Tony Blair’s record-setting tenure as a Labour prime minister of
Britain is examined in Part I of this highly critical CBC documentary.
** BLAIR AND WHAT HE MEANS. Arguably the premier politician on the planet, Tony Blair and his departure this week as prime minister of the United Kingdom prompt some thinking about the nature of politics and the state of play as America slowly begins tapping toward the exits in Iraq. Rather than write a biography or even a huge essay on Tony Blair, which I obviously haven’t the time to do, I’ll be bringing these questions up from time to time. They’re of particular import as the Bush era grinds agonizingly to its close. And, of course, Blair is a key ally of California’s governor.
The CBC documentary is very critical, not the way I would do it, and comes at Blair from the left. But it’s valuable because it’s well-done, providing a chronological view, and it provokes thought. How wide a net does a leader need to cast in making decisions? What is an acceptable level of sleaze in political fundraising? How did Iraq go so wrong?
Blair, as you may know, reinvented a moribund political party, won three national elections, the only Labour politician to do so, beginning with his landslide win in 1997, largest in 165 years, and quickly became a major world figure. (As the new Mideast envoy, he’s continuing on the global stage and will continue to be a key player with regard to that part of the world which has become so overwhelmingly important in US presidential politics.)
Probably only Bill Clinton of the world’s politicians can hope to match Blair in terms of political skills, intelligence, speaking ability, and durability. Under Blair, Britain “modernised” as “Cool Britannia,” and indicators on the economy, the environment, and crime continued to improve throughout his decade-plus as British prime minister. He made Britain a more inclusive society. And he settled the bloody, decades long conflict in Northern Ireland. Blair and Clinton formed a strong working partnership as Blair became a global player.
Fatefully, Blair became quite the interventionist abroad. He took Britain to war, in one form or another, five times. First when he and Clinton decided to conduct an air war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq when the Iraqi dictator proved intransigent on weapons inspections and other matter. Next when, at Blair’s determined instigation, NATO launched an air war to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and bring down the Serbian dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic. Then Blair intervened in the African nation of Sierra Leone, with British forces landing to end a brutal civil war.
Then came 9/11, and Blair, who had formed an unlikely friendship with George W. Bush, was quick to spring to America’s side. British resources, notably intelligence, and forces, including its crack special ops forces, were instrumental in helping America overthrow the Taliban’s theocratic dictatorship in Afghanistan and rout Al Qaeda from its redoubt.
Then came Iraq. And that’s a matter for tomorrow.
** THE AIR BOARD FLAP. It’s hard to make out exactly what’s going on with the shake-up late this week at the California Air Resources Board. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was unhappy about the board’s decision to defer air quality action in the Central Valley for more than a decade, which made his promise to sue the US Environmental Protection Agency unless it grants California its customary waiver under the Clean Air Act to implement the state’s landmark law cutting tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases look more than a little dodgy. There is a dispute over who is responsible for the board’s rather paltry opening round of regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Some say the board was doing what top staffers in the Governor’s Office wanted. Others say no.
What is clear is that Arnold Schwarzenegger knows that the implementation of California’s climate change plan will require a blend of strong regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the development of new technologies, and the use of market mechanisms in the form of a cap and trade system.
The plan, although it has its origins in a gubernatorial executive order two years ago, with much work done by Schwarzenegger’s Climate Action Team, is largely arising from AB 32, the law authored by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, who was relatively new to the issue, and former LA Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, who authored the tailpipe emissions law discussed below. Nunez and Senate leader Don Perata are left-liberals who wanted the law to focus primarily on command and control regulatory solutions. Schwarzenegger, as a centrist Republican, is more market-oriented. His office offered a raft of amendments to the bill last year before it was signed.
But when I read the proposed law, it was clear that it was actually rather vague. And that it could accommodate a baseline regulatory approach coupled with the flexibility of market mechanisms in the form, among other things, of a carbon trading market. Schwarzenegger did sign the bill without further heavy amending. So the task since then has been to develop the exact blend of regulation and market. I think the differing sides are pretty close, probably closer than some advocates believe.
** THE CALIFORNIA BUDGET. The Legislature’s budget conference committee began bridging the gap yesterday, with Democrats scaling back on their upgraded spending hopes and agreeing to many of the cuts proposed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Legislative Republicans want more cuts, but haven’t been especially forthcoming about what they might be.
Meanwhile, the state’s constitutional deadline of June 30th comes today and leaves at midnight. It’s a deadline almost always honored by the breach rather than the observance. Here’s what state Controller John Chiang has to say about how the state will fund things before the Legislature adopts a new budget and departs for a summer vacation.
Chiang: “The State has enough cash to pay bills that come due at the end of June and we can keep payments flowing for some essential services. But despite having cash on hand, starting July 1, I am prohibited from making payments to school special education programs, community colleges, local governments, small businesses and state vendors until a budget is in place.”
Nevertheless, Chiang, on behalf of the state, still has the authority to pay for basic funding for schools, health and welfare programs required by federal law, constitutional obligations, state employee payroll, and continuous legislative appropriations. The elected officials won’t get paid, however.
NWN interrupts its coverage of Tony Blair to bring you this message from Apple:
“By Friday, we expect to control the country.” It’s Friday. Actually, it’s iFriday.
** SETTING THE TABLE FOR THE BUSH-PUTIN NON-SUMMIT AT KENNEBUNKPORT THIS WEEKEND. President George W. Bush is up at the old Bush family coastal compound at Kennebunkport, Maine readying to receive his weekend visitor, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Lurking in the background is the president’s far more diplomatic father, George Herbert Walker Bush, the former president/CIA director/UN ambassador whose old hands dominated the Iraq Study Group. (Reviled by the right, rejected by W, now seeing their recommendations slowly but surely adopted.)
In classic Russian fashion, Putin made ready for his social call by having the Russian Navy successfully fire off a submarine-launched missile. They’ve done those before, but have had a little trouble with the newer model. Make that a lot of trouble. With US-Russian relations in a bad patch, the meetings on July 1st and 2nd will be important. The US increasingly feels it needs to settle the Iraq War, and Russia can be helpful there. Britain, just as Tony Blair was in the midst of leaving, has floated a compromise with Iran, which would freeze further development of its nuclear enrichment program but allow current enrichment activities to proceed. That might allow Iran the space to continue dealing on Iraq.
The US also needs to determine precisely what Russia wants, and how much to confront and how much to accommodate. Under Bush, the US looked the other one while Russian forces ruthlessly largely crushed the rebellion in Chechnya. That helped gain bases in Central Asia — all but one of which, the one in Kyrgyzstan, are no longer — and critical help in the takedown of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. It’s not clear that Bush, transfixed by Iraq and fresh from a crushing defeat on his immigration bill, and his team will have thought through all the angles on this summit that is not a summit. But perhaps his father the former president and his old hands have.
