to be., Which in turn was over 2000 megawatts less than forecast this morning. Should the equipment strained by more than a week of a lingering record heat wave hold up, there should be no blackouts tomorrow. Who says Arnold Schwarzenegger is the luckiest man in the world?

Still, this should give us all significant pause. We’re breathing a sigh of relief over the current level of electric power demand, which is over 2500 megawats more than the state record until this recent heat wave. The sustained nature of this extreme heat wave around the state has confounded normal utility reserve planning, which is predicated on once-in-a-decade events. This is a once in a half-century event. With climate change, such rare occurrences may well become regular occurrences. We should plan accordingly.

6:15 PM UPDATE: California’s electric power demand has dropped to 49,044 megawatts, as of 6:10 PM.

** 4:40 PM UPDATE: At what in many parts of the state is the heat of the day, California’s peak power demand is at 50,113 megawatts, over 2000 megawatts below the peak forecast this morning.

** 3:30 PM UPDATE: After reaching a new record of 50,269 megawatts, peak power demand has dropped back a bit to 50,122 megawatts.

** It’s a little past two in the afternoon and already California has blown past the old peak power usage record set last Friday, passing 50,000 megawatts in the area covered by the state’s private utility companies (absent the big municipal utilities in Los Angeles and Sacrament.) The total stands at 50,067 megawatts. Until last week, the state’s record, set last July, was 45,431 megawatts.

However, in good news for the state, the forecast for the highest peak demand today has been lowered. This morning, the forecast was for 52,336 megawatts, more than 3,000 megawatts higher than the record established last Friday. However, today’s peak power forecast is now 50,067 megawatts. California is now in a Stage 2 emergency status, short of the Stage 3 which would trigger rolling blackouts for residential service. In Stage 2, some businesses which have voluntarily contracted for reduced service in such a circumstance have their power supply curtailed.

So there is a decent chance that blackouts will be avoided today, so long as equipment already straining under the demands imposed by the record heat wave being endured by Californians holds up.

** The Zogby Interactive Online poll, conducted from July 11th to July 19th, gives Phil Angelides a very slight edge, within the margin of error, over Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Here are the Zogby numbers: Angelides 44%, Schwarzenegger 42.3%. In his poll last month, Zogby had the two tied at 43% to 43%. In the five polls prior to that, Schwarzenegger had trailed, frequently by double digits.

However, I don’t buy the Zogby poll.

** Meanwhile, with his health care summit likely to be overshadowed by the record heat wave/power load and his opponent on the air, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is on the road again tomorrow. This time with a two-day bus tour of Southern California. Same drill as his first bus tour of the general election campaign, unplugged town halls and cafe plunges and walking tours. Although with this weather …

** Expect some blackouts today. In fact, we’ve already had some in the past few days. In the midst of a record heat wave, California has turned into a giant heat sink. Buildings and their environs never really cool off over night, making the air conditioning demand during the day all the greater. Already, stressed equipment — transformers and some power lines — have failed in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas, putting hundreds of thousands without power. LA’s San Fernando Valley topped out at a Death Valley-like 119 degrees on Saturday. Similar grid failure situations exist in New York and other parts of the country. Sacramento’s public library is shut down due to the failure of its air conditioning equipment.

As a result of the heat wave, exacerbated by the heat sink phenomenon, California’s peak electric power usage has broken the old state record — set in July of last year — every day for the past seven days. Today the challenge to the state’s stressed power grid goes up dramatically. Very high temperatures over the weekend led to power usage levels greater than the old record for a weekday. But all those office buildings have been sitting there all weekend long, serving as giant solar collectors. Since we’re not capturing that solar energy, it will require even more energy to overcome its effects to cool them off. Today the forecast, as you can see here — where the state’s power usage outside the big municipal utilities in Los Angeles and Sacramento is tracked throughout the day in near real time — is for peak electric power usage fully 16 percent higher than the old state record set last July.

