They’re not exactly back to the post-partisan comity seen in this
NWN video from the spring, but new developments make it easier
for Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders to accomplish
some things put off by the right-wing’s curious budget stall.
With the term limits change initiative now qualified for the February ballot, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger cancelling his much-anticipated British trip, and the two parties’ leaders in the Assembly, Fabian Nunez and Mike Villines in apparent general accord on redistricting reform, the stage is again set for some late season action.
As anticipated, the term limits change initiative has narrowly qualified for the February 5th presidential primary ballot. This will help pave the way for redistricting reform legislation, now in the works. Without a term limits initiative, there is little real world incentive for many Democrats to back redistricting reform. And without redistricting reform, there is no hope of gaining Schwarzenegger’s support for the term limits change.
If Schwarzenegger actively opposes the term limits measure — which would lower the overall limit on state legislative service from 14 to 12 years but allow all of it to be served in one house, continuing several legislative careers in the process — it almost certainly loses.
Just prior to Labor Day weekend, Schwarzenegger cancelled his late September trip to the UK to keynote the British Conservative Party conference. He has also postponed a planned fall trade mission to India. In a statement, Schwarzenegger said: “While I am confident that we will be able to accomplish quite a bit before the end of the legislative session, I need to maintain the flexibility to call a special session.”
The former action movie superstar will speak to the Tory conference in Britain via satellite. Nevertheless, the move to cancel is a very significant one for Schwarzenegger. The speech, which was scheduled early this year as revealed on NWN, was to be a key event in Schwarzenegger’s global moves on climate change politics, many of them involving Europe. Britain’s Conservative Party, under young new leader David Cameron, is moving to the center on the environment and other key issues, and Schwarzenegger’s keynote appearance was a significant part of that.
Not going to Britain at the end of the month makes it much easier for Schwarzenegger to call a special legislative session to make up for the time lost in the very curious state budget stall by right-wing Senate Republicans. That escapade, of course, ended in a deal that was readily available a month earlier.
While the politics of health care reform remain murky — Assembly Speaker Nunez floated a big trial balloon at the end of last week to the LA Times editorial board, touting a possible agreement with Schwarzenegger on a business tax initiative — and there is still no consensus on water policy, despite the state’s drought conditions, redistricting reform is moving into clearer focus.
Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines and Speaker Nunez seem to be in general accord on redistricting reform, with Nunez moving to embrace Villines’ and Schwarzenegger’s insistence on an independent citizens commission to be in charge.
“At the end of the session, everyone has something,” Villines told NWN of the relative chaos of the moment. “But I’m encouraged that there is general agreement,” he said, going on to note that the Senate remains key.
“We want a citizens commission, no legislative veto of the redistricting, and Congress included in the redistricting,” he said. Reminded that there is an outstanding threat that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, wary of changing anything in the mix that has given her a narrow majority in Congress, will put together a $10 million advertising campaign against a redistricting reform plan that includes Congress, Villines said simply: “I don’t think Congress should be dropped.”
He also said that he wants a major redistricting reform measure passed.
If the threat from the Pelosi camp is real, that may be impossible. How real the Pelosi threat is is not yet clear.
With John Edwards back in the lead in Iowa, former President
Bill Clinton campaigned in Iowa yesterday with Hillary Clinton.
** CALIFORNIA TERM LIMITS CHANGE INITIATIVE QUALIFIES FOR FEBRUARY BALLOT. As anticipated and discussed below, the term limits change initiative has narrowly qualified for the February 5th presidential primary ballot. This will help pave the way for redistricting reform legislation, now in the works.
** EDWARDS PICKS UP MORE LABOR SUPPORT. John Edwards picked up more labor support today for his Democratic presidential campaign. In national polls and fundraising he’s running a distant third behind Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
** APPARENT CHAOS SPREADING IN REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES. While the Democrats are getting the rogue states back under control — getting the major candidates to agree not to campaign in them and stripping all delegates from them — in order to maintain the agreed upon early sequence of Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina — the chaos appears to be spreading amongst a less resolved Republican Party.
