Election Countdown

This bill seems like kind of a no-brainer: it would stop teachers charged with felony sex offenses from keeping their credentials by pleading no-contest to a misdemeanor offense.

The bill arose shortly after a massive Associated Press investigation that showed that teachers across the nation were getting in trouble with the law and moving on to new schools without losing credentials. 

The only thing that gave me pause was that the bill also sets in the same rules for drug offenses... it seems like the demonstrable problem was with sex offenders, rather than drug offenders.  If school boards are not having problems with drug offenders (perhaps suspension and drug treatment can be effective) maybe it did not belong in the bill.  Still, it wouldn't surprise me if the same sorts of problems are happening with drug convictions.

A similar bill authored by Sen. Jack Scott, D-Pasadena, was passed recently also: it would automatically suspend credentials of teachers who had lost their credentials in another state.  Again, no-brainer. 

Rep. Henry Waxman and Rep. Howard Berman both announced today they will both cast their votes for Sen. Obama when the superdelegates weigh in on the presidential candidate.  Both were previously uncommitted. 

Both their districts went for Sen. Clinton in February's primary, but nation-wide delegates are starting to line up behind Obama.

According to CNN Obama now leads Clinton 291 to 274 in the superdelegate count.

  Karen Bass said today in her first press conference as Speaker that she would not pursue big issues like global warming and health care.

That might be a good thing, given California's massive deficit problems. Remember last year when massive amounts of time and government resources went down the drain as a hastily-constructed (though well-intentioned) health care bill from Assemblyman Fabian Nunez died in committee because nobody thought the state could afford it?

Of course, universal health care is a worthy goal, but with the long-term structure of California government funding at stake (are we going to massively cut spending, massively increase taxation, find a compromise, or continue to face deficits even in good revenue years?) it seems like pipe dream right now.

Bass said her priorities are fixing the state's budget problems, and ensuring a secure revenue stream for foster care.  Since her term as Speaker will expire in 2010 because of term limits, accomplishing just those two things would be a decent achievement. 

Better to shoot low and accomplish than aim high and miss the target.

Assemblyman Portantino, D- La Canada, took some heat in recent weeks in some editorial pages, as we noted in this blog, for considering introducing amendments that would help hide salary information for police officers.  The California Newspaper Publisher's Association, the closest thing we journalists have to a trade group, spoke out against Portantino.

Now Portantino is behind a bill the CNPA is a fan of: AB 2433, which protects the anonymity of web site publishers.  A technique used by some organizations to silence websites is to file lawsuits, or threaten lawsuits against online providers, demanding they reveal the name and/or personal information of the person running the lawsuit.  That threat can be enough to get a web site taken offline, or to silence a blogger..... for an example thumb through this story on the Falun Gong I wrote last December. 

Good to see a bill like this being voted on in the Senate. 

Pop Photo has a cool feature up with digital projections of what Obama, Clinton, and McCain will look like in 4 years.  If you have children under the age of 12, please have them leave the room before you show them the cryptkeeper-like appearance of the site's projection of John McCain.

Really, it isn't actually that bad, but they sure won't like that great in a few years if Pop Photo is right.  They do include a comparison of George Bush in 2000 and 2008, if you have doubts about how much the presidency can age a person. 

Obama says he's "outraged" by Jeremiah Wright's comments. Here's the transcript from his latest (4/29) Q&A with reporters.

A wily bill from Assemblyman Charles Calderon, D-Whittier, failed in committee last week.... the bill would have authorized the taxation of music downloads.

It was wily for two reasons: first, though the bill was sold as a music download tax, it would have also opened the door for taxation on other downloads that have not yet quite become the revenue generator that music has: books, articles, movies, TV shows, etc.  It could even go beyond that in its reach.... with a new amendment the bill now reads that the tax "includes, but is not limited to, products like music, movies, and books.

Secondly, the bill aimed to tweak an existing tax code that allows tax only on "tangible property."  Through some legal wrangling, that would allow a straight majority vote in the assembly, rather than the normal 2/3 required to pass a new tax.

