Wilson

The California campaign finance watchdog agency has issued a warning letter to GOP Assembly District 15 candidate and San Ramon Mayor Abram Wilson for contribution violations related to his unsuccessful 2008 campaign.

Wilson’s campaign treasurer had failed to report within 24 hours $475,000 in non-monetary contributions from the California Republican Party received on Sept. 17 and Sept. 23. Wilson’s campaign believed the contributions were classified as member communications from the party, which reported the expenditures on its disclosures. The Fair Political Practices Commission cited the immediate and full cooperation of Wilson’s campaign treasurer as the basis for writing a warning letter rather than issuing a fine.

The national healthcare reform just signed into law by President Barack Obama will be a huge boost for low-income Californians and people of color now suffering a disproportionate lack access to care, but further state-level reforms are urgently needed, according to the Greenlining Institute, a Berkeley-based public policy and advocacy group.

The new law “doesn’t go far enough,” Greenlining health program manager Carla Saporta said in a news release. “We urgently need to pass state-level legislation such as AB 2578 so that we have the same sort of strict regulation of health insurance rates that California has now for auto insurance. Surely our health is at least as important as our cars.”

AB 2578 – which in a previous incarnation as AB 1554 passed the Assembly in 2007 but died in the Senate Health Committee, and as AB 1218 was nixed by the Assembly Health Committee last year – would force insurance companies to justify rate hikes to state regulators and require the state Department of Insurance or Department of Managed Care to approve any rate hikes over seven percent per year.

As Democrats declared victory this week in Washington, the Assembly Health Committee passed AB 2578 on Tuesday; Greenlining says continuing public anger over huge rate increases by insurers such as Anthem Blue Cross has helped the bill, too.

“Lack of health coverage is a true emergency for communities of color,” Saporta said. “Latinos, for example, have the highest uninsured rate of any racial or ethnic group, African-Americans are more than half again as likely to be uninsured as whites, and Asian and Pacific Islanders are more likely than whites to forego routine and preventative care due to costs. National health insurance reform will do a lot to help fix this, but the measure President Obama signed doesn’t do nearly enough to control insurance rates. Our communities urgently need the added protection that AB 2578 will give, and we hope the legislature will pass further consumer protections as well.”

Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento – a Democratic candidate for state Insurance Commissioner – is a driving force behind this bill. Republican gubernatorial candidate and current state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner has said he favors better state regulation of insurers rather than the federal regulation contained in this week’s new health reform law. And Poizner has voiced outrage at Anthem Blue Cross’ rate hike.

But Poizner doesn’t support this bill, campaign spokesman Jarrod Agen said today.

“He believes that additional bureaucracy envisioned in the bill doesn’t deal with the fundamental problem of health care — rising medical costs. Steve is committed to lowering healthcare costs, but President Obama demonstrated with his healthcare bill that he is not the least bit interested in lowering healthcare costs for consumers,” Agen said in an e-mailed reply to my query. “Steve wants greater choice and competition in the healthcare marketplace through measures like reducing the number of mandates, increasing the use of electronic medical records, and giving consumers the freedom to purchase health insurance across state lines. He believes measures such as these, rather than more government incursion into our healthcare system, will make healthcare more affordable for California’s citizens.”

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, is part of a congressional delegation visiting Haiti today to examine recovery efforts following the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. The trip comes just a week before the Haiti Donors Conference, for which the international community will gather at the United Nations in New York City to make long-term commitments towards Haiti’s reconstruction.

“Now, more than ever, the people of Haiti require the coordinated and sustained commitment of the Untied States,” Lee said in a news release. “As Congress prepares to consider the Haiti supplemental appropriations bill, this trip will give us an opportunity to survey ongoing recovery efforts and to determine what resources are still needed, both in terms of short-term relief in advance of the rainy season as well as long-term rebuilding.”

(Lee’s staff, which provided this photo, says the man with the guitar is blind and singing something to the effect of “I am blind, give me some food.”)

“The people of Haiti have been courageous and resilient throughout this tragedy. However, we must ensure that the United States and the international community are doing all we can to not simply ‘rebuild Haiti’ back to what it was pre-earthquake, but to empower Haitians to transform their country into one that can sustain itself and provide for the basic needs and rights of its people. ”

The Congressional Black Caucus, which Lee chairs, this week held a forum on Haiti entitled, “The Road to Recovery;” attending were USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, Haitian Ambassador to the U.S. Raymond Joseph, and numerous other Haiti experts discussing the historical significance of U.S.-Haiti relations as well as policy prescriptions and opportunities for rebuilding.

Just as things start heating up for Goodwin Liu, the Cal law professor whom President Barack Obama nominated last month to the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the President has named another nominee to that same appellate bench: U.S. District Judge Mary Murguia of Arizona.