** SCHWARZENEGGER ANTI-GANG PROGRAM GEARS UP. At his webcast Fresno event this morning, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed former US Attorney Paul Seave as director of CalGRIP, the California Gang Reduction, Intervention and Prevention Program. Seave, most recently chief counsel to the state Board of Education, will head up a multi-faceted program.
Fresno’s Republican Mayor Alan Autry said that the key to dealing with gangs is to “have the hammer in one hand, and the hope in the other.” He and Schwarzenegger, surrounded by law enforcement officials, both stated that suppression alone will not work, that “future gang members are being created faster than they can be arrested.”
And no, the governor did not get any questions from the local press on the state of things with the three major outstanding issues left in the current legislative session: Health care, water policy, and redistricting reform.
** CALIFORNIA TERM LIMITS CHANGE INITIATIVE LOOKS LIKE IT WILL QUALIFY, BARELY. Due to a problem with the random sampling of signatures submitted in Los Angeles County — in which about 20 duplicate names triggered a formula that dropped the random sample verification rate from 70% to 64% — the state’s term limits change initiative has been in danger of failing to qualify in time for next February’s presidential primary ballot. However, it now appears, though it is not certain, that the initiative will nonetheless qualify via the random sample technigue.
If an initiative falls short in that measure, then a time-consuming full count takes place, and that could kick the iniative to the June primary ballot. Which would be too late for some current state legislators whose tenure in office runs out otherwise. While the initiative would cut the total number of years one can serve in the state Legislature from 14 to 12, it would also allow all of those years to be served in one house, grandfathering in a number of legislators under the altered law.
Bill gave the crowds the blast from the past, Hillary gave them the glimpse of the future, and Bill positioned it all for the listeners. “She is, including me in 1992, by a good long stretch, she is the best prepared, most suited to the times person I have ever had the chance to vote for,” says the former president.
** HANRETTY JOINS FRED THOMPSON’S CAMPAIGN. Californian Karen Hanretty, the former Arnold Schwarzenegger campaign press secretary and California Republican Party communications director who has become a frequent commentator on Fox News, has joined the Fred Thompson for President campaign as its deputy communications director. She does so just as Thompson is about to announce, as discussed in yesterday’s Monday Morning Quarterback. Hanretty, who joins another key veteran of Schwarzenegger’s dramatic 2003 victory in the California recall campaign, new communications director Todd Harris, will work in the development of all communications and media strategy and be a spokesperson for the former Tennessee senator and Law & Order star.
** SCHWARZENEGGER ANTI-CRIME ANNOUNCEMENT IN LIVE WEBCAST. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will make an announcement about California’s anti-gangs program in a live webcast at 10:15 AM from the Fresno Police Department.
** NEW BIO RIPS RICE.A new biography of Secretary of State Condi Rice, who will return to Stanford University after the Bush Administration, rips her ranking role over the past six-and-a-half years, describing her as one of the weakest national security advisors ever.
In “The Confidante,” Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler, who has frequently traveled with Rice around the world, writes: “The invasion of Iraq, the missed opportunity with Iran, the breach in relations with Europe, the Arab anger at a perceived bias against the Palestinians — all of these problems were the direct result of decisions she helped make in the White House.”
“Now, as secretary of state (Rice was Bush’s national security advisor in the first term), she tried mightily — and with limited success — to unravel the Gordian knots she tied in in George W. Bush’s first term.”
** AL QAEDA’S AMERICAN PRISONERS STILL NOT LOCATED. American troops are now in the midst of a 113th 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.
Former Senator and Law & Order star Fred Thompson chats with Fox News personality Sean Hannity in advance of his announcement for the presidency.
This week we’ll see if Fred Thompson can replicate Arnold Schwarzenegger’s success with The Tonight Show. The former senator and famous actor finally makes his candidacy official with a live Internet webcast on Thursday. The day before, he joins Schwarzenegger’s friend Jay Leno in Burbank to discuss his presidential plans.
This coming week in presidential politics, we find the Clintons together again in Iowa, where the former first lady has lost her newfound tie for the lead, Thompson’s formal announcement of candidacy, a Republican debate in New Hampshire, and the end to the burgeoning rogue primary activity, at least on the Democratic side.