The real kicker on the bill though, was that tax would only be allowed on in-state companies.  With web sales, of course, you can purchase downloads from anywhere in the world, allowing a huge disincentive for web companies to base themselves in California, and a huge disincentive for people to buy anything from a California-based company.

The bill stalled with a split 4-4 vote.  Four Democrats, including Calderon and Mike Eng, D-El Monte,  voted for the bill.  Three Republicans and one Democrat voted against it.  The committee voted unanimously to allow another hearing on the bill in the future

Rocky Rushing, the chief of staff for Sen. Ron Calderon, and a very even-keeled guy didn't sound upset talking about the failure of his boss's dog-fighting bill, but he had some tough words both the Public Safety committee and the ACLU.

Rushing called it a "good day for dog fighters and the ACLU," and set the bill was about as dead as the thousands of dogs who die in the fights every year.  Ouch!

His frustration is understandable.... I think anyone's first reaction to the bill would be to agree to any steps to stop the swine who force dogs to fight for entertainment.  The argument against the bill is equally strong though: any time the government wants the right to confiscate property, people have good reason to be wary.

When I spoke to ACLU, their representative brought up some of the horrors of California's drug forfeiture laws where police were alleged to have targeted people for drug crimes based on the quality of their possessions.  In one such case, Donald Scott, of Malibu was shot and killed by police in his own home.  They were there to arrest him for drug crimes they did not find evidence of. 

So the issue doesn't necessarily have an easy answer. 

The Contra Costa Times is reporting that  Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-La Canada, wants to put amendments in a bill that originally dealt with police interrogations.  An editorial in the Sacramento Bee describes the changes as "stealth amendments" and describes their inception:

Assembly Bill 1855 originally dealt with interrogation of police officers under investigation. But, as reported in the Contra Costa Times, a police lobbying group, the Peace Officers Research Association of California, is hawking amendments that would reverse state Supreme Court decisions affirming the public's right to names, badge numbers, salaries and dates of employment.

According to the Sac Bee, Portantino's staff says the bill is about protecting undercover police officers, which the paper claims are already protected:

Since the effort to change the law has been exposed, Portantino's staff says that what the assemblyman really wants to do is "craft a set of amendments to this bill to specifically protect the identities of undercover officers." But the law and court interpretation already does that. This is an effort in search of a problem.

As a journalist, this issue is a no-brainer for me, but we are very oriented towards the importance of keeping records public.  I'm sure police groups would argue that any piece of information about an officer's identity could lead to someone tracking that officer down... but officers are not really shy about giving out their names, which is the only info I think could really lead to that happening.  Salary info is not going to reveal anything about the officer, as long as his personal information is redacted when the records are handed over to the public.

Unsurprisingly, the California Newspaper Publishers Association had the strongest words on the issue in the Contra Costa Times article:

"Portantino's bill would stop the public from monitoring excessive pay, overtime abuse, nepotism, gender and race discrimination, and the migration of potentially abusive peace officers from one agency to the next," Tom Newton, the associations' general counsel, said in a statement.

I notice that neither paper appeared to get a direct comment from the Assemblyman or his office, however, so I will email them and ask if they have a response to this blog post.  

What do all of the above items have in common?  If you are a taxpayer, your helped pay for them, says a Washington Post article.  The charges for those items all came from government employees using credit cards.

So it isn't just Irwindale politicians and local water boards using taxpayer funds for questionable expenses... the federal government does it as well.

The lingerie is really the most bizarre expense on there.... I believe most Americans don't realize that American State Department employees are in Ecuador running drug enforcement operations, but I am sure that until today nobody would have thought they were doing it wearing expensive women's underwear:

In another case at the State Department, a cardholder spent $360 at the Seduccion Boutique in Ecuador to buy "women's underwear/lingerie for use during jungle training by trainees of a drug enforcement program." The report does not include further details, but it says a State Department official "agreed that the charge was questionable."

The 300,000 employees with government credit cards remind me of something L.A. District Attorney Dave Demerjian told me for a story on former Baldwin Park  Councilman  William Van Cleave's misuse of a city credit card

"When I speak to public officials, I always say that giving badges and credit cards to city councilmen is like giving a cell phone to a teenage girl," said Demerjian."