** D.C. TERM LIMITS ORGANIZATION LOSES IN CALI COURT OF APPEALS. US Term Limits, the Washington-based group running the campaign to stop a bid to change California’s term limits law lost again before the state appelate court in its effort to challenge Attorney General Jerry Brown’s ballot description of the measure likely to be voted on in the February 5th presidential primary election.
“We are grateful that, once again, the courts have told the out-of-state opponents of reform to stop their cheap political grandstanding,” said Gale Kaufman, chief strategist for the term limits change, which would cut the total time allowed in the Legislature from 12 to 14 years but allow members to serve all those years in one house. Currently, members can serve only six years in the Assembly and eight years in the Senate. The US Term Limits group wanted a description in the ballot pamphlet that emphasized the fact that some current members will be able to stay on longer. But the courts have held that Brown’s description is accurate, and seem to feel that what the group wants is something it can say in a campaign.
Thompson hasn’t been running as well in New Hampshire polling as he has elsewhere. He currently leads in two of the four earliest states. Nevada, which has its own brand of living free, and South Carolina, a diehard state of the old Confederacy which still flies the rebel flag outside its capitol. Here in California, he runs well back. Thompson may be coming off as too conservative for the Golden State’s Republican voters.
** THAT CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN PARTY CONTROVERSY. Oh, that California Republican Party staffing flap. It has two big components. One is the hiring of non-citzens for top jobs, including as the party’s director a fellow from Australia named Michael Kamburowski who spent a month in jail on an immigration law charge and benefited from two marriages in gaining a green card. (Readers recall I had cared less about the other guy, the deputy political director from Canada, not thinking it worthy of an item while the San Francisco Chronicle made that a front page story.)
The other big component is the Grover Norquist factor. He’s the longtime controversial Washington conservative power broker and associate of disgraced stringpuller Jack Abramoff. Norquist, according to various press reports used his issue-related committees to funnel money from Abramoff clients to various PR campaigns. He was the longtime boss of new California Republican Party chairman Ron Nehring and of the short-lived party director from the land down under, who also had a particularly skimpy political background for such a key post. While Nehring no longer works for him — as he told me when I asked a few months ago — I did subsequently learn that Norquist is a client of Nehring’s new consulting firm.
With the state party leadership leaning hard to the right after last February’s convention, the party’s new leaders are sensitive to anyone forming the impression that they are part of a right-wing cabal with controversial Washington ties. Follow the sequence from Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.
On Tuesday, I reported the following: In an op-ed piece in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, Republican National Committee member Tim Morgan, the sole vote on the state party’s board against hiring Australian citizen Michael Kamburowski, decries the lack of thorough review in his appointment by state Republican chairman Ron Nehring as the party’s top staffer. Morgan says he was slated to head up a search effort for what is in essence an executive director but that new state chairman Ron Nehring immediately short-circuited the process. He also mentions that controversial Washington conservative power broker Grover Norquist came to California to help Kamburowski get the post, appearing before state party board members.
Jon Fleischman, proprietor of the conservative Republican Flash Report web site and Southern California vice chairman of the party, told me the decision was taken in a conference call, and that Norquist was not on the call. But he confirms that Norquist came in to California on Kamburowski’s behalf.
“Grover was out,” Fleischman told me this morning, “and traveled with Ron and Michael around California to meet with folks,” talking with key Republicans just prior to the decision.
Late that afternoon, I got a message from Jon: “I think I have made an assumption that wasn’t accurate. So I think I should clarify: I went to a meeting down in San Diego at which Grover spoke, and afterwards a few of us had lunch, including Kamburowski.
“I didn’t speak with Grover about Kamburowski, as I had already met him earlier that week when he along with Ron Nehring came up to Orange County. I knew that Grover was heading off to Sacramento and I assumed that it was with Nehring and Kamburowski. I assumed incorrectly. (There’s a saying, you know what happens when you assume…)”
Prior to that message, I’d heard that Nehring had told at least one reporter that Norquist hadn’t really been in California pushing for Kamburowski’s appointment. Although he was out, coincidentally, just prior to the decision. I decided to wait.
The next morning, the Chronicle reported, again on the front page, that the party may have violated federal law by not inspecting Kamburowski’s green card. Okay, didn’t look at his green card. Wow. Nehring strongly pooh-poohed the idea that Norquist had pushed for Kamburowski’s hiring. Then came this passage.
“But Jon Fleischman, publisher of the widely read GOP Web site FlashReport.org. and a member of the state GOP board of directors, told The Chronicle that he was invited to at least two meetings with Nehring, Norquist and Kamburowski in March, when the state’s chief operations officer job was open. Those included a March 12 meeting of Nehring’s “San Diego Center-right Coalition,” held at the offices of the San Diego Republican Party, which Kamburowski attended and later an intimate lunch the same day with Norquist and other top party insiders.
“Grover was there, as was Nehring and Kamburowski and some of the other people who worked for Grover, and we spent a little time talking to him,” recalled Fleischman.
“It was very clear, it was a ‘Come on down to this meeting, meet Mike Kamburowski, say hi to Grover’ and all mixed together,” he said. “It was clearly part of the credentials that were presented — the work (Kamburowski) had done for Grover. Clearly.”
“Other Republicans said Norquist and Kamburowski then went on to Northern California and Sacramento for similar meetings with other influential party insiders.
I asked Jon how this was all to be reconciled.
“There seems to be an over-fixation on whether Grover lobbied CRP officials to hire Mike Kamburowksi. As far as I am aware, he did not. Grover and I never spoke about it.
“That said, does anyone really care? If he had mentioned something to me, I would not have thought it odd. Grover Norquist and his organization, Americans for Tax Reform, have been a fixture on the GOP side of the aisle going back many years. Ron Nehring worked for ATR for years. I guess that might disqualify him from being a union-organizer, an advocate for tax increases?”
Meanwhile, Fleischman published a small column on his site called “Get Over It.” And his associate from the Young Americans for Freedom, Brandon Powers, attacked RNC member Tim Morgan for allegedly misusing party funds in various trips on party business, saying Morgan’s account was fictitious. Other senior Republicans described this as an attempt at distraction.
** LONDON TERROR SCARE. I’m caught up as anyone in the unfolding terror scare in London, and know nothing more than anyone else watching cable news. One bit of speculation on my part, and it’s only that, is that it may be an attempt to pressure the new British government to step away from Afghanistan, where British forces have actually become more involved as their involvement in Iraq slowly diminishes.
** DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL FORUM, AND A POLL. The Democratic presidential field had another forum last night at Howard University, focused mostly on African American issues. Hillary Clinton won widespread plaudits for another polished performance, and Barack Obama also scored well. Clinton, of course, leads in the national polls of Democrats, with Obama running second.
The Clinton campaign is saying she is raising more money this quarter than in the first, but less than Obama is raising. Obama is mum on the question of how much money he’s raised — as he was in the first quarter, when he let Clinton reveal her numbers first — but has announced that he now has 250,000 contributors. He’s more than doubled the number of contributors he had in the first quarter, which was easily a record.
** SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCAST FROM FIRE SITE AT 10 AM. This morning Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tours the site of another large fire, this in Kern County in the southern part of the Central Valley, then at 10 AM conducts a press conference and live webcast. The Lake Tahoe fire, incidentally, is now over 70% contained.
** AL QAEDA’S AMERICAN PRISONERS STILL NOT LOCATED. American troops are now in the midst of a 48th day of searching for the remaining two US soldiers captured by Al Qaeda in an ambush south of Baghdad. They have had no luck so far. A video put out by Al Qaeda forces in Iraq claims that all three men were executed after being captured. But, with the exception of the Californian found floating in the Euphrates River, that claim can’t be confirmed. The US high command in Baghdad has revealed that ID cards for the other two American prisoners were found in an Al Qaeda safehouse on June 9th.
The defeat of the big immigration bill in the U.S. Senate yesterday ends, for now, a saga that began last year with massive demonstrations in Los Angeles and other cities around California and much of the country and confident predictions that “the wave of history,” as one organizer put it, would sweep over the political process and create a new era. But the wave crested and broke, and the actual legislation proved toxic to key elements in both major political parties.
Last year, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spoke at a huge rally in LA. California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez helped lead a big march, then conferred in Washington with Senator Ted Kennedy, author with Republican John McCain of the bill to provide a pathway to legalization for 12 million illegal immigrants, increase border security, and create guest worker programs. It was a very heady time.
This year, demonstrations were much smaller, and Villaraigosa was out of town, touring Latin America at the time when police indiscriminately attacked protesters and journalists in his city’s MacArthur Park. The wheels on the unstoppable movement were coming off even before that. So what happened yesterday wasn’t much of a surprise.
After going down earlier this month on a procedural vote following the sunsetting of its guest worker program at the insistence of organized labor, the Senate comprehensive immigration revamp measure was revived, only to go down again yesterday on what most say is the final attempt before the 2008 elections. The bill needed 60 votes to end debate and move forward. It received only 46. Of which only 12 were Republican, yet another sign of the dramatically downsized influence of President George W. Bush.
Even had the bill managed to get out of the Senate, it likely would have languished in the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had told Bush he needed to provide 70 Republican votes there, as many Democratic members of Congress are opposed.
Indeed, most of organized labor — as I predicted last year when the immigration issue emerged as a frontburner matter following large demonstrations around the country — is opposed to this bill, which would provide a pathway to legalization for the 12 million or so illegal immigrants already here, some new border controls, and a large guest worker program. That ran very contrary to the claims made widely by enthusiasts for legalization and more immigration.
Although Republicans are getting the credit or blame, depending upon one’s perpsective for killing the bill, it’s interesting how little Democratic presidential candidates referred to it, much less championed it. They will all privately breathe a sigh of relief that they needn’t deal with it in their campaigns.
On the Republican side, everyone was opposed except John McCain, who co-authored the bill with Democratic Ted Kennedy. Having recovered from a poor start to this campaign, McCain saw his campaign smothered by the immigration issue. If he is to have a chance at the nomination, which he still does, he needed this bill to lose. Though I doubt he saw it that way.
McCain had seen his support in primaries around the country melt down over the perception that he was supporting “amnesty” for illegal immigrants already here — “criminal aliens” in the superheated parlance of the right and “undocumented workers” in the politically correct language of the left — and doing nothing of importance to secure the border against new illegal immigrants. Frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, a Republican moderate on the issue, piled on, noting that the bill lacked security provisions to identify and follow the movements of illegal immigrants.
On the other side of the spectrum, advocates heady with the enthusiasm of last year’s mass demonstrations claimed a united front that never actually existed. Support for humane and realistic treatment of illegal immigrants already here, many of them working jobs Americans don’t want, didn’t equate to support for a de facto open borders policy, which is how many viewed the bill. And more specifically to the point, claims of the backing of organized labor were vastly overblown.
While some unions have flourished by organizing illegal immigrants into their membership base, most of labor opposed the legislation, on account of its very liberal guest worker provisions. While these made some on the left, looking for ways to increase the number of people coming across the border, and many in the corporate world, looking for an assured supply of low-cost labor, they were anathema to most of labor.
For two reasons. First, they feared that guest workers would end up competing with their workers. Second, they believed that a larger supply of low-cost labor would have a down draft effect on wages overall.
There were other problems, of course, including the sense that the bill would make for a growing presence of unassimilated residents. Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Edwards both called for requirements that immigrants learn English.
But the deepest problem was that it was being pushed by a president, George W. Bush, who is highly distracted and lacks fundamental credibility as a leader. In order to solve this terribly complex issue in a humane and sophisticated way, serious presidential leadership will be required. With Bush’s head stuck in the miasma of his Iraq policy, his credibility burnt down to the waterline by the same, that was simply absent.
Tony Blair leaves Downing Street yesterday for the last time as
prime minister and proceeds, in his now armored Jaguar, to Buckingham
Palace to tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth in this BBC footage.
** GORDON BROWN’S NEW CABINET AND FUTURE U.S. RELATIONS. As expected, new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has created a mostly new Cabinet. Perhaps the most intriguing appointee is the new foreign minister, 41-year old David Milliband, an Oxford grad who did his post-grad work at MIT. He was already a member of the Blair Cabinet, as the environment minister. In that post, he declared climate change the key mobilizing issue of the age, and late last year floated the idea of issuing “carbon credit cards” to British citizens. It’s an intriguing notion, which is not entirely clear to me, but it seems to involve determining each individual’s carbon output, establishing some sort of allowance, and promoting a market in trading offsets between individuals.
Something not dissimilar can already be done, and is increasingly being done. You can determine your own production of greenhouse gases — in your home, your driving, and your air travel — through various online sources, and figure out ways to lower your GHG production and to purchase carbon offsets for what you do not lower.
In addition to his environmentalism, and perhaps most immediately telling with regard to Britain’s future role with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere in Terror War activities, Milliband is known as an early skeptic of the Iraq War. Though he did vote for it in the House of Commons. So this is a subtle yet not so subtle sign of Brown widening the distance between Britain and the Bush Administration, without any sort of immediate pull-out.
** SCHWARZENEGGER APPOINTS FIREFIGHTERS UNION HEAD TO STATE FIRE BOARD. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today appointed Lou Paulson, president of the California Professional Firefighters union to the California Board of Fire Services. It’s interesting in that Paulson and the firefighters u/nion went all out fo defeat Schwarzenegger during his notably unsuccessful “Year of Reform” special election initiative agenda of 2005. Firefighters were outraged by what they saw as Schwarzenegger meddling with their pensions and health benefits, and that outrage turned to a frenzy when they discovered that the former action superstar’s then misfiring yet very high-priced political team had come up with an initiative that could deny benefits to the survivors of public safety personel killed in the line of duty.
Then last year, Paulson and the union backed Democrat Phil Angelides heavily in the governor’s race. But Schwarzenegger may owe them a debt of gratitude for their work in the race. How so?