Bill and Hillary Clinton campaigned together Sunday in New Hampshire, where she’s in a tough fight with Barack Obama, and on Monday campaign together again in Iowa. There John Edwards, who has spent much of the past few years since the Kerry-Edwards ticket lost in 2004 essentially camping out to claim the first-in-the-nation contest in 2008, has regained the lead after falling into a three-way tie with Obama and Clinton. And all it took was a week-long Edwards bus tour to do it.
If you’re getting the idea that winning Iowa, at least on the Democratic side, will be not unlike an NBA game in which whomever gets hot in the final two minutes ends up the victor, you are probably right.
Meanwhile, the long in the making Fred Thompson for President campaign at last gets official this week. The former Tennessee senator and Law & Order star will announce formally on September 6th, in an Internet webcast. He is likely to prefigure that announcement the night before on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
That, of course, is the political venue which Arnold Schwarzenegger made famous four years ago, when he announced his “surprise” candidacy for governor of California in the California recall campaign.
I say “surprise” because Schwarzenegger, with whom I’ve been acquainted for years, told me throughout his pre-campaign period — in which he was readying the launch of his movie, Terminator III — that he intended to run for governor and needed to work things through with his wife, his business, and his political situation. But most people chose not to believe that, so it was a surprise. Which Schwarzenegger was quite happy about, actually.
Thompson’s announcement, of course, is anything but a surprise. And while he is a very well-known character actor, he is hardly the global megastar Schwarzenegger is. So his announcement, in its various formats, will inevitably come as something of an anti-climax.
Which is not to say that we won’t be covering it closely, as he is clearly one of the top Republican prospects for the presidency.
After his announcement, Thompson will do a tour of the early primary and caucus states …
The award-winning film The Queen depicts the crisis of the British
monarchy and popular outpouring of grief that erupted following
the death of Princess Diana 10 years ago.
** HILLARY AGREES TO SKIP FLORIDA AND OTHER ROGUE PRIMARIES. At last following in the footsteps of all the other major Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton has agreed to skip campaigning in all the rogue primaries and caucuses that threaten the carefully worked out sequence of Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Clinton, whose Democratic National Committee representative Harold Ickes opposed the new constellation of contests, was the last candidate to agree to national party chairman Howard Dean’s insistence that the rogue contests be skipped. Florida, the most prominent rogue, is probably her best state in the South. Now it’s off the board.
On Saturday, several hours after all the rest of the field had agreed to ignore any early contests in Florida, Michigan, or wherever else, Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle put out this statement: “We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process. And we believe the DNC’s rules and its calendar provide the necessary structure to respect and honor that role. Thus, we will be signing the pledge to adhere to the DNC approved nominating calendar.”
No word yet on what the more scattered Republican Party is doing with respect to similar challenges.
Associates of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, America’s only staunch ally in the Afghan and Iraq Wars following 9/11, have long complained that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney did everything possible to undermine Blair’s influence with President George W. Bush.
** SCHWARZENEGGER VETOES DENHAM BILL. State Senator Jeff Denham, who made a show of defiance of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the recent unsuccessful state budget stall by right-wing senators, found one of his key bills vetoed on Friday. His bill for a prison wastewater treatment plant bit the dust very late Friday afternoon. “This is a surplus property bill, and as such, should be included in the Department of General Services’ annual omnibus bill,” Schwarzenegger informed Denham in his veto message. In other words, when it happens, it will not be something Denham receives credit for.
 ** WHO IS BOB DUTTON?Who is state Senator Bob Dutton? He led the unsuccessful charge, as it were, against former Governor-turned-Attorney General Jerry Brown’s move to get sprawling San Bernardino County, largest county in the continental US, and other local governments to account for greenhouse gas emissions in their planning processes. After months of negotiation, as reported here, San Bernardino County settled Brown’s lawsuit against it, with only one no vote on the county board of supervisors. (Of course, that supervisor is the one whose commentary led the far right Flash Report web site the other day, in which he incoherently derided the agreement as both “hot air” and wildly intrusive. Gang, it is either one or the other.) Dutton says he is no more intimidated by the famous Brown than he is by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is reportedly more accommodating than he comes off in his public statements.
** OH, AND BTW, POOR LARRY CRAIG RESIGNED FROM THE U.S. SENATE YESTERDAY. Enough said.
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