So what is the solution... hmm, let me think about how we do it here on the newsroom.  We pay for expenses out of our own pockets, put it on an expense form, and then our supervisors look at it to see if it is an appropriate use of funds.  If it is, they pay for it.  I guess if the supervisor is the one buying the liquor and underwear the system doesn't work quite as well though. 

In other national news, the Justice Department no longer takes corporate wrong-doers to court.

A week or so ago we ran an article an legislator's overseas travel (and their domestic travel).  A lot of us journalists, skeptical of government, tend to assume not much comes out of them.

So to be fair, Assemblyman Charles Calderon told me two weeks ago that on a trip to Spain last month a group of legislators studied an underground tunnel freeway system.

Now, a few weeks later, reporter Fred Ortega reports that pols are looking at applying that system to the 710 Freeway, and European companies want to bid on the job.

Could be coincidence.... or it could be argued that the idea of using that freeway system could have been generated without the trip.  But if not, the trip could pay off for the public. 

The L.A. Times has an interesting background story on embattled County Registrar Dean Logan, who had the misfortune of presiding over the county's double-bubble trouble outbreak that caused 50,000 votes to initially not be counted on the Feb 5 primary.

Apparently, Logan was the head of King County's elections (the Washington state county which includes Seattle) in 2004 when one of the closest gubernatorial contests ended up with the initial outcome (A Republican win) being overturned for a Democratic winner.  Recounts in Logan;s county accounted for the change.

A GOP official who said he was "shocked that anyone would hire Dean Logan," went on to describe the 2004 governor's race like this:

"It might be the last thing I think about before I die," said Vance, the former state Republican Party chairman who was a King County councilman as well as a state legislator. "It was unbelievably bitter and all-consuming for all of us. It was one of the biggest things that has ever happened in my professional life."

Ouch!  Still, Democrats in King County remember Logan fondly, but the election was rough enough on Logan that he took a job as L.A. county deputy registrar in 2006, and is now interim head of the registrar since Connie McCormak's recent retirement.

In all fairness to Logan, regarding the double-bubble mess, the ballot was approved in 2002, years before he got to the county.  Additionally, Logan did attempt to clarify the double-bubble problem (some say a little half-heartedly) in his time as interim head of the department. 

For the umpteenth time I am asking myself why take a job at a privately-owned newspaper, when I could get a job at a publicly-owned state for more pay, benefits, and wildly-overpriced parties.  From the Sacramento Bee, on a $43,000 November bash thrown by the state-owned California lottery:

"Billed as an employee recognition and training event, the expenses actually went to entertainment, prizes and black-peppered prime rib dinners for Lottery employees, retires and guests," Controller John Chiang said in a statement.

Nearly $30,000 was spent on the Nov. 8 event, intended to celebrate the Lottery's $20 billion contribution to education. Besides a dinner and dessert, guests received silver-framed photo frames, and the Lottery hired a D.J. and photographer.

An additional $17,262 was spent on mock Lottery games for entertainment. Among the costs were $5,000 paid to a former Big Spin host as master of ceremonies and $10,932 worth of prizes, including a Nintendo Wii, i-Pods and digital cameras.

Several people have called me today in response to a story I wrote on Sen. Ron Calderon's bill to open up access to some medical records, to ask for the senator's information to write him.  The info can be found on his web site, but I will reproduce it below.  You can also follow this link to an online sheet to contact him.

The Associated Press reports today that now that the legislature's "spring break" week has come, delegations of California lawmakers are off on sponsored trips to Spain and Japan.  The Spanish delegation, which includes local Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Whittier) is there on a 11-day trip paid for by the California Foundation, which the AP describes thusly:

"The California Foundation pays for airfare, hotels, transportation and some of the meals on the trips it sponsors. Most of its budget of about $1 million a year comes from the corporations, labor unions and environmental groups that are represented on its board of directors."

The trip is meant to study high-speed rail (i.e. ride on it and maybe take a meeting with some rail officials).  The other group, which is going to Japan to study high-speed rail, is the 13th straight legislature group to go there in 13 years.  Last year, legislators, including local Assemblyman Bob Huff (D-Diamond Bar) also went to France to .... you guessed it, study high speed rail.