Angelides was running behind eBay honcho-turned-state Controller Steve Westly in the Democratic primary. Until the firefighters put their stamp on a $10 million “independent expenditure” campaign for Angelides almost entirely funded by the development empire of Angelo Tsakopoulos, Angelides’ longtime patron and business partner and also finance chairman of his campaign. The firefighters provided TV production facilities and people for TV ads depicting cops, firefighters, and health workers plumping for Angelides. He won narrowly. Which provided the perfect set-up for Schwarzenegger: An underfunded, untelegenic opponent who believed that the best way to beat the former Mr. Universe was to remind California voters that he was really a clone of George W. Bush.
** CALIFORNIA LABOR CHIEF BLASTS DEMOCRATIC LEGISLATURE FOR PASSAGE OF INDIAN GAMING COMPACTS. California Labor Federation chief Art Pulaski issued the following statement: It is with deep dismay that California’s working people have witnessed the passage of tribal gaming compacts, agreements that have all but guaranteed that a generation of workers in California’s fastest growing service sector will be left without the protection of state and federal laws or a union contract.
There is no more important issue to workers than the right to organize themselves and collectively bargain for fair wages and improved working conditions. This is a right that millions of workers hold dear as a symbol of respect and fairness, and which historically has secured the path to better lives for their families.
The middle class has eroded as union membership has declined. Our legislative allies agree that the best way to rebuild our middle class is to create jobs with living wages and decent benefits. And our legislative allies know that a growing and vibrant group of workers with the right to organize is the best way to achieve that goal. Unfortunately, with this vote, the Legislature has abandoned California’s 100,000 current and future casino workers who now risk languishing among the working poor.
We express our deepest gratitude to the dozens of casino workers who injected the Capitol and district offices, first weekly, then daily, with stories of their struggles on the job. It is their collective voice that has challenged the power of the state’s wealthiest casino owners. Today, a clear choice was made. The Legislature chose to stand with wealthy employers over the workers who create their prosperity.
Labor had several issues, but the principal issue was card check. That is a technique by which a union can become authorized by the workers by getting them to sign up on cards, rather than have a secret ballot election.
Even had the bill managed to get out of the Senate, it likely would have languished in the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had told Bush he needed to provide 70 Republican votes there, as many Democrats are opposed. Indeed, most of organized labor — as I predicted last year when the immigration issue emerged as a frontburner matter following large demonstrations around the country — is opposed to this bill, which would provide a pathway to legalization for the 12 million or so illegal immigrants already here, some new border controls, and a large guest worker program. That ran very contrary to the claims made widely by enthusiasts for legalization and more immigration.
Although Republicans are getting the credit or blame, depending upon one’s perpsective for killing the bill, it’s interesting how little Democratic presidential candidates referred to it, much less championed it. They will all privately breathe a sigh of relief that they needn’t deal with it in their campaigns.
On the Republican side, everyone was opposed except John McCain, who co-authored the bill with Democratic Ted Kennedy. Having recovered from a poor start to this campaign, McCain saw his campaign smothered by the immigration issue. If he is to have a chance at the nomination, which he still does, he needed this bill to lose. Though I doubt he saw it that way.
Meanwhile, word out of Washington is that Secretary of State Condi Rice wants to be the one to negotiate peace in the Middle East, rather than new Mideast envoy Blair. That seems, let us say, unlikely.
Says Blair: “I have to prepare the ground for a negotiated settlement, and the key to that is to prepare the Palestinians for statehood. There have to be two states – Israel confident in its security and Palestinians with a viable state not merely in terms of its territory, but also in terms of its institutions, its capability – otherwise there won’t be a deal.
“That’s the reality.
“Anywhere you go in the world, this is the issue which concerns people, not merely because of the plight of the Israelis and the Palestinians, but also the symbolism of the dispute, what it says about the state of the relationship between the Western world and the Muslim world and between different cultures and religions. It is a fundamental issue. I will be starting straight away. I will probably go out in July.”
Without Al Gore in the mix, it’s Clinton 41%, Obama 25%, and Edwards 12%. With Gore, it’s Clinton 35%, Obama 20%, Gore 19%, and Edwards 9%.
Among Republicans, it’s Rudy Giuliani 29%, John McCain 15%, Mitt Romney 12%, and Fred Thompson 11%. Although Thompson is riding a wave of national publicity, and leading in some other early states, he isn’t catching on yet in California, the biggest primary prize of all.
But support for the Legislature has diminished, as have expectations of great post-partisan achievements coming out of Sacramento. This comes in the wake of the right turn by most partisan Republicans in the state, as well as a sharply declining mood about national politics. President George W. Bush is extraordinarily unpopular, as is his latest policy in Iraq. I should probably have a default key to push to say that, so I don’t have to waste time typing what should be obvious.
** CASINO TRIBES WIN. As reported last night, and forecast long before that, California’s Indian casino tribes are getting their new compacts negotiated last year with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration. The administration negotiated some side deals to allow for better accounting practices. But the so-called card check procedure that labor wanted, wherein unions would be recognized by signing workers up on cards, rather than by winning elections, doesn’t fly. Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez put out a statement late yesterday acknowledging that the deals are acceptable, but saying next time labor must do much better.
Meanwhile, the biggest expansion of slot machines in California’s history is poised to occur. The move by Assembly Democrats, which comes in the wake of last week’s spirited but small rally outside the state Capitol by labor, will likely forestall a threatened casino tribe campaign against the term limits change initiative which will almost certainly appear on next February’s presidential primary ballot.
** AL QAEDA’S AMERICAN PRISONERS STILL NOT LOCATED. American troops are now in the midst of a 47th day of searching for the remaining two US soldiers captured by Al Qaeda in an ambush south of Baghdad. They have had no luck so far. A video put out by Al Qaeda forces in Iraq claims that all three men were executed after being captured. But, with the exception of the Californian found floating in the Euphrates River, that claim can’t be confirmed. The US high command in Baghdad has revealed that ID cards for the other two American prisoners were found in an Al Qaeda safehouse on June 9th.
Prime Minister Tony Blair and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger do a joint interview this past March in London, with Schwarzenegger participating by satellite.
** CASINO TRIBES WIN. The Indian gaming compacts negotiated by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger are, as predicted, going through. Some side deals have been negotiated that address accounting issues — but do not make labor happy — and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez is on board. More to follow.
I’m also going to get hold of video of Blair’s last Question Time today, a weekly practice in which the prime minister goes to Parliament and, yes, answers questions from fellow MPs. It’s all very close-in, as you’ll see, about the scale of the town halls that Arnold Schwarzenegger does these days, as you’ve seen in NWN videos, though the questions are much more probing. Opposition Leader David Cameron was sitting about six feet away from Blair as he peppered away.
As for his new role as Mideast envoy representing the Quartet powers of America, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations, Blair — who is setting up his private office in London — will have a new office in Jerusalem. His charge is going to be evolving over time. At first, he will work with the Palestinians, who are in near total disarray. But since Blair, and most experts, believe that the crises in the Middle East are all intertwined, I suspect he’ll be doing still more than that.