The state’s utilities are required by law to have a 15 percent power reserve, a requirement which Schwarzenegger had accelerated from 2008 to 2006. But today’s peak demand will almost certainly surpass that, drawing on already stressed equipment with a heat wave unlike that in decades.

** Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger convenes his health care summit this morning at UCLA, with a live webcast beginning at 9 AM. Meanwhile, his old nemesis, the California Nurses Association, will be demonstrating outside, decrying what they see as his election year conversion on several health care issues.

** Energy price watch, updated throughout the day, from Bloomberg. Crude oil prices have declined slightly from record highs.

** With Israeli troops reporting stiffer opposition than they expected, continuing coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah War on Pajamas Media.

Democratic presidential politics is slated for a big change with Nevada on the verge of becoming the second state in the 2008 contest for the presidential nomination. Expect California and Nevada to become a two-step for the party’s presidential candidates. A stop in Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay Area to raise money followed by a quick flight to Las Vegas or Reno for some key early campaigning.

The vote over the weekend by the national party’s rules and bylaws committee is, according to Democratic insiders, fully expected to be ratified next month by the Democratic National Committee. The first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses would now be followed by the Nevada caucuses, then the New Hampshire primary. Following the Granite State classic, in another new move, would be the South Carolina primary.

With California having turned into a giant heat sink, this may be the best news around.

Why the changes? Long-standing concern that the party’s nomination contest was overly influenced by two states, Iowa and New Hampshire, that in no way reflect the emerging diversity of America. And that regions key to the party’s future, the West and the South, went neglected as presidential campaigns were conceptualized and structured to score early breakthroughs in Iowa and New Hampshire.

The shift west is seen as key. Democrats have become increasingly competitive in the West, not just in California. Nevada had competition for the second-in-the-nation Western slot from Arizona and, earlier on, Colorado. In the end, Nevada got the nod, in large measure because it is heavily Latino and has a major labor presence. And because Nevada has the third highest per capita population of veterans in the country. One in six Nevadans has served in the military, making it a good place to develop national security themes. Nevada also prevailed because U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, who represents the Silver State in the Senate, wanted it, as did much of organized labor.

Arizona had the additional burdens of being substantially bigger and thus more expensive to campaign in and of being the home to Senator John McCain. If McCain is the Republican presidential nominee, that would essentially remove the possibility of the Democratic nominee carrying the state in the general election. Whereas Nevada — which for many years was part of “Reagan Country” — went for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. And John Kerry nearly beat George W. Bush there in 2004, losing by little more than two percent.

The states also need to be politically manageable in terms of size and population. Iowa and New Hampshire have populations of three million and 1.3 million, respectively, according to the 2005 estimate of the U.S. Census Bureau. Nevada, one of the fastest-growing states in the country, had 2.4 million people last year; South Carolina 4.3 million. Moving California or another big state into the lead group would not work because it would be unfair to all but the frontrunners able to raise the most money. The emphasis on smaller states in the beginning allows a dark horse candidate the opportunity to shine and break through.

Nevada moving into the lead group in presidential nomination politics means that Western issues of development, water, energy, the environment, and immigration will move to the fore. And labor is happy because Nevada, contrary to its old image as an anti-labor haven, is one of the most unionized states in the country. Nearly a quarter of the state’s population is Latino, and roughly a quarter of its voters are in union households.

Democrats who’ve done especially well in past Nevada presidential caucuses include former Vice President Al Gore, former Governor Jerry Brown (twice a winner there), and former Senator Gary Hart. Each a candidate of the New South or New West, rather than the traditional Northeasterners and Midwesterners.

There was actually little debate over moving Nevada to the fore. There was more dissension about South Carolina, expressed by longtime Clinton advisor Harold Ickes, now counseling Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton. John Edwards, the party’s 2004 vice presidential nominee, represented neighboring North Carolina in the U.S. Senate and could have the edge in a South Carolina primary if he runs for president, as expected. But South Carolina, again unlike Iowa and New Hampshire, has a large African American population, and that was a major factor as well.