If confirmed, Murguia, 49, would have a lifetime appointment to a seat vacant since Feb. 12, when Circuit Judge Michael Daly Hawkins of Arizona took senior status. Nominated to the federal trial court by President Bill Clinton, she is the first Latina to serve on the federal bench in Arizona.

Earlier, she was counsel, principal deputy director and then director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. from 1998 to 2000; a prosecutor in the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s office from 1990 to 1998, the latter half of which she spent as chief criminal deputy; and a prosecutor in the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s office in Kansas City, Kan. (of which she’s a native) from 1985 to 1990. She holds two bachelors degrees and a law degree from the University of Kansas. (Boo, jayhawks.)

The dockets are Arizona’s federal courts are heavy with illegal-immigration and drug-related cases, so that’s some of the expertise Murguia is presumed to bring. Her confirmation probably won’t be smooth sailing: her twin sister is Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic civil rights and advocacy group that many conservatives see as a far-left outfit. In fact, she recused herself last year from handling a racial profiling case against Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio, whom the NCLR has blasted repeatedly for his immigration enforcement methods.

Federal circuit judges are paid an annual salary of $184,500. The 9th Circuit court is the nation’s largest, serving nine western states and two Pacific Island jurisdictions, and reported 12,223 appeals filed in 2009.

I’ve never seen so much hue and cry about ballot designations – the two or three word titles appearing beneath a candidate’s name on the ballot – as I’m seeing this year.

Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, a Republican candidate for state Attorney General, complains that GOP primary rival former Chapman Law School Dean John Eastman wants to call himself an “Assistant Attorney General” (he received the title last month when he agreed to represent South Dakota in a specific U.S. Supreme Court case) and that state Sen. Tom Harman, R-Huntington Beach, wants to call himself a “Prosecutor/Attorney/Senator.”

It’s a local phenomenon, too – and in some cases, a circular firing squad. Alameda County Family Justice Center Executive Director Nadia Lockyer, seeking the county Board of Supervisors’ District 2 seat, announced Tuesday that someone is suing rival candidate former state Sen. Liz Figueroa, D-Sunol, for wanting to call herself a “job developer/educator,” when her job on the California Unemployment Appeals Board doesn’t involve either. The next day, another candidate in that race – Hayward City Councilman Kevin Dowling – filed a complaint against Lockyer for wanting to call herself a “county manager,” a title he says doesn’t exist; her formal title is “project director.” (For a while she was referring to herself on her Web site as a Deputy District Attorney, but that got scrubbed.)

And it’s happening in LA. And Orange County.

Last week I asked state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner why he wants to call himself a “businessman” rather than going by his current, elected title. Poizner told me nobody knows what the Insurance Commissioner actually does and the title requires too much explanation, and he has 20 years of experience in building businesses.

Now, it’s one thing for proponents and opponents of ballot measures to argue or sue (as is happening a lot this year, too) over the official title and summary and/or the ballot-pamphlet arguments – those words are all many voters ever learn about some of these measures, and so jockeying for the high ground there seems worthwhile. But do you think it’s the same for candidates and their ballot designations? Are those two or three words really so important, or is all this bellyaching more a matter of getting media attention now rather than voters’ eyes on election day?

Meg Whitman has an updated statewide radio ad out today, which hones in on her three-point plan for California: create jobs, cut Sacramento spending and fix schools. The minute-long spot allows her to elaborate a bit more than previous ads: she wants “targeted” tax cuts and to eliminate the sales tax on factory equipment; a “strict” spending cap (she’ll have to go the voters for that) and “new ideas” to use technology to eliminate waste and duplication. For schools, she wants to send more money directly to the classrooms and give parents “more choice.” A lot of buzzwords and phrases that have become like comfort food for the masses.

To give it all some heft, she pitches her 48-page plan “to build a new California.”

The aggressive phase of Steve Poizner’s campaign is now upon us. The Insurance Commissioner, who is running 50 points behind Meg Whitman, billionaire ex-CEO of eBay, in the polls, is starting to hammer away at an issue he thinks will resonate among Republican primary voters: illegal immigration. Here’s his new ad, a statewide buy that will appear on broadcast and cable television.

The Whitman campaign’s response:
“Not only is Meg 100 percent against amnesty, but Steve Poizner is attacking the very policies that he praised in 2008,” said spokeswoman Sarah Pompei. “It’s dishonest and it’s just the latest reason Californians can’t trust Steve Poizner.”

Mike Murphy, the chief strategist for Meg Whitman — yes, the same consultant who was listed under Bonaparte Films in Whitman’s spending report who’s been paid $495,582 since coming on board on Nov. 25 — says the media have it all wrong in our collective gasp over Whitman’s record $46 million spending spree.