I guess they must really know a lot about high speed rail now. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has just voiced what many political observers have been saying for months: If the superdelegates vote against the candidate who goes into the convention with the most pledged delegates from the state primaries and caucuses, the Democratic Party will be damaged politically.

Pelosi, who made the comments in a taped segment of ABC's "This Week" as reported by CNN's Political Ticker, seemed to be saying that she will cast her vote as a superdelegate for the popular leader of the Democratic nominating contests. Currently, that person is Sen. Barack Obama.

According to the AP, Obama currently leads Clinton by about 142 pledged delegates, a lead that would remain in place going into the August convention unless Clinton takes landslide victories in the remaining primaries and caucuses -- an unlikely scenario.

Pelosi's words carry great weight and could influence many of her fellow superdelegates -- Democratic members of Congress, state governors and other high-ranking party officials who get their own votes at the convention. Clinton currently leads the superdelegate county, 249-213 according to the AP.

If they follow Pelosi's lead, the roughly 700 superdelegates in the party would easily tip the nomination toward Obama.

 

The Sacramento Bee's Capitol Alert blog is reporting that Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-Pasadena, has been stripped of his chairmanship of the Assembly Higher Education Committee.

This appears to be the first sign of fallout from Portantino's failed candidacy for the speakership. Back on Feb. 28 we speculated on what kinds of repercussions Portantino -- and by proxy, the Valley -- might face after Portantino lost his challenge to Speaker Fabian Nunez's handpicked successor, L.A. Assemblywoman Karen Bass. Losing speakership candidates have faced similar punishment before, but we hoped the relatively peaceful nature of the Nunez-Bass transition might have proved benign to Portantino and other challengers.

Apparently not so. Capitol Alert is reporting that besides Portantino another challenger, Hector De la Torre, has also been removed from the head of the powerful Assembly Rules Committee. It seems that both assemblymen were part of an opposition group of Democrats that had joined to try to thwart Nunez's attempt to have Bass selected as speaker through a procedural maneuver. But De La Torre and Portantino weren't the only ones involved in opposing Bass, so it is unclear why they were the only ones singled out so far.

Will Portantino's loss of clout in Sacramento affect the Valley's already meager chances of attracting state funding in an already dismal fiscal climate? My guess is yes. Higher Education is an important committee, and first to be affected may be our local community colleges like Pasadena, Citrus and Mt. SAC, as well as other universities and assorted students and faculty, whom have just lost a powerful local advocate in the capitol.

Assemblyman Anthony Adam's office just emailed me a Republican-compiled top-10 worst Democratic tax increase proposals of this year.  Looks like that $14 billion budget shortfall isn't going to get reduced anytime soon.

1. The iTunes Tax
   Assembly Bill 1956 (Calderon) would require state tax officials to begin imposing sales taxes on music, movies and software purchases made online, such as on iTunes.  Democrats have also talked about taxing all items purchased on the Internet ($500 million tax increase).

 

2. Taking Away the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction
   Democrats have proposed eliminating the state home mortgage interest deduction, also known as the homeowner’s tax, which provides significant tax savings for working families and helps many Californians afford the expensive costs of home ownership.  This would be a $5.3 billion tax hike.

 

3.      Closing So-Called “Tax Loopholes”
Democrats and others have pushed closing “tax loopholes,” which is an effort to raise taxes on working Californians.  These so-called loopholes include taking away the senior citizen tax credit (a $255 million tax increase) and reducing the child dependent tax credit ($2.4 billion) – which will hurt middle-class families.

 

4. New Health Taxes
   Democrats have proposed the largest tax increase on businesses in state history, an $8 billion jobs tax, to pay for government-run health care.  In addition, Assembly Bill 2967 (Fuentes) would impose a new .06 percent tax on the gross operating costs of every California hospital, to pay for new government health care programs. 

 

5. Creating a New Tax on California Businesses
   Speaker Núñez has talked about creating a new split-roll property tax on California businesses, which would be a $3 to $7 billion tax increase on businesses.  This would lead to higher prices for consumers and the threat of job losses.

 

6. The Plastic Bag Tax
   Assembly Bill 2829 (Davis) would impose a new plastic bag tax, at a still-unspecified level, on the plastic bags used by grocery stores and other retailers to package purchases.