The national party will have to deal with archaic state laws in Iowa and New Hampshire that seek to maintain their preeminence in presidential politics by guaranteeing that each is the first caucus state and first primary state, respectively, and by maintaining a large interval between the two. But insiders say the first, fundamental point, is maintained by the new scheme, since Nevada is a caucus state and South Carolina a primary state. And the second point will be dealt with via a combination of national party will and vague drafting in the state law.

The first definitively ugly event of the 2006 general election for governor of California occurred with no fanfare this past Friday. Uncannily mirroring a similar event in the 2003 recall, First Lady Maria Shriver was shouted down and forced to leave a public event in Watsonville.

Shriver was in Watsonville — a city 95 miles south of San Francisco in an agricultural area near Monterey Bay — for an event to encourage families that are eligible to sign up for food stamps. Several hundred people were on hand to see her. According to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the event was going very well with the first lady touring some 80 booths set up in the city plaza to educate about nutrition and health care, then helping low-income families sign up for the food stamp program. Then a dozen members of a group called the Watsonville Brown Berets began loudly shouting at her, calling her a “racist” and thoroughly disrupting the event.

Watsonville Mayor Antonio Rivas tried to quiet the group, but had no success. With tensions escalating amidst the noisy harassment, on the advice of security, Shriver departed.

The group, Rivas told the Sentinel, “deliberately interfered with Shriver’s ability to talk with the public.” One member of the group confirmed to the Sentinel that that was indeed their goal. “We were trying to make Maria Shriver feel unwelcome in Watsonville,” he said. “What we need is not the promotion of food stamps. We don’t want a welfare state, we want better wages and jobs.”

The incident was strikingly similar to a notorious event during the 2003 recall. Then a group of labor protesters, orchestrated by then state Democratic Party honcho Bob Mulholland, disrupted and shut down Shriver’s very first campaign event on behalf of her husband, now Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Shriver had come to Sacramento for an event registering voters, but another dozen protesters, some wielding bullhorns, shouted her down and made it impossible to continue. Many major Democrats, including then Governor Gray Davis, were offended by the shouting down of Shriver, niece of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy.

Mulholland, now senior strategist for Schwarzenegger’s Democratic challenger, Treasurer Phil Angelides, refused to comment on the latest incident.

However, Angelides advisor Steve Maviglio decried the incident, calling it “tragic and totally inappropriate.”

“The first lady is doing a great job,” said Maviglio, who is on loan to the Angelides campaign for a few weeks from Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez to improve the campaign’s operations.

The Watsonville Brown Berets, a group little known outside the area, emerged in 1994, spurred in part by the Proposition 187 anti-illegal immigration initiative, taking their name from the famous Brown Berets Chicano activist group of the 1960s.

They did not return calls for comment on their activities and connections.

The group sponsors an annual march through Watsonville, a small city of some 50,000 with a 75 percent Latino population. Though the original Brown Berets were focused on Chicano nationalism, at one point attempting to claim Catalina Island for Mexico, this version is actually heavily networked in the liberal activist community in the Santa Cruz and Monterey region. One of the group’s projects is urging the naming of schools after Dolores Huerta, a prominent Angelides backer, and the late Cesar Chavez. (There is no reason to believe that Huerta was involved in the incident.) Watsonville Brown Beret members traveled to New York in 2004 to join the coalition of liberal groups protesting the Republican National Convention.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Phil Angelides moved back onto the airwaves this weekend with a TV spot funded by the California Democratic Party. Spokespeople would not say how large the pro-Angelides buy is, but informed sources say that it is $2.2 million.

It’s something of an unusual move, in that TV viewership is lowest on Friday and Saturday nights. New Angelides media consultant Bill Carrick has produced a 30-second attack ad called “A Leader Not An Actor.” Featuring an announcer talking over a montage of black and white photos of Angelides posed with various representative figures while portentous movie-style music plays, it declares that Angelides, unlike Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, is “a leader, not an actor.”