** GIULIANI TO CALIFORNIA. Rudy Giuliani, who still holds a sizeable lead in the California Republican presidential primary in a forthcoming poll, will be in California tomorrow and Friday for fundraising and public events in Sacramento and Orange County.
** SCHWARZENEGGER IN A DAY OF CAPITOL MEETINGS, WITH GOOD NEWS FORTHCOMING IN A NEW POLL. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will spend tomorrow in a day of private meetings in and around the state Capitol. He has some very good news coming in a new poll.
** CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN PARTY CONTROVERSY. Yes, I do have more material on the controversy surrounding the hiring and departure of an Australian citizen with major immigration problems — and, as has new state Republican chairman Ron Nehring, longstanding ties to contoversial Washington conservative power broker Grover Norquist — as the party’s top staffer. But it’s a bigger day than that, not to mention a busy day, so it’s held for tomorrow.
** SCHWARZENEGGER AND GARAMENDI AT LAKE TAHOE FIRE. Just back from his conference in London yesterday with outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair, now the special Mideast envoy, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger joined Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in a tour of some of the fire devastation at Lake Tahoe and a briefing on the overall situation.
Joining Schwarzenegger and Garamendi in the event carried live on CNN were Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons and Nevada Lieutenant Governor Brian Krolicki. (The big blue lake in the Sierra Nevada is intersected by the state line between the Golden State and the Silver State.) With Schwarzenegger out of the country from Sunday through Tuesday, Democrat Garamendi, who has great knowledge of the region through his efforts as a state senator to preserve Lake Tahoe, functioned as Acting Governor and oversaw much of the emergency response effort. It was clear from viewing the event, and from what I know of their long history, that there is an easy rapport between Schwarzenegger and Garamendi — who is very familiar with these issues as the former state insurance commissioner and deputy US interior secretary — and the two frequently referred to one another during their statements and the press conference and chatted in the background.
The fire is less than half-contained, yet officials are fairly confident they’ll have it fully under control in the next few days. In any event, Schwarzenegger, who called firefighters “the true action heroes,” says it will be safe for people to visit Lake Tahoe over the 4th of July, when it is a huge tourist and vacation attraction. 3500 acres have been burned and about 200 homes destroyed so far, along with other structures. Fortunately, no lives have been lost. Despite the presence of the lake, the terrain around Tahoe is quite arid now, with the Sierra snow pack for the year having been at a 30-year low at just 29% of normal capacity. Schwarzenegger, Garamendi and others attribute this to the greenhouse effect. To the extent there is a controversy so far, it’s over how much brush and trees should have been cut back in the vicinity of homes and structures. Some say environmentalists are to blame. Some point the finger at the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. There will be plenty of time to sort that out.
But Blair achieved a lasting settlement of the seemingly intractable Northern Ireland crisis, also involving diametrically opposed religious groups.
** L.A. CONGRESSIONAL SPECIAL ELECTION. State Assemblywoman Laura Richardson, an African American, has won the Democratic nomination over state Senator Jenny Oropez in yesterday’s special election to replace the late Congresswoman Juanita Millender McDonald, who died two months ago. Richardson, backed by most of labor, defeated Oropeza, backed by casino tribes, by what looks like a 38% to 31% margin. The district is a safe Democratic seat, traditionally a black seat, and Richardson’s victory in a run-off is assured.
On the Democratic side, it’s John Edwards 26%, Barack Obama 21%, Hillary Clinton 20%, and Bill Richardson 11%.
** FROM LONDON TO LAKE TAHOE. SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCAST FROM TAHOE AT NOON TODAY. Just back in Sacramento from conferring in London with outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair and leading executives and environmental experts, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger journeys to the Sierra Nevada Mountains today to tour the big fire at Lake Tahoe. Along with Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, who oversaw the fire emergency in Schwarzenegger’s absence, and state Insurance Commissioner Stever Poizner, Schwarzenegger and several state officials, legislators and local officials will view damage from the fire and receive a briefing from fire officials. At noon, Schwarzenegger will do a live webcast and press conference from Lake Tahoe.
** AL QAEDA’S AMERICAN PRISONERS STILL NOT LOCATED. American troops are now in the midst of a 46th day of searching for the remaining two US soldiers captured by Al Qaeda in an ambush south of Baghdad. They have had no luck so far. A video put out by Al Qaeda forces in Iraq claims that all three men were executed after being captured. But, with the exception of the Californian found floating in the Euphrates River, that claim can’t be confirmed. The US high command in Baghdad has revealed that ID cards for the other two American prisoners were found in an Al Qaeda safehouse on June 9th.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who just stepped down today,
takes part in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s climate change bill signing ceremony last fall on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay in this NWN video.
It was participation in an historic day and another move in extending California’s work with countries around the world on climate change. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his friend, outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair, met early yesterday at 10 Downing Street in London reviewing the state of play on climate change and other issues, holding a press conference, and conducting a roundtable with The Climate Group of top British executives and environmental officials before touring an energy efficient school.
Blair’s office announced that it was the final official visit for Blair during his more than 10 year tenure as Britain’s prime minister — the longest of any Labour prime minister in Britain’s history — as well as his last press conference in office. By the time you read this today, Blair will have stepped down as prime minister, handing off the post to new Labour Party leader and longtime Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) Gordon Brown.
Last year, Blair and Schwarzenegger held several meetings in California as the former action movie superstar made plans for the state’s greenhouse gas reduction program and signed the first of several accords with other states and foreign principalities committing the state to working jointly on climate change. Last fall, Blair participated live by satellite when Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez’s landmark climate change bill in a dramatic ceremony on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay.
Yesterday morning in London, Schwarzenegger praised Britain under Blair for helping show the way for California in reducing greenhouse gas emissions while growing the British economy. He also praised Blair for his impending appointment as international envoy for the Middle East — a post for which the outgoing prime minister has reportedly been approved by the Quartet group of the US, UN, European Union, and Russia — but mock lamented that Blair could not play a similar role with regard to the global greenhouse effect.
The day before, Schwarzenegger held a wide-ranging discusssion with new French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysee Palace. The two discussed several matters, including Schwarzenegger’s 2008 trade mission to Europe and possible collaboration between California and France on climate change.
Schwarzenegger sees this as a particularly good time for that involvement, since France will be assuming the rotating presidency of the European Union.
Clearly, Schwarzenegger has new climate change accords in mind, with France and perhaps the entire European Union. This would put even more pressure on the federal government to act. And eventually it would likely lead to California being part of a very large and probably more efficient carbon trading market.
Europe has had problems with the start-up of its carbon trading scheme, as Blair has acknowledged and London roundtable participants discussed. California can learn from that as it implements its own climate change law. And as critics, and Schwarzenegger himself, have noted, the state’s Air Resources Board can do more starting out from a regulatory standpoint to reduce greenhouse gas emissions before moving to carbon trading in an overall cap and trade set-up than it has so far.
