Some names have disappeared from the endorsement list on the Web site of Wilma Chan, the former Assemblywoman facing off against current Assemblywoman Loni Hancock in the June 3 Democratic primary to succeed state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata — names including Perata himself.

Compare the old, cached version to the current version.

Perata earlier had granted a dual endorsement to both Chan and Hancock in this 9th State Senate District race, both of whom generally have been his allies in the Legislature. Perata had been singing Chan’s praises for years, including right after she helped him nail down a judicial ruling cementing his right to seek a final four-year term in 2004.

But now Perata’s name and face are gone from Chan’s endorsement list, and I’ve got a copy of a letter Perata sent to Hancock last week praising her as “far and away the best person for the job.” Perata’s political consultant returned my e-mail message this afternoon confirming the letter’s authenticity, but wrote that he couldn’t break out of a meeting to discuss with me who Perata actually now endorses.

Also gone from Chan’s endorsement list is Alameda Mayor Beverly Johnson — a notable name, given Chan’s base of support in the island city she calls home — and Oakland School Board member Alice Spearman. There’s not much ambiguity about why they’re gone from the list; both Johnson and Spearman apparently sent letters to Chan last Thursday expressing their support for Hancock and demanding that Chan remove their names from all Chan campaign materials immediately. “Any failure to abide by my request will force me to take immediate legal action,” Spearman wrote. Ouch.

Spearman couldn’t immediately be reached for comment, but Johnson told me tonight she had endorsed Chan “a couple of years ago” yet recently decided Hancock’s the better choice; she said she sent the letter to Chan on Thursday and talked with her Friday, and that all was amicable as Chan assured her that her name would be removed from the campaign’s Web site and literature.

Two Chan campaign staffers haven’t yet returned phone calls and e-mails about this; watch for updates if and when they do.

So state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, pulled the plug late Wednesday on his effort to have state Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Merced, recalled from office. From our story:

The abrupt move came, he said, after deciding that a recall of the Merced Republican would directly affect his ability to negotiate a budget with Republicans, who have assailed him for pursuing the recall.

He said he told Sen. Dave Cogdill, R-Fresno, that “I did not believe this kind of politics cast against the huge problems we’re having in the state made a lot of sense.

“You get to the point where you just have to say you gotta see what matters most,” Perata said.

“And I don’t want to go through what we went through last year. The state can’t afford it. You know how things are at the end of a campaign. They get uglier and uglier, tenser and tenser, and it made no sense.”

To recap: Perata couldn’t see what mattered most until Wednesday, when he realized pursuing the recall made no sense.

So what took him so long?

In trying to recall Denham — a move Perata essentially acknowledged was as much (if not more) about pushing Senate Democrats closer to the two-thirds majority needed to pass budget bills as it was about Denham’s voting record — Perata embraced the very tactics of which he and many other Democrats complained so stridently during the 2003 gubernatorial recall.

Also, even as he abandoned any pretense to owning the moral high ground (as if there’s any in politics, anyway), Perata also has made a martyr of Denham — a martyr who gets to stick around and make the most of his martyrdom. Denham’s supporters say he’s a moderate, Perata and his supporters say Denham campaigned as a moderate but legislated as an arch-conservative. Whatever Denham is, he’s also now the guy who can truthfully say he faced down a recall threat from someone supposed to be California’s most powerful Democrat; that’s a line you’ll surely hear in campaign ads if Denham ever seeks statewide office.

If you don’t buy that, fine. For another view — a staunchly liberal Democratic view — of how Perata made a train-wreck out of this, check Calitics, where a recall supporter reams Perata for wussing out on a noble cause:

“A real Senate leader would have broadened the race into a referendum on state Republicans and would have done very well. You either do something like this full-speed or you never start it in the first place. This half-step just furthers the narrative of Democratic weakness.

[snip]

“(Y)ou now let everyone off the hook because you’ve proven you can be bullied by a Republican hissy fit and tut-tuts from the conventional wisdom crowd in the media. No Republican will EVER take a Democratic threat seriously in the near future, crippling the leadership of Darrell Steinberg. And all the leverage on getting legislation passed in the Senate just ended.

“Great friggin’ job, Don. If you want to just go ahead and quit now and let any stray cat from Berkeley finish out your term, that’d be just fine with me.”

Wow, there’s just no love for Perata on this one. Methinks the Pro Tem isn’t covering himself in glory in his final months at the Legislature’s helm; read Perata’s statement as e-mailed to reporters, after the jump, and judge for yourself… Read the rest of this entry »

Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were on the move in the East Bay earlier today. From our story:

OAKLAND — Ongoing enforcement tactics by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel caused panic to erupt at several East Bay school districts Tuesday, although ICE officials said that many of the rumors that swirled among parents and school staff were false or overblown.