In something of an irony, veteran Democratic consultant Carrick, who produced the new ad for Angelides, had encouraged movie star Warren Beatty to seriously consider a run for governor this year. Beatty, an Academy Award-winning director and producer, has also received multiple Oscar nominations for best actor.

“A Leader Not An Actor,” incidentally, was essentially former Governor Pat Brown’s theme in his 1966 campaign against Ronald Reagan. Many years later, laughing at his foolishness, Brown told me of his and his associates’ derision for Reagan and their belief that a professional politician was inherently superior in any political campaign to a mere thespian because he would know more. The wise old governor learned differently. Voters were tired of his party’s dominance, which they saw leading to more taxes and big-spending excess, and he was buried in a landslide.

The arrangement between the California Democratic Party and the Angelides campaign with regard to party-funded advertising is just like that between the California Republican Party and the Schwarzenegger campaign. The parties can receive much larger contributions than the official campaigns to run “issue advocacy” advertising. Pretty much anything goes so long as the ad does not specifically advocate a vote. Such advertising must cease 45 days before the election.

After opening with the statement that Angelides is “a leader, not an actor,” the ad proceeds to attack Schwarzenegger for a variety of things, taking away property tax relief for senior citizens, raising college tuition and fees, and making big cuts to schools and health care, saying that the treasurer led the fight to stop him. (Schwarzenegger would dispute much of this.) It praises Angelides for his role on a few other issues, opposing excessive pay for HMO execs and ending state investments in tobacco companies. It then closes with the opening slogan about Angelides being “A leader, not an actor.”

The Schwarzenegger response was to have the California Republican Party begin running a positive spot on Schwarzenegger and the environment while the campaign allowed as how Angelides is a leader; a leader in raising taxes. The pro-Schwarzenegger spot, entitled “Forward,” can be seen here.

This is the second ad for Angelides since the June 6th primary, the first being one which began with a sequence of a Terminator-like figure riding a motorcycle backwards. Responding to Schwarzenegger’s advertising theme of Angelides purportedly wanting to take California “backwards,” the ad proclaimed that it was Schwarzenegger taking California backwards with his Bush-like policies and showed Angelides speaking earnestly to camera about his ideas.

Throughout the entirety of the primary campaign, and now with over a quarter of the general election period already behind us, Angelides has yet to define himself through biographical advertising. But he is behind in recent private polling for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), the infrastructure bonds campaign, and the California Teachers Association (CTA).

Some around the treasurer believe that Angelides needs to define himself positively before returning to the attack mode with which he is most comfortable. But Schwarzenegger has been gaining with all-important decline to state voters — fastest growing bloc in California — and with moderates. It may be necessary to halt and reverse his gains first before any positive effort for Angelides can take root. In any event, while this ad contains a few positive elements about Angelides, its tone, slogan, and most of its content make it clear that the negative path was selected.

As a result of the lack of expected Angelides advertising before the weekend, we did not see much of an anticipated Republican counter-offensive against Angelides and his still undefined but expansive tax program. But the Schwarzenegger campaign and its Republican allies will undoubtedly ramp that up next week.

3:50 PM UPDATE: A NEW CALIFORNIA PEAK ELECTRIC POWER USAGE HAS JUST BEEN ESTABLISHED, BREAKING THE RECORD ESTABLISHED ON MONDAY BY OVER 2000 MEGAWATTS.

** In an unusual move, the Democratic Party TV advertising campaign for gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides is starting this weekend. TV viewership is lowest on Friday and Saturday nights. After a long lunch with someone’s biographer, I’m back to report that here is what the pro-Angelides campaign has. New Angelides media consultant Bill Carrick has produced a 30-second attack ad called “A Leader Not An Actor.” It declares that Angelides is “a leader, not an actor.” The proceeds to attack Schwarzenegger for a variety of things, taking away property tax relief for senior citizens, raising college tuition and fees, and making big cuts to schools and health care, saying that the treasurer led the fight to stop him. It praises Angelides for his role on a few other issues, opposing excessive pay for HMO execs and ending state investments in tobacco companies. It then closes with the opening tag about Angelides being “A leader, not an actor.”

