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 CONFERS WITH SARKOZY, WILL BE LAST FOREIGN OFFICIAL TO MEET WITH BLAIR AS PRIME MINISTER. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today 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. I’ll have a fuller report on this later.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office confirmed that Schwarzenegger will be the last foreign official to confer with the outgoing prime minister at 10 Downing Street when the two meet in London tomorrow, and that their joint press conference will be the last Blair holds as prime minister. The two will conduct a roundtable on climate change strategies following their private meeting.
** 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.
** NEW NEVADA POLL. CLINTON LEADS DEMOCRATS, FRED THOMPSON LEADS REPUBLICANS. A new Mason-Dixon poll released over the weekend shows Fred Thompson moving into the lead among Republicans in the second-in-the-nation contest in the Silver State, with Hillary Clinton maintaining her strong lead there among Democrats.
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.
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link broke. try this:
http://tinyurl.com/2jkpx8
Very interesting. You might want to put this on today’s thread.
Ah, of course, Nick, the county supervisors in a heavily conservative-Republican county weren’t part of the power structure, and had absolutely nothing to do with what the conservative DINO treasurer was doing, even though what he was doing followed the privatize-everything GOP ideology that was highly popular at the time… How could I have missed how it was all the Democrats’ fault?!
RM,
The fault falls on Citron, not on the Orange County Sups. However, it would be wrong to make it a party issue. It wasn’t. Just a case of one man having too much power and making bad decisions.
I sat through a couple of the hearings that were held at the Capitol and was Citron who called the shots. All the shots.
Did the OC sups fail by giving him so much leaway? Yes.
Did the investment firms reap a heavy profit from some very risky investments? Yes.
But when the day was done and the slammer door was shut it was Mr. Citron, and I believe his cheif assistant, who took the fall.
And that’s what I recall.
Citron, and the long leash he was given by the Sups to make unregulated, risky investments with money given to him in trust, fit into a model that was, and is, popular with the GOP. The transfer of Ohio’s worker’s comp fund into a rare coin fund is in the same family.