“This whole experience is so terrifying that it really brought out the greatest fear in everybody,” said Mark Coplan, a spokesman for the Berkeley Unified School District, where the schools superintendent issued a recorded phone message to parents Tuesday promising that he “will not allow any child to be taken away from the school.”

Some of the rumors — for example, that Berkeley middle school students were being carted off in vans — turned out to be false. But others — for example, that ICE agents were conducting surveillance near an East Oakland elementary school — were true and prompted Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and others to rally outside the school in protest.

“We were not at a school,” ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said. “We were at residences. There may be a situation where a residence is near to a school.”

Local elected officials are seriously peeved.

“I find today’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence at our schools reprehensible. The Bush Administration espouses the virtues of No Child Left Behind and yet they provide no funding. If the President wants to help our nation’s children he should send funding — not federal agents to our schools,” said state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland. “It is clear that ICE raids jeopardize the stability of our communities and families. There should be an immediate freeze on ICE raids directed at school children while legislation aiming to fix immigration is considered.”

And Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, said she’s “deeply troubled and concerned about the tactics employed by ICE. Conducting an operation of this nature in Oakland is a direct violation of the spirit of the city’s sanctuary resolution.”

“Although ICE officials assured my district office that they did not physically enter public school property, the presence of the ICE van near or parked in front of the Esperanza Academy and Fred T. Korematsu Discovery Academy is of grave concern to me,” Lee said. “In an effort to address the controversial tactics that have been used by ICE, my district office has been in contact with them to convey my concerns. I will be working with my colleagues to oppose the use of this troubling approach, and I am personally committed to reviewing any ICE policies that may create a culture of fear and intimidation, especially near a school or place of worship.

“To conduct such an operation near or around a public school campus is a violation of the sanctity of the education process, and is intentionally meant to intimidate those who live in the community,” Lee continued. “I do not support these intimidation policies and I am planning a district outreach event in the future to hear directly from my constituents about their experiences with agency officials.”

Assemblyman Sandre Swanson, D-Oakland, will host a regional town hall on California’s budget crisis from 10 a.m. to noon this Saturday, May 3 at Alameda’s Encinal High School, 210 Central Ave.

Assembly Budget Committee Chairman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, will make a presentation on the budget, while assemblywomen Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, and Mary Hayashi, D-Castro Valley, also will take part.

Swanson says there’s “an incredible outcry” against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to cut all government services by 10 percent across the board, as this would cripple schools, social services and other vital public functions. “In these incredibly difficult budget times, and with so many vital services at stake, it is important that we have a conversation about what our priorities in this state really are. That discussion has to begin in our communities.”

So this Saturday’s meeting will include discussions of the education and health care budget-cut proposals, as well as other areas; Swanson said attendees — of which he expects hundreds — will direct the conversation in a question-and-answer session with elected officials present. He said he wants people to leave “informed and energized.”

“We will provide specific and effective ways for individuals to make their priorities heard in Sacramento,” he said. “At the end of the day, that is what is going to sway the conversation. It will take ordinary people standing up and telling their elected officials, including the Governor, that they will not accept a budget balanced on the backs of our children and our most vulnerable.”

Indeed, expect more and more meetings and events such as this as spring warms toward summer, as lawmakers have said all along that this year’s budget battle will be won or lost based on the public’s outcry.

In fact, elected officials are joining the Oakland school officials, teachers, students, parents, businesspeople and community leaders for a demonstration against education budget cuts at 4 p.m. tomorrow, Wednesday, April 30, in Oakland’s school administration building, 1025 Second Ave. They say they’ll offer “specific proposals for addressing California’s budget crisis without gutting the state’s education system and invite Maria Shriver, a longtime advocate of children’s rights and educational issues, to come to Oakland and discuss alternatives to cuts in school funding.” (Hmm, good luck with that one.)

Perhaps most importantly, attendees at tomorrow’s event will visit “action stations” to contact residents of Republican-held legislative districts, asking those voters to pressure their lawmakers to oppose school funding cuts and find alternative revenue to help close the budget deficit. So this won’t just be a rally for the cameras; they’ll be taking the battle right to the ballot boxes, turning up the heat on GOP lawmakers to back off their adamant “no tax hikes” pledge.

Those expected to attend include Swanson; Hancock; Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums; Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland; state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland; Alameda County Office of Education Superitendent Sheila Jordan; and representatives from the Oakland Board of Education; the Oakland Education Association; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; United Administrators of Oakland Schools; Oakland Community Organizations (OCO); Oakland Parents Together and other community organizations.