 

7. Making It Easier for Politicians to Raise Taxes
   Senate Constitutional Amendment 18 (Torlakson) would make it easier for local politicians to raise taxes, by allowing educational finance districts to impose special taxes by a majority vote.

 

8. Increasing the Car Tax
   Assembly Bill 2388 (Feuer) would raise the car tax based on the weight of the vehicle and the amount of carbon dioxide emissions it emits, to a still-unspecified level. 
   
   Assembly Bill 2522 (Arambula) would authorize San Joaquin Valley air quality officials to impose a new $30 car tax on local drivers, without a vote of the people. 
   
   Assembly Bill 2638 (Coto) would impose a new sales tax on the sale of cars in California that get less than 15 miles per gallon.
   
   Senate Bill 1731 (Yee) would authorize San Francisco Bay Area transportation officials to impose a higher car tax on local drivers, without a vote of the people.
   
   Democrats have also proposed restoring the higher car tax imposed by former Governor Gray Davis and repealed by Governor Schwarzenegger upon taking office, a $6 billion tax increase.

 

9. Increasing the Gas Tax

Assembly Bill 9xxx (Núñez) would impose a costly new “oil severance” tax on the cost of oil production in California.  This will cause gas prices to soar new heights in California as this new tax will be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices at the pump.

 

Assembly Bill 2744 (Huffman) would authorize San Francisco Bay Area transportation officials to impose a new gas tax, of as much as 10 cents per gallon, to pay for new government spending. 

Assembly Bill 2558 (Feuer) would authorize Los Angeles transportation officials to impose one of two different taxes, subject to a majority vote, to address climate change – an increased gas tax as high as 3 percent, or an increased car tax as high as $80.

 

10. Raising Income Taxes
    Assembly Bill 2372 (Coto) would impose a new 1 percent tax on Californians earning more than $1 million per year, raising the state’s highest income tax rate to 11.3 percent. 
    
    Assembly Bill 2897 (Hancock) would impose a new 10 percent tax rate for individuals earning more than $136,115 every year ($272,230 for joint filers) and a new 11 percent tax rate for individuals earning more than $272,230 per year ($544,460 for joint filers). 

 It would have been pretty clear if Sen. Obama had just been able to take Ohio and Texas: no more endless speculation from the blogosphere, and talking heads, and salaried "political expert" columnists.

But since it isn't, let's just revel in the wildly differing opinions on this race.  From Marc Cooper at the Huffington Post:

"There is no plausible scenario in which Clinton can win the nomination. At least not democratically."

The undemocratic situation Cooper refers to is the possibility that the pledged delegate count will be so close to deadlocked that party-chosen superdelegates will be the one to choose the president (for a recap on what superdelegates are see Fred Ortega's post of last month.)

Meanwhile, two columns up at the Huff Post, Stephen Schlesinger argues there are plenty of historical examples of superdelegates elevating a candidate with fewer pledged delegates (Clinton) over the front runner:

"There is no rule in the politics of Democratic Party conventions that says that the contender with the largest number of pledged delegates short of the total required for nomination should automatically, by dint of that achievement, be handed the party's designation. This argument is now being put forth by Senator Obama's campaign."

And, of course, the final x factor is what could happen if Florida and Michigan get their delegates counted (Clinton might still be behind in that scenario, though it would be much closer).  Or, as Cooper and Schelesinger's colleague, Mark Green, suggests, perhaps Florida and Michigan will attempt a new primary which would actually have all the candidates on the ballot. 

Here is a good roundup by the AP about the delegates that were at stake Tuesday and how they were divvied up between the candidates:

There were 370 Democratic delegates at stake in Tuesday's contests, and nearly complete returns showed Clinton outpaced Obama in Ohio, 74-65, in Rhode Island, 13-8, and in the Texas primary, 65-61.

Obama won in Vermont, 9-6, and was ahead in the Texas caucuses, 30-27. Ten of the dozen that remained to be awarded were in Texas; the other two in Ohio.