While the visit with Sarkozy was important for Schwarzenegger’s plans — the newly elected French president, touted by many American rightists, is actually a staunch greenhouse warrior who is already playing a central role in European politics, which are continuing to unfold in the wake of the European Council summit last week in Brussels — and his Sunday visit to this Austrian hometown held sentimental as well as political relevance, the trip was prompted by Blair’s retirement. Which, as I write it, I see is an odd way of characterizing what Blair has just done, since he is 54 years old and moving to at least one and probably two major international posts in the future. (In the near term, the Mideast envoyship. In the longer term, a prospective permanent presidency of the European Union.)
Schwarzenegger presented his friend, an avid guitarist, with a custom electric guitar made by a disabled California artist. The two men, to the surprise of many, actually have much in common. Blair uttered a very Arnold-like sentiment in his speech last month in which he announced his plan to step down as prime minister, saying: “Politics may be the art of the possible, but in life it’s good to give the impossible a go.”
Each has found the sweet spot of politics in the center. Blair remade the nearly moribund Labour Party in Britain, reinventing it in the early 1990s as “New Labour.” While it’s not what the hard left wanted, it worked as in 1997 he won the biggest landslide election in 165 years, along with two subsequent national elections. The economy, education, and the environment have all improved throughout his tenure. His problem has been the downward spiral of Iraq, in which venture Britain has been America’s staunchest and, for practical purposes, only real ally. Blair’s influence on the Bush Administration and the president himself, with whom Blair has a warm relationship as he had with Bill Clinton before him, was frequently blunted by hardcore conservatives such as Vice President Dick Cheney, but that’s a matter for another piece.
Like Blair, Schwarzenegger has flourished in the center. The former Mr. Universe is back to his original centrist leanings of 2002 and 2003, expressed prior to his rather centrist Republican campaign in the 2003 recall election and first bipartisan year of governance prior to the rightward shift of 2005.
So it’s natural that two essentially optimistic men who have found great political success by eschewing the old dogmas of their political parties would find a great deal of common ground, forging a lasting political alliance in the process.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair steps down from the prime ministership tomorrow after over 10 creative and tumultuous years in office. He met today with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at 10 Downing Street. Here is his speech last month in which he announces his intentions and steps away as head of the Labour Party.
Of the four Quartet members, Russia was least enthusiastic, with the major push for Blair coming from the US and EU. Ironically, Blair and Russian President Vladimir Putin got on very well in the beginning. But major strains have emerged lately. London is a world center of Russian emigres, especially of the super-rich kind. Substantial criticism of Moscow emanates from the emigre community. And London was the location of a spectacular murder of a Putin critic. British authorities later identified former Soviet agents as prime suspects in the murder, but Russia is stonewalling the investigation. In addition, Russia has just essentially seized a large natural gas field back from BP (the former British Petroleum), which is going along with its reduction to minority owner in a bid to keep doing business in the country.
Meanwhile, with the politics around Blair’s appointment seemingly settled, US policy in the Middle East becomes more unsettled by the day. The victory of Hamas in the Gaza Strip wreck’s Bush’s play in Palestine, and points up the weakness of the Palestinian and Israeli leadership with whom Blair has to work. Both camps like Blair, but if they can’t deliver anything, he’s not off to a flying start.
And the giant elephant in the room, the ever evolving US policy in Iraq, already deeply unpopular in America, just received two more body blows with two senior Republican senators calling for a US exit plan. Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, the highly respected former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Ohio Senator George Voinovich have both just labeled the Bush surge strategy a loser in real world politics.
Voinovich, incidentally, is also the former governor of Ohio, the state which barely granted Bush re-election in 2004. And many years ago, Voinovich began his rise into big-time national politics by winning election as mayor of Cleveland. Who did he beat for the office? One Dennis Kucinich, now the anti-war firebrand congressman running a quixotic campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, then the “boy mayor” of Cleveland.
I’m not sure that answer works all too well. As Democratic candidate John Edwards is learning with regard to his work for a hedge fund while advocating for the poor. Meanwhile, Thompson’s emergence, showing the very unsettled nature of the Republican race following the popular collapse of the Bush presidency, has taken the form of a strong second in most national polls, new leads in the early states of Nevada and South Carolina, and signs that he is moving into second in Iowa.
** CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN TROUBLES: THE GROVER NORQUIST FACTOR. In an op-ed piece in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, Republican National Committee member Tim Morgan, the sole vote on the state party’s board against hiring Australian citizen Michael Kamburowski, decries the lack of thorough review in his appointment by state Republican chairman Ron Nehring as the party’s top staffer. Morgan says he was slated to head up a search effort for what is in essence an executive director but that new state chairman Ron Nehring immediately short-circuited the process.
He also mentions that controversial Washington conservative power broker Grover Norquist came to California to help Kamburowski get the post, appearing before state party board members. Jon Fleischman, proprietor of the conservative Republican Flash Report web site and Southern California vice chairman of the party, says the decision was taken in a conference call, and that Norquist was not on the call. But he confirms that Norquist came in to California on Kamburowski’s behalf.
“Grover was out,” Fleischman told me this morning, “and traveled with Ron and Michael around California to meet with folks,” talking with key Republicans just prior to the decision.
Who is Grover Norquist? He is the former employer of both Nehring and Kamburowski, who worked on Norquist projects in the 1990s. Nehring is no longer on Norquist’s staff, but he does have Norquist as a client of his new consulting firm.
Wall Street Journal editorial board member John Fund says that Norquist is at the hub of conservative politics in Washington, D.C. He was a co-author of Newt Ginggrich’s “Contract With America.” He has a web of issue-related groups. He is a longtime friend and close associate of disgraced influence peddler Jack Abramoff, having run Abramoff’s campaign to be head of the national College Republicans back in the day. More recently, Norquist, according to reports, ran funds from Abramoff clients through his issue-related groups.
A key Norquist quote: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
** BILL CLINTON MAKES THE PITCH. In a missive to supporters and other interested parties, former President Bill Clinton just tossed a big pitch for his wife’s presidential campaign. I hope you enjoyed the Sopranos spoof Hillary and I did last week. Campaigns should be fun, but they are also serious business — especially now. … America is ready for change, and we need a president ready to lead on day one. …
Hillary can be a great president, but she needs your support to win. And she needs it now as we come down to the wire in the last critical days of this quarter. Come June 30, all the campaigns will be measured on what they raised in the last three months. We have to raise more online before then to show her strength and keep her campaign going.
The fact is, our opponents may very well outraise us — and we can’t afford to lose momentum now. …
Last year, he and Schwarzenegger held several meetings in California as the former action movie superstar made plans for the state’s greenhouse gas reduction program. Later, Blair participated live by satellite when Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez’s landmark climate change bill in a dramatic ceremony on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay.