The Merced Sun Star reports today that Merced County Registrar of Voters M. Stephen Jones will ask county and state prosecutors to probe possible election-law violations — by the Don Perata-backed campaign to recall state Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Merced:

Jones, Merced County’s top elections official, said his staff noticed some of the same problems several weeks ago and that he will file a complaint by early next week with both the county district attorney and the state attorney general.

Specifically, his staff discovered that some of the signature-gatherers had used hotel addresses when they registered to vote in Merced County. His office called the hotels and verified that the signature-gatherers didn’t live there, Jones said. “It appears that people who stated they were residents of Merced are actually residents of Florida, and that’s a problem,” he said. “We think it warrants the attention of law enforcement.”

These issues were raised by Denham’s supporters months ago — before Secretary of State Debra Bowen had certified more than 60,000 petition signatures calling for Denham’s recall, and before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had scheduled the recall election to coincide with the June 3 statewide primary — and were repeated at a news conference yesterday in Merced.

So the Denham defense campaign wants the public talking about election law violations, while the Dump Denham campaign wants people talking about Denham’s role in stonewalling the state budget last summer. But it’s very clear that Perata has pushed the recall in large part because replacing the Republican Denham with a Democrat would give Senate Democrats the two-thirds majority they need to override gubernatorial vetoes. Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in Denham’s district, so Perata saw him as the most vulnerable way to tip the balance.

I just left a message for Dump Denham spokesman Paul Hefner, and I’ll post his comments as soon as I get ‘em.

The Sun-Star also reported this:

The Sacramento-based company that hired and paid the signature gatherers, Discovery Petition Management Company, did nothing wrong, its owner, Eileen Ray, insisted in an interview.

She said her employees don’t mislead voters. Ray acknowledged that her company used some nonlocal signature-gatherers for the job, for which Discovery was paid at least $246,000. But she argued that’s not illegal.

She cited a recent appellate court ruling that deemed some parts of the California Election Code unconstitutional, specifically codes that require signature-gatherers circulating citywide veto referendum petitions to be residents of the city in which they are circulating the petitions. “Our attorneys basically told us the ruling meant we don’t have to worry about using people from the area anymore,” Ray said.

(Denham spokesman Kevin) Spillane said that ruling doesn’t apply to state Senate recalls. “Our attorneys have looked at that, and if that’s their only defense, they could be in a lot of trouble.”

Supporters of state Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Merced, today claimed the campaign to recall him from office — backed by state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland — broke state election law by using petition signature-gatherers who live outside Denham’s 12th State Senate District. In a Merced news conference this morning, they asked prosecutors and voter registrars in Denham’s district to investigate.

Perhaps this should’ve happened before the more than 60,000 signatures calling for Denham’s recall were certified last month by Secretary of State Debra Bowen, or at least before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger formally set the recall election to coincide with the June 3 state primary?

Perata has pushed the recall in large part because Denham was among Senate Republicans who stonewalled the state budget for about a month last summer. But the policy rationale clearly takes a back seat to the political ramifications: Replacing the Republican Denham with a Democrat would give Senate Democrats the two-thirds majority they need to override gubernatorial vetoes. Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in Denham’s district, so Perata saw him as the most vulnerable way to tip the balance.

Denhams’ supporters’ news release today notes California Election Code section 11045 requires that “(o)nly registered voters of the electoral jurisdiction of the officer sought to be recalled are qualified to circulate or sign a recall petition for that officer.” Yet, they claim, a review of campaign finance forms filed by the two committees behind the recall show at least 24 of the 56 individuals who were paid to gather for signature gathering live elsewhere; $79,885, or 64 percent of the itemized payments reported thus far to signature gatherers, have been made to individuals living outside Denham’s district.

They also claim their review of the other 32 individuals listed as paid signature gatherers found two registered to vote at the same non-existent address in Atwater, and two more registered at different hotels in the district. They cite California Election Code section 2021(b), which states, “A person does not gain a domicile in any precinct into which he or she comes for temporary purposes merely, without the intention of making that precinct his or her home.”

“Throughout the recall campaign there have been numerous reports of suspicious conduct by paid signature gatherers who not only misrepresented Jeff Denham’s record, but lied about the very petitions they asked voters to sign,” anti-recall campaign spokesman Kevin Spillane said in a release. “It has been reported back to us that some voters were being told the recall forms were actually a petition for widening Highway 99. Also — in several cases, the signature gatherers admitted to voters that they lived at locations outside the 12th District — in violation of California election law.”