UPDATE: Here is the new Phil Angelides for Governor ad, “A Leader Not An Actor.” This, incidentally, was essentially Pat Brown’s theme in his 1966 campaign against Ronald Reagan.

** “PJM Special Correspondent Bill Bradley of New West Notes casts a cool eye at the Democrats who want to get close to Israel and the new war. Just not too close.”

“ALTHOUGH THERE IS a strong undercurrent of misgiving, Democrats nationally are mostly embracing the latest war in the Middle East, that between Israel and the Hezbollah. So far …“

Click through to the new column on Pajamas Media and then comment here at New West.

** Energy price watch, updated throughout the day, from Bloomberg. Crude oil prices have dropped back from record levels, but remain well above $70 per barrel.

** Continuing coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah War from Pajamas Media.

** California broke its previous record, from last July, for electric power usage, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The forecast is for the old record to be broken again today, but the emergency Power Watch has been cancelled. You can track peak electric power usage here throughout the day at Cal ISO, the California Independent System Operator.

For a campaign that is already well engaged, this week in the California governor’s race was more about what did not happen than what did happen. With over a quarter of the general election period now past, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides needs things to begin happening for him to take down Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The California Democratic Party TV advertising for Angelides did not begin this week. An Angelides advisor says it is now likely to begin next week. But what will the emphasis be? Negative on Schwarzenegger? Or positive for Angelides? That is the question, and different people around the Democratic challenger have different answers.

Angelides has yet to define himself through biographical advertising. But he is behind in recent private polling for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), the infrastructure bonds campaign, and the California Teachers Association (CTA). Schwarzenegger has been gaining with all-important decline to state voters — fastest growing bloc in California — and with moderates. It may be necessary to halt and reverse his gains first before any positive effort for Angelides can take root. In any event, the Angelides campaign is running out of opportunities to reboot. Regardless of the fact that this is a mostly Democratic state and Republican President George W. Bush is unpopular here, they have to get this right.

As a result of the lack of Angelides advertising, we did not see much of the promised Republican counter-offensive against Angelides and his still undefined but expansive tax program. But the Schwarzenegger campaign and its Republican allies can ramp that up at a moment’s notice.

We also have not seen something the Angelides camp, through its various public and private comments, was clearly hankering for. Blackouts.

The second most important news yesterday was what did not happen. A fourth straight day of record electric power usage this week occurred and nothing close to blackouts ensued. Indeed, the state’s power grid managers dropped their “Power Watch” alert, and conservation was described as “helpful” rather than “critical” as it was the first two days of the week.

But while the lack of blackouts yesterday was important news, the pattern had already been established for the week early in the week, when conservation had played a significant role with electric power supply seeming more scarce. So the most important news of yesterday was what did happen, Schwarzenegger jump-starting the state’s stem cell research program.

Angelides had hoped to turn Bush’s veto of a national stem cell research bill into a negative for Schwarzenegger by laying Bush’s re-election at the feet of the former action superstar, and deriding him for ineffectually writing letters to the president he elected urging that he not veto the bill.

But Schwarzenegger stole a march on the issue with an executive order releasing a $150 million loan to jump start the state’s stem cell research program. In one fell swoop, California will be spending more than the federal government on stem cell research. Some $3 billion in bond funding was authorized by a 2004 California ballot initiative. But anti-abortion forces have tied the measure up in court, preventing sale of the bonds to fund the San Francisco-based California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).

