It was widely reported -- including here -- that Carole Migden was bound for a $132,000-a-year sinecure on the state Integrated Waste Management Board after losing her state Senate seat to Mark Leno in the Democratic primary in February.
Well, it turns out the seat is going to another out-of-work senator, Sheila Kuehl, a Southern California Democrat who was unseated by term limits. No word yet on what precipitated a change. Or if there is another appointment in the offing for Migden.
Kuehl, by the bye, has been the primary sponsor of efforts to create a single-payer health care system in California. In a posting at the California Progress Report, a liberal blog, she said she would be passing the torch on single-payer to Leno, who will be sworn into the Senate next week.
Do you think Leno will be any more succesful in passing single-payer than Kuehl has been?
It doesn't roll off the tongue quite like Tinker to Evers to
Chance. And don't look for this combination to be immortalized alongside Montana and Clark and
Young and Rice.
But it's looking like a sure thing in the state solid waste
trifecta.
Wiggins is Pat Wiggins. During a two-year break between her
last term in the state Assembly and her current term in the state Senate, the
Santa Rosa Democrat was appointed to the state Intergrated Waste Management
Board.
When she left the board, Wesley Chesbro, a former state
senator (and before that a waste board member), was appointed to one of two vacancies. In a couple weeks, Chesbro,
D-Arcata, must give up his waste board seat (again) to take up residence in the
state Assembly next month.
Which brings us to Migden. That would be state Sen. Carole
Migden, who lost her re-election bid in the Democratic primary in June. Her
term ends in two weeks and it's widely expected that she will be appointed to
the waste board.
The board oversees California's
recycling efforts and enforces a state mandate to reduce landfill dumping by 50
percent. Board members are appointed by the governor, the Assembly speaker and
the Senate Rules Committee, making the board a popular landing spot for jobless
politicos. The current board chairwoman is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's former
scheduling secretary.
Members are paid $117,800 a year and apparently have ample
time to run for office.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday
joined the list of challengers to Proposition 8, the ballot measure that amends
the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
The board joins supervisors in San Francisco
and Santa Clara
counties in a lawsuit against Prop. 8. Democrats in the state Legislature and
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also have called on the court to step in on the
grounds that Prop. 8 revised rather than amended the constitution, which
requires legislative as well as voter approval.
This is a risky gambit, for the plaintiffs and for the
court.
Most voters aren't versed in the finer points of
constitutional law, such as revisions vs. amendments to the constitution. They
do have a sense of fair play that could mean a backlash, perhaps even from some
opponents of Prop. 8, if the measure is overturned after being approved by the
voters.
There's plenty of precedent for overturning ballot measures.
Courts have rejected open primaries, campaign finance measures and a rather
sweeping consumer-protection law in recent years. But none of those generated
the political heat that Prop. 8 has.And neither term limits nor Prop. 13 was ruled a
revision, so it may be tough to sell Prop. 8 as such.
On the court, two justices are up for retention elections in
2010. One is Chief Justice Ron George, who wrote the same-sex marriage ruling,
which infuriated many conservatives. The other is Ming Chin, who dissented.
Both George and Chin faced retention challenges in 1998, led by critics of a
decision that overturned a state law requiring parental consent before a minor
undergoes an abortion. Both formed campaign committees, raised money and fought
off their opponents, which is rarely necessary in California judicial races.
George probably will have to do that again. Although he's a
former prosecutor whose rise on the bench has been orchestrated by
Republican governors, it's conservatives who will be looking to unseat him,
much as they did in 1986 with Chief Justice Rose Bird and two associate justices appointed by Democrats.
This isn't to suggest that Prop. 8 should stand
unchallenged. But it would better political sense for advocates of same-sex marriage to try
to repeal it with another ballot measure in 2010.
A comparison of election results from 2000 and 2008 shows
that support for same-sex marriage increased from 39 percent to 48 percent. The
sad fact is opponents of Prop. 8 may have defeated it with a better campaign.
Crowds have turned out to protest, but where were those crowds before the election? There was next to no effort to counter the most effective pro-Prop. 8 ads, which claimed negative impacts
on churches and schools. And instead of gay families, the campaign relied on
politicians such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein and schools chief Jack O'Connell to
make its case.
A court fight only compounds the mistakes of the campaign.
Supporters of same-sex marriage need to convince the electorate.