This morning in London, Schwarzenegger praised Britain under Blair for helping show the way for California in reducing greenhouse gas emissions while growing the British economy. He praised Blair for his impending appointment as international envoy for the Middle East — a post for which the outgoing prime minister has reportedly been approved by the Quartet group of the US, UN, European Union, and Russia — but mock lamented that Blair could not play a similar role with regard to the global greenhouse effect.
I’ll have a full report on this tomorrow, when Blair steps down as prime minister.
Describing the state party as “marginalized” by its ideological estrangment from the successful centrism of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the article quotes former state Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte: “They either failed to do due diligence and therefore did not know, not only about his citizenship status but the pending lawsuit, or they did know and didn’t care. Either their process is broken or their judgment is off.”
** AL QAEDA’S AMERICAN PRISONERS STILL NOT LOCATED. American troops are now in the midst of a 45th day of searching for the remaining two US soldiers captured by Al Qaeda in an ambush south of Baghdad. They have had no luck so far. A video put out by Al Qaeda forces in Iraq claims that all three men were executed after being captured. But, with the exception of the Californian found floating in the Euphrates River, that claim can’t be confirmed. The US high command in Baghdad has revealed that ID cards for the other two American prisoners were found in an Al Qaeda safehouse on June 9th.
This was Hillary Clinton’s campaign song, prior to the controversial choice of Celine Dion’s Air Canada theme, You and I. It was also former California Governor (now Attorney General) Jerry Brown’s theme song in his 1992 presidential primary campaign against Hillary’s husband. Right Here, Right Now, from the British group Jesus Jones.
** GIULIANI TO CALIFORNIA, ROMNEY USES PERSONAL FUNDS. Not surprisingly, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani comes to California later this week as the dash for the cash prior to the end of the second quarter fundraising period continues. It’s not clear if he is still the Republican presidential frontrunner.
On the one hand, he still leads Fred Thompson in most national polls. On the other hand, he is now behind in the four earliest states. Thompson has taken the lead in Nevada and South Carolina. And Mitt Romney, who today said that he is putting more money from his personal fortune into his campaign coffers — he did $2.35 million in the first quarter — has leads in Iowa and New Hampshire after spending unanswered millions on TV advertising.
Schwarzenegger sees this as a particularly good time for that involvement, since France will be assuming the rotating presidency of the European Union. I’ll have a fuller report on this later.
** CALI REPUBLICANS HAVE NEW TOP STAFFER. The California Republican Party, reeling in the wake of the departure of its chief operating officer, an Australian citizen who repeatedly ran afoul of US immigration law, has a new interim top staffer. He comes out of the party’s conservative heartland. Bill Christiansen was the longtime executive director of the Orange County Republican Party. Later, he was executive director of the Arizona Republican Party.
** EDWARDS ON TONIGHT. John and Elizabeth Edwards will appear tonight on The Tonight Show. They’re in California to raise money as the sprint to the end of the fundraising quarter continues. Host Jay Leno has a good set-up for a spirited segment. Elizabeth Edwards announced in San Francisco, where she took part in the annual Gay Pride festivities, over the weekend that she supports gay and lesbian marriage. John Edwards does not, though he does support civil unions.
** OBAMA TV ADS NOW ON. Barack Obama is making a sudden move in Iowa, where polls show him close to a lead. Here are the two TV ads he has just launched. They are introductory spots. One, called “Carry,” is about his bipartisan success in the Illinois Senate on health care, ethics reform, and worker programs. The other, called “Choices,” is about his background as a young man and decision to work as a community organizer in Chicago, turning down the big money offers that came his way as president of the Harvard Law Review.
** NO SCHWARZENEGGER WEBCASTS FROM EUROPE. Unfortunately, there will be no webcasts of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger with French President Nicolas Sarkozy or British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
** OBAMA TO LAUNCH TV ADVERTISING IN IOWA. NWN previously reported that Barack Obama’s campaign was exploring doing TV ads in early states. Today it announced that two TV ads will begin airing in Iowa, where the Illinois senator is in a three-way statistical dead heat with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in the latest polling. The ads are introductory spots and will be linked to here when available. The strategy of early TV advertising has worked well for Republican Mitt Romney, who’s already spent millions on media buys.
** SCHWARZENEGGER IN AUSTRIA YESTERDAY, FRANCE TODAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger returned to his native Graz, Austria yesterday for the first time since his name was stripped from the city’s sports stadium after he approved the execution of a famous LA gang leader convicted of murder. It’s only his second trip to Austria since his election as governor of California in the dramatic 2003 recall election. Schwarzenegger retains his Austrian citizenship as well as his American citizenship.
Today the European Union member meets with new French President Nicolas Sarkozy to discuss trade and a possible pact between California and France to combat climate change. Tomorrow, the former action movie superstar will be in Britain to confer with his friend, outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair, who leaves office on Wednesday. The two will further their alliance on climate change. I’m going to find out about possible webcasts of these events.
On the Democratic side, Clinton is first with 39%, Barack Obama is second with 17%, John Edwards third with 12%, and Bill Richardson fourth with 7%.
Fred Thompson becomes the third candidate so far this year to lead in Nevada. He’s at 25%, Mitt Romney is at 20%, one-time leader Rudy Giuliani is at 17%, and John McCain, who took a lead there last month, has slid to 8% amidst the immigration controversy (He’s co-author of the Senate bill with Ted Kennedy, not a popular figure among many Republican primary/caucus voters).
Keep in mind these polls are early, and numbers in a state presidential primary or caucus can turn very rapidly with the onset of very active campaigning. While the Democrats in particular have made a number of forays into Nevada — and held the first two presidential forums of the campaign — there has been very little competitive engagement so far.
** ANTI-GOP PARTY CHAIRMAN WEB SITE SPRINGS UP. Just like that, within hours of the resignation of the top staffer for the California Republican Party following the revelation of his troubled immigration background, a web site has sprung up calling for the ouster of the man who championed him, state Republican chairman Ron Nehring. As you can see, research reveals that it was done through an anonymous registration service in Arizona. I blanked out the contact phone numbers.
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** AL QAEDA’S AMERICAN PRISONERS STILL NOT LOCATED. American troops are now in the midst of a 44th day of searching for the remaining two US soldiers captured by Al Qaeda in an ambush south of Baghdad. They have had no luck so far. A video put out by Al Qaeda forces in Iraq claims that all three men were executed after being captured. But, with the exception of the Californian found floating in the Euphrates River, that claim can’t be confirmed. The US high command in Baghdad has revealed that ID cards for the other two American prisoners were found in an Al Qaeda safehouse on June 9th.
** Track global and national energy prices in near real time via Bloomberg. Most crude oil prices have dipped below $68 per barrel on settlement of the Nigerian oil strike. Nigeria is the world’s fifth largest oil producing nation.
We had three Democratic presidential candidates appearing in Los Angeles on Friday at the US Conference of Mayors of convention. More candidates will be here this week. But it’s really all about money now.