It’s “clear that California election law has been systematically violated by Senator Don Perata’s political operation,” Spillane claimed. “Under California law, our campaign is not allowed access to the petitions and other relevant records. We have taken our research as far as we can. Now we respectfully request that local authorities do their jobs and pursue this matter.”

Dump Denham campaign spokesman Paul Hefner said this is a load of tripe, just as it was when Denham supporters first complained about it several months ago.

“We abided by the rules, that’s why the recall was certified,” he said. “The simple fact of the matter is, Jeff Denham wants this to be about anything other than his record… and that the voters of his district are desperate to get rid of him.”

Denham’s anti-recall campaign has posted to its Web site, via YouTube, several surreptitious recordings of an operative talking to petition signature-gatherers. But Hefner said those’ve been up there for months, aren’t so scandalous, and mean only that “Denham’s got a lot of explaining to do for why he feels the need to go out and do surveillance on his own constituents.”

What did I learn listening to these recordings?

Really, this seems to me like an indictment of California’s overall petition signature-gathering process — having uninformed people who’re paid like paperboys serve as gatekeepers to our democracy is a recipe for disaster no matter what the issue. But then again, I hate the ballot-measure process anyway; I think we should elect our representatives to legislate for us, and if we’re not happy with ‘em, we shouldn’t re-elect ‘em.

Listen to the recordings yourself, after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

No sooner do I blog about the Loni Hancock versus Wilma Chan race for Don Perata’s 9th State Senate District seat than the fireworks start up in earnest: Chan today asked the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission to investigate whether Hancock and her campaign violated rules by paying a Senate campaign staffer out of her 14th Assembly District Officeholder Account.

According to Chan’s news release, public campaign filings show Hancock has paid Terri Waller — listed in FPPC reports as a campaign consultant — $15,000 or more from the Officeholder Account since June 2007. FPPC regulations say officeholders can’t use officeholder funds to pay campaign expenses, Chan notes, and Waller has been introduced as Hancock’s campaign manager at one or more Senate campaign forums and is listed as the campaign contact on at least one candidate questionnaire. Read Chan’s full complaint here. [And scroll down through the updates for an expert’s review.]

“A year ago, Loni Hancock was touting the virtues of campaign finance reform on her blog,” Chan spokesman David Chilenski said in the release. “Today, it looks like she could be misusing campaign funds and may be circumventing the rules for her Senate campaign. It’s ironic to see her champion clean money reform in her speeches and then turn around and act in a way that seems contradict these values.”

Waller is listed on Hancock’s office Web site as Hancock’s district coordinator, and a Web search shows she has served in that capacity for years. Campaign-finance printouts attached to Chan’s complaint show Waller was paid from the officeholder account for various office expenses, but also several times under the notation “campaign consultants.”

I couldn’t immediately reach Hancock’s campaign spokespeople, but I’ll keep trying…

UPDATE @ 9:35 P.M. MONDAY: And the word from Hancock campaign spokesman Cliff Staton is “bogus.”

“Terri Waller has been the Campaign Manager for the Hancock campaign since the beginning of March. The last period for which she was paid from the Officeholder Account ended in February. The East Bay Young Dems meeting was on March 6. The Nate Miley endorsement interview was on March 22,” Staton says. “This is another desperate attempt by the Chan campaign to distract attention from their big loss at the Democratic Convention over the weekend.”

In fairness, Staton got back to me quickly; this update has been delayed because I was out of pocket for a few hours.

UPDATE @ 10:15 A.M. TUESDAY: I just got off the phone with Staton, who explained that several “campaign consultant” payments made to Waller before she became Hancock’s Senate campaign manager were for various political but non-campaign functions she served while in Hancock’s employ.

“It’s simply the way that they list it on the officeholder account,” he said. “It’s not campaigning… It’s not about running for election, it’s simply that as a politician you’re in a political environment and there are things you have to do.”

So if Waller went to a purely political event on Hancock’s behalf – maybe a labor council dinner, for example – Hancock would pay her out of the officeholder account rather than from state funds, Staton said. “Loni has always determined those kinds of things are not part of the state, the taxpayers should not pay that.”

“They were on a fishing expedition,” he said of Chan’s complaint. “There’s absolutely no substance to that.”

Staton is angry that I posted this last night before he could get back to me with his comments; he said I’ve given Chan’s campaign fodder for a direct-mail hit piece. I responded that when a former lawmaker and current candidate files an official complaint with a state agency – a matter of public record, not just a verbal accusation – I think it’s newsworthy.

And if it turns out to be bogus, a cheap campaign tactic as Staton says, that’s newsworthy too.