Reacting to Schwarzenegger’s move, Angelides advisor Steve Maviglio said: “The governor is an Arnold-Come-Lately” on the issue. And that Angelides actually deserved the credit for the funding, because the treasurer — who chairs the nascent institute’s finance committee as the state’s banker — came up with an earlier bridge loan of $200 million to the CIRM through the sale of bond anticipation notes.

Schwarzenegger, however, was anything but a latecomer to the issue. He was the principal campaigner for the 2004 initiative which created the state’s CIRM stem cell program. And Angelides was unable to sell all but $50 million of the bond anticipation notes, apparently due to hesitancy in the financial community over threats of legal action by anti-abortion forces.

Only Schwarzenegger had the power to make the $150 million loan to the CIRM program. If the bonds are permanently blocked, the state’s coffers will not be repaid. But in the meantime, barring effective legal action against it, California will now have the largest public stem cell research program in the country. And Schwarzenegger has again frustrated Angelides’ hopes to make him out to be a clone, so to speak, of the unpopular president.

With Schwarzenegger hosting what will likely be a controversial health care summit in Los Angeles on Monday, and with the two campaigns likely engaging their TV advertising campaigns, next week, unlike this week will almost certainly not be defined by what did not happen.

“ALTHOUGH THERE IS a strong undercurrent of misgiving, Democrats nationally are mostly embracing the latest war in the Middle East, that between Israel and the Hezbollah. So far …”

Click through below to the new column on Pajamas Media and comment here.

“PJM Special Correspondent Bill Bradley of New West Notes casts a cool eye at the Democrats who want to get close to Israel and the new war. Just not too close.”

**  According to the Israeli press, there are thousands of Israeli troops operating now inside of Lebanon.

** The most important news was what did not happen. A fourth straight day of record electric power usage and nothing close to blackouts. For his part, Democratic challenger Phil Angelides did events in LA and the Bay Area decrying gas prices, hitting Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as a tool of Big Oil, and pushing the oil severance tax initiative for alternative fuels research on the November ballot (at his San Francisco event appearing with the most vociferous opponent of the Jessica’s Law anti-child molester initiative he endorsed earlier in the week, Assemblyman Mark Leno.) Both Schwarzenegger and Angelides have raised oil money, though Angelides has raised less.

For his part, Schwarzenegger jump-started the state’s stem cell research program mandated by a 2004 initiative that has been hung up in court with an executive order releasing a $150 million loan. He did this in the wake of President Bush’s veto of a stem cell research bill from Congress. Angelides had criticized Schwarzenegger for the ineffectiveness of his advocacy with Bush after having, as he has it, re-elected him in 2004.

** 3 PM UPDATE: The record set last July for peak electric power usage in California was just broken for the fourth consecutive day. But the managers of the state’s power grid describe conservation efforts at this hour as “helpful,” rather than critical.”

** 6:30 PM UPDATE: California peak electric power usage today came within 95 megawatts of the new record established on Monday.

** A glittering front person, international money laundering, drug smuggling, Russian-made AK 47s … and a few low-budget movies. All allegations, of course, but what a way to prosper in what looks from some angles like a Hollywood slowdown. I only wish I’d gotten the story myself. Makes a good movie treatment.

** Incidentally, as reported Monday, I am throttling back some after months of close to 24/7 political coverage and analysis (except for the sleeping part). I’m also getting myself up to speed on the new war, which will clearly be a major new political factor.

In addition, New West Notes is becoming part of a global new media network. (More on that later.) And having provided breaking coverage and analysis setting up the California elections, it’s time to be in a bit more relaxed mode in the relative dog days of summer.

NWN will continue to publish every day.

** Energy price watch, updated throughout the day, from Bloomberg. Crude oil prices have dropped back from record levels, but remain well above $70 per barrel.

** California broke its previous record, from last July, for electric power usage, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The forecast is for the old record to be broken again today, but the emergency Power Watch has been cancelled. You can track peak electric power usage here throughout the day at Cal ISO, the California Independent System Operator.

** Continuing coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah War from Pajamas Media.