His point is that for a state as large as California, the money Whitman has spent on advertising so far — about $28 million total — is not so far out of line when you index it by the number of registered voters.

Murphy pulled together an interesting chart showing that, for instance, Tom Daschle’s Senate campaign’s $20.3 million expenditure in 2004 in puny South Dakota was far in excess of what Whitman has spent, at $40 per registered voter. In contrast, Whitman has spent $2.72 per registered voter so far.

Others ahead of Whitman in per registered voter expenditures were John Thune ($30.59) in the same 2004 Senate race in South Dakota; Steve Poizner ($30.54) in his 2006 Assembly race; Mayor Michael Bloomberg ($24.34) in 2009; Al Franken ($8.89) in his Minnesota Senate race in 1008; and Senate Leader Harry Reid ($4.67) in 2004.

“While we are obviously a very well funded campaign, California is also a very big state and very expensive to campaign across,” Murphy wrote in an email. “For all the conventional wisdom about voters being bombed with ads at around $2 per voter, the average California voter has seen a pretty average number of ads for a political campaign so far.”

His point, he said, was that the contention that the large spending numbers have created “some massive onslaught on the voters … just isn’t true.”

At any rate, he said, “we make no apologies for spending enough to put our message out. Especially against incumbent office holders with taxpayer funded staff and power(ful) special interests on their side.”

That all may be true, but the simple fact is that we’re not even in April and Whitman has already shattered spending records for a gubernatorial race in California. And she doesn’t intend to slow down the cash flow.

A footnote on how Whitman listed Murphy in her spending reports. First, you had to put it together that Bonaparte Films was Murphy’s consulting firm. Fine. But you may not have thought much of his presence from Whitman’s first spending report covering 2009, filed on Feb. 2. Bonaparte Films got a relatively modest sum of $57,975 for a little more than a month’s work.

Once the report was filed, though, Whitman cut a $250,000 check to Murphy on Jan. 7. Was she just trying to hold off the day that we would see how extravagant her pay to one of her top consultants was? Murphy seems to have settled into a $90,000 per month arrangement since the New Year, which means that by the end of the campaign, he’ll have made a cool $1.5 million for his services.

That’s not much, if you index it by registered voters.

Attorney General Jerry Brown ridiculed the effort by the 13 attorneys general to overturn the health insurance reform bill in an interview this morning on KGO radio, saying it’s just “part of the national Republican party effort to destroy” the Obama presidency.

“As an attorney general, you don’t know these things the night of the vote or the next day,” he said. “This takes time. … You can’t file a lawsuit that quickly. This requires sober constitutional reflection.

“My own hunch at this early point,” he continued, “is that they’re going with Glenn Beck, Limbaugh and the others. And there’s no effort to collaborate, forge a common purpose at this time of maximum national crisis.”

Brown also took a swipe at Meg Whitman, the billionaire ex-CEO of eBay who is running 50 points ahead of her GOP rival Steve Poizner, and 5 points ahead of Brown, in the race for governor.

“What’s going on is Meg Whitman is spending $350,000 a day,” Brown said. “It’s incredibly wasteful because half the money she spends she wastes. It’s emblematic of exactly the wrong kind of leader for the state, somebody who doesn’t know how to save money, flies around in a jet, spends hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars every day.

“If you buy TV every hour on the Gong shows, the Olympics and sports, you’re gonna catch people who don’t listen to this show, read the newspapers and watch the news, and you’re going to reach out to a lot of people and they’re going to get only one side of the story and you get close. With that kind of spending, to be only even with me may reflect she’s hit the ceiling.”

Brown declined to weigh in on the debate over legalizing marijuana, saying that since he has to write the 100-word title and summary for the ballot measure, he had to keep neutral.

All four Republicans in the 11th Congressional District primary say they have signed the Club For Growth’s pledge to repeal the health care reform legislation signed into law earlier this week.

Dougherty Valley attorney David Harmer, businesswoman and autism research lobbyist Elizabeth Emken of Danville, Clements winegrape grower Brad Goehring and former U.S. Marshall Tony Amador of Lodi have all agreed to pursue repeal of the legislation if elected.

Incumbent Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton, voted for the bill.

In concept, the pledge is similar to the Americans For Tax Reform’s no new taxes promise that many Republican candidates sign.

Critics say signing these pledges amount to an abdication of elected officials’ responsibility to make independent decisions and contributes to the paralyzing, uncompromising partisan gridlock in Washington, D.C.

For the most part, the repeal pledge is more about politics than practice. It’s unlikely that any of these District 11 candidates, if elected, will have the chance to vote on a repeal unless Republicans take control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. And even then, President Barack Obama would very likely veto such legislation.