This week, things are pretty clearcut. We are in the final stretch of the second quarter of 2007 fundraising and the candidates in both major parties are vying for position. And as a result, focusing their efforts on the money game.
Their public campaigning is essentially an ancillary activity, designed to show that they are doing more than fundraising.
But not all that much more.
The Democrats are heartened by the collapse of the Bush presidency in the polls — now close to the historic lows achieved by Richard Nixon in the height of the Watergate scandal over three decades ago. Add to that, the record numbers who say that America is on the wrong track with the – at best – slow developing surge strategy in Iraq, and it is little surprise that they are, by all accounts, raising substantially more money than their Republican counterparts.
The outstanding question is this: Will the tyro freshman senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, once again raise more money for the primaries than the longstanding Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton? Most of my sources, in both camps, say that he will.
The competitive action between the two leading Democratic candidates, leaves the third member of the Democratic first tier, 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, lowballing his numbers.
Cyberpolitics guru Joe Trippi, who masterminded Howard Dean’s short-lived front-runnership for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination in the pre-scream days, sent an e-mail to supporters late last week saying the Edwards campaign is right on track. Raising substantially less money than it did in the first quarter of 2007, when Edwards was already overwhelmed by the strength of Clinton and Obama is on track? Okay.
Meanwhile, keep an eye on leading second tier contender Democratic Bill Richardson, the New Mexico governor and former UN ambassador who has moved into fourth place in the early states, who says he may raise more money than Edwards.
Most of the Republicans will also be scuffling for cash over the next week. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is expected to lead the way financially yet again, with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani pulling in second – a reversal of their standing in national polls. John McCain is in, as his advisors might put it, in survival mode.
Having come back from the seeming dead just two months ago after a disappointing start, the Arizona senator and Vietnam War hero is once more in big trouble, due to his co-authorship of the comprehensive immigration bill.
That bill, which may be revived in the Senate this week after its seeming demise earlier this month, is smothering McCain’s candidacy. While it has received, at best, mixed tidings among national polls of all voters, it is extremely unpopular among Republican primary voters. The sooner it is resolved, one way or the other, the better for McCain, who must again revive his candidacy with his fundraising again trailing that of Romney and Giuliani.
Of course, the real action on the Republican side is around Fred Thompson, the former Tennessee senator-turned-TV star who is exciting many disaffected conservatives. Democrats are much happier with their candidates than are Republicans (notwithstanding the fact that their two frontrunners are a second-term senator best known as a controversial first lady and a first-term senator who was a state legislator just over two years ago.)
Thompson journeyed to Britain last week to polish up his foreign policy gravitas and found mixed tidings. His hawkish policy speech on Monday, in which he seemed to call for regime change in Iran with a US blockade to force the way, was balanced by an interview later in the week with the Times of London in which he said that a new “realism” will be in store for America after the Bush years. While he did meet with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, still a major icon for conservatives around the world, it was not a dramatic occasion. But the void in enthusiasm on the Republican side continues nonetheless, and Thompson does have the chops to take advantage of it, at least for a while.
This week, he is back in the USA and will continue his undeclared candidacy with trips to his home state Tennessee, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Some say he will make an announcement in Tennessee this week. While I’m sure he’ll announce something there, it won’t be his candidacy, which now seems slated for July. New Hampshire is a state where Thompson needs to do some serious work. South Carolina, on the other hand, is a state where he has taken the lead in the new Mason-Dixon poll. And he has just pulled ahead in Nevada, as well.
Nevada and South Carolina are two of the first four states in the nomination process, the other two being Iowa and New Hampshire. Thompson is in the hunt in Iowa, where Romney leads after spending megabucks on TV advertising (no other Republican is doing that) and trails in New Hampshire (where the former governor of next door Massachusetts also leads, also after spending megabucks on TV advertising).
Also on tap this week in presidential politics is the handover of the British prime ministership from staunch US ally Tony Blair to Gordon Brown, the current chancellor of the exchequer. That’s finance minister to us.
How this plays out will have a major impact on US foreign policy, as Britain has been America’s only consistent ally in the military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the overall war on terror.
Intriguingly, the only American official on hand in London prior to the hand-off and meeting at the Elysee Palace today with new French President Nicolas Sarkozy California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger — the highest-profile American politician who is not running for president.
Now that. Is a line. It’s summer now. Time for. The sunglasses
of justice.
** SUNDAY NIGHT UPDATE. I am told that the California Republican Party’s chief operating officer, discussed below, has resigned. Interestingly enough, I have received nothing official from the party on this — and let me tell you that I get plenty of press releases from that operation, on all sorts of topics — but I am told by several sources that it is accurate. Intriguingly, the only statement to the press of which I am currently aware was from California Republican Chairman Ron Nehring to the very conservative New York Sun newspaper. The New York Sun, as you know, is not a California media outlet.
While Nehring has described the individual as by far the best choice for the key staff job of running the state Republican Party, his resume, according to the article, is quite thin in this decade. I never heard of him before, nor of the deputy political director who according to Nehring played a key role in Schwarzenegger’s 2003 election. He reportedly worked at some clerk jobs and was an aspiring actor, although the Internet Movie DataBase reveals no Hollywood credits of any sort. Most recently, he was in the real estate business in the Caribbean, but his boss describes him as a poor employee. But in the 1990s, he worked along with Nehring for the very controversial, longtime Washington right-wing leader Grover Norquist.
When Nehring became California’s Republican Party chairman earlier this year, I asked him if he was still working for Norquist. He told me he is not, that he now has his own consulting firm. Subsequent to that, I learned that Norquist is one of Nehring’s clients.
Now sources tell me that the California Republican Party has a $3 million note coming due, and is struggling to pay it.
Norquist’s election, replacing moderate Republican Duf Sundheim, a Silicon Valley lawyer, was part of a general right-ward movement amongst the Republican Party apparatus that also saw the election of Contra Costa County Republican Chairman Tom Del Beccaro — who disastrously sought through a lawsuit to prevent the election of former Governor Jerry Brown as California’s new attorney general — as state party vice chairman and of conservative activist and Flash Report publisher Jon Fleischman as Southern California party vice chairman.
There he spoke of his familiar “Two Americas” theme, focusing on the very rich and everyone else, talked up his plans for universal health care and withdrawal from Iraq, and addressed the immigration controversy. He called for pathway to legalization for illegal immigrants now in the country, but said they should pay fines and should be required to learn English, drawing a huge round of applause.
Nevada has large Latino and labor constituencies, and both are of several minds on the immigration question.
** ARNOLD TO AUSTRIA. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who meets with new French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday at the Elysee Palace and his friend British Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street on Tuesday, visits his hometown of Graz in Austria today. This is only his second visit to his home country since his election as governor of California in the dramatic recall election of October 2003.
Schwarzenegger, who is very proud of his Austrian heritage, retains dual citizenship as both an American and an Austrian.
Yesterday, he wowed the US Conference of Mayors convention in Los Angeles with his call for American cities to become more involved in the movement to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
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