So as we said earlier, it looks like Obama could take the Texas caucus, pretty much negating Hillary's primary win there. At this point, with those 12 delegates still to be apportioned, the total delegate count is 1,562 for Obama and 1,461 for Clinton -- roughly the same 100-delegate lead Obama carried into the Critical Tuesday primaries.

Again, this is all bad news for Hillary and her supporters. Her victories in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island are little more than morale-boosting, psychological wins, as opposed to actual, statistical ones.

Clinton wins Ohio and Texas, achieving her campaign's oft state goal of stopping Obama's momentum with wins in those two large states. So what does this really mean?

Back on Feb. 14 we noted that Clinton would have to win the big "Critical Tuesday" primaries by relatively large margins to really eat into Obama's delegate lead. She won Ohio by a good 10 points. But Texas is another story. With 98 percent of the vote counted Clinton has a narrow 3 point lead, and in the Longhorn State's weird "primacaucus" contest she is actually behind Obama by 3 points in the caucus portion of the contest, with about 40 percent of ballots counted.

Unlike California Texas does not automatically award a big chunk of the delegates to the overall winner, so even if she wins the caucus by the same margin as the primary (or if Obama holds his slight lead in the caucus) then they are pretty much gonna split the state's nearly 200 delegates. Not good for Hillary.

As this article by the AP points out, splitting the vote with Obama at this late point in the primaries does not help Hillary, since Obama still maintains the overall delegate lead:

...even if she wins every contest left, Clinton still would have a hard time overcoming Barack Obama's pledged delegate lead. In fact, her task got even harder because even though she won Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island Tuesday night, she didn't do much to close the delegate gap — and with every contest that passes, the number up for grabs drops.

Obama focused on the math while addressing supporters in Texas. "We have nearly the same delegate lead as we did this morning and we are on our way to winning this nomination," he said. 

My take? Unless Hillary wins Pennsylvania by a landslide -- even with that she may not be able to catch up in the pledged delegate count -- she is pretty much finished. Obama will likely hold on to a (however slight) lead going into the convention, and the superdelegates will have to roll over to whoever the popular winner is at that time. Obama wins the nomination.

According to CNN, anyway.  It's kind of a yawner of a news story since McCain was virtually guaranteed to be the nominee since Super Tuesday.

The question is will Huckabee's mathematical elimination make him actually stop campaigning.

To piggyback on our previous post, here is the latest update from the AP:

"McCain added first Vermont, then Ohio to his column in the Republican race, and moved to within about 130 of the delegate total needed to clinch the nomination. Aides readied a giant banner bearing the magic number — 1,191 — to serve as a backdrop for an anticipated victory celebration in Dallas."

Read the complete story here.

As expected, Barack Obama won Vermont, or is expected to based on exit polling.  TV networks are not so bold about calling the race in Ohio, where it should be a lot closer.  Clinton has led all the polls there. 

The conventional wisdom is, as far as I can gather, that if Clinton takes Ohio and Texas she is back in contention, if she loses both, her campaign is sunk, and if they split (likely with Clinton taking Ohio, and Obama, Texas) we're in for a long campaign with Obama as the front runner. 

Full story here

I was dreading the call, and had anticipated it enough to post the following entry back on Feb. 14. But despite any disclaimers, it was only a matter of time before we received a complaint that our blog was displaying a left-leaning slant in its coverage of the presidential nominating campaigns.

"There is nothing but Democrats on your political campaign page," said reader Diane, who identified herself as a registered Republican, in a message left on my voicemail. "It would be nice to see some coverage of the Republicans, and even independents for that matter."

Well Diane, we appreciate your concerns. But as I mentioned before, the Republican nominating race has been locked in for a while, with Sen. John McCain able to officially capture the nomination today if he wins enough delegates in the Texas and Ohio primaries. But the Democratic race is still very much alive. After all, the term "Critical Tuesday" that has been coined for today's Ohio and Texas contests refers to the Obama-Clinton fight. I doubt McCain is looking over his shoulder at Mike Huckabee with anything other than curious amusement.

Journalists (and the public, for that matter), like to concentrate on unfolding developments, not foregone conclusions.

That being said, if today's races settle it for the Democrats, readers can be assured that they will be hearing a lot more from the GOP at Election Countdown as McCain ramps up his