Just so the process is clear: I received the release and complaint from Chan’s campaign at 5:47 p.m. I left voice-mails for Staton at his office and home, and e-mailed him at his office; I left a voice-mail and an e-mail for one of his associates; and I left a voice-mail for a Hancock campaign worker whose cell number I obtained from the campaign office. I had to be away from my phone and computer for a while, and updated the blog item as soon as I returned.

Staton also asked me to pull this item off the blog at least until I’ve “had a chance to evaluate its validity.” As I told him, it’s up to the FPPC to evaluate the complaint’s validity.

UPDATE @ 1:40 P.M. TUESDAY: One of the state’s top authorities on campaign finance, law and ethics has just told me that if there’s any violation at all here, it’s “trivial.”

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen a complaint like this — I’ve never seen them complain about officeholder funds versus campaign funds,” said Center for Governmental Studies President Bob Stern, who authored the Political Reform Act of 1974 and was the FPPC’s first general counsel from 1974 to 1983. “It just seems like overkill, even if it were true.”

By state law, candidates who voluntarily choose to limit their spending in state Senate campaigns may spend no more than $724,000 in a primary election and $1,086,000 in a general election. Stern said Chan’s complaint would only have any consequence if Hancock accepted these limits (which she has, while Chan has not) but then used the payments at issue to dodge the limits. Judging from her campaign finance reports, it doesn’t look as if she’s anywhere near those limits.

Even then, Stern said, it would depend on whether Waller clearly represented herself before March 1 — at events for which she was reimbursed from the officeholder account — as representing Hancock as a Senate candidate rather than as an Assemblywoman. And even then, he said, “it’s more of a bookkeeping thing.”

“They have met the standards of saying there might be a violation, but it certainly doesn’t seem like a very earthshaking one even if the facts are true,” Stern said.

UPDATE @ 3:55 P.M. THURSDAY: Chan’s campaign filed an addendum to its complaint today with the FPPC.

Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, reportedly has received the California Democratic Party’s endorsement to succeed state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, in the 9th State Senate District.

“As a lifelong Democrat, I am proud to have the sole endorsement of my party,” Hancock said in her own news release. “We have worked hard on the issues that face our state — combating global warming, fixing our health care system, and improving our schools. I look forward to continuing that work in the State Senate.”

The release said Hancock got with 90% of the vote from Democrats based in her region, needing only 60 percent to win the endorsement. That’s gotta hurt for Hancock’s opponent, former Assembly Majority Leader Wilma Chan, D-Alameda.

Chan, term-limited out in 2006, just hasn’t had the kind of public face-time that Hancock — finishing her final Assembly term this year — has had by remaining in office. And note Hancock’s quote, regarding the “sole endorsement;” Perata had endorsed them both, which essentially negated any possible benefit.

But don’t count Chan out. As of March 17, the end of the last reporting period, Chan’s campaign had $507,283 in the bank compared to Hancock’s $406,108, although a glance at filings since then shows Hancock may have stepped it up in the last two weeks, collecting $34,200 to Chan’s $9,700. Lotsa money on both sides; watch your mailboxes for what’s sure to be a direct-mail deluge.

Even as state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, goes around doing press events to underscore the damage Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget cuts will do to local schools — such as last week in Oakland, and yesterday in Concord — his daughter is busy drumming up press for such events, too.

Becca Perata-Rosati’s public relations firm, Vox Populi, issued a release summoning reporters to an event at 3 p.m. today at which more than 100 Alameda educators and students will stand in trash cans at sites throughout the city to demonstrate that “public education is too valuable to throw away.” It’s the kickoff of a public awareness campaign which will include decals on the sides of Alameda’s trash trucks and curbside cans as well as print and outdoor space and lawn signs, all designed to raise awareness of the district’s proposed $4.5 million budget cuts announced earlier this month.

It’s organized by the Alameda Education Foundation, a nonprofit working to support educational excellence in the Alameda Unified School District. Oakland-based ad firm Wrecking Ball Inc. donated its services to conceive the campaign.

Sacramento reporters have been complaining for some time about a lack of Internet access in the state Capitol.

Steve Geissinger — the Capitol Correspondents Association of California’s president and a reporter for this newspaper — said perhaps the state and the CCAC, through fundraising, could forge a 50-50 deal so the deficit-plagued state doesn’t bear the whole cost of providing adequate Internet access for reporting on things such as — well, the deficit.

At least one lawmaker reportedly agrees and has been talking with the CCAC about a deal, although this person asked not to be identified before an agreement is reached.

Follow us after the jump for a letter the CCAC sent to state officials yesterday, including some comparisons that show just how far the supposedly high-tech Golden State has fallen behind… Read the rest of this entry »