One recurring theme during the closing days of the campaign
and the first few days after the election was that a newly minted generation of
political junkies would suffer withdrawal. Not to worry. Less than a week has
passed, and we've got the first handicap report on California's 2010 gubernatorial election to
dissect.
And why not? Some stores have been set up for Christmas since the
Fourth of July.
Michael Rothfeld rounds up the likely field of candidates in
today's Los Angeles Times. Alas, no great surprises.
Among the Democrats mentioned are Jerry Brown, John
Garamendi, Gavin Newsom (though his "Howard Dean moment" on same-sex marriage might
hurt him in the general election, it is pointed out), Antonio Villaraigosa and
Steve Westley (who also has been mentioned for an Obama administration post).
The wild card, of course, is Dianne Feinstein. If she runs, chances are
everyone else is busy. Errands to run. Hair to wash. Lawn to mow. No time for a
campaign.
There aren't many household names among the Republicans -- Meg
Whitman, Steve Poizner and Campbell. But Whitman, the founder of eBay, is a
self-made billionaire. Poizner, the state's insurance commissioner, has deep
pockets, too. Campbell
has been on the faculty at Cal and Stanford, served five terms in Congress and was state
finance director under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I think Feinstein takes a pass, and we see a free-for-all
among the Democrats. Whitman seems to me to have the inside for the Republicans
- money, huge business success, female. What do you think? Or were you hoping
to get through Thanksgiving (or at least Veterans Day) without thinking about
the next election?
Measure Q: I told several people that I thought Q would fail,
largely because it wouldn't do well in MarinCounty.
Moreover, I said I expected Marin voters to give much stronger support to Prop.
1A (bonds for a high-speed train to L.A.)
than to a local rail measure. Well, I certainly was wrong. Support in Marin increased
since 2006, and, as a result, this time the rail measure passed. I was right that Prop. 1A would do better -
65 percent vs. 62.6 percent. But 2.4 percentage points doesn't exactly equate to "much stronger." In
SonomaCounty, by the way, Prop. 1A lagged well
behind Q - 64 percent vs. 73.5 percent.
Prop. 8: Election results don't become final for about a
month after Election Day, as late absentees are counted and the vote is canvassed.
During that time, I would imagine that there will be a rush, much as there was
right before the election, for gay couples to marry. That's going to be an
extra crunch for county clerks, who will be wrapping up the election at the
same time they have a big demand for marriage licenses and civil weddings. I
also imagine we'll see a court fight over the validity of the marriages
conducted in the six months between the state Supreme Court ruling and whatever
date Prop. 8 takes effect.
Rohnert Park:
Interesting mixed message in the results here. Measure L, the sewer rate
rollback, passed, yet the candidate most closely associated with it (Dawna
Gallagher) finished last in the City Council election. We'll probably get a
picture very quickly of whether the sponsors were right that the city could
meet all its financial obligations, including paying for the regional treatment plant and
The Geysers pipeline, with lower rates. A major argument of Measure L's
sponsors was that the city had been adding a sewer line to promote growth. Yet
the new council majority may be considerably friendlier to development proposals
than the majority that has been turned out.
It also will be interesting to see if the new council
revisits the issue of retirement benefits for the Public Safety
Department. Joe Callinan and Gina Belforte were critical of the negotiations
that resulted in a two-tier retirement system, which reduced the city's long-term
liability.
Board of Supervisors: I haven't got an up-to-date voter
registration breakdown of SonomaCounty by supervisorial
district, but I'm surprised to see that there were far more votes cast in the
1st district (Valerie Brown vs. Will Pier) than either of the other races. Pier
quietly put together a very serious challenge to an incumbent supervisor, but
attention was focused on the contests between Shirlee Zane and Sharon Wright in Santa Rosa
and Efren Carrillo and Rue Furch in the west county. The numbers will change as the remaining absentees are
counted, but probably not the proportions. For now, there are 40,500 ballots in
the 1st district, 31,000 in the 3rd and 34,000 in the 5th.
Ballot fatigue: It's not unusual to see a big drop-off from
the top of the ballot to the bottom, but not this time, at least in SonomaCounty.
There were 196,300 votes cast for president and 180,671 for Measure Q, the last item on the ballot. What
else were voters intense about? Prop. 8, for sure. There were 194,000 ballots cast. And Proposition 2 (chickens and cages), with 190,300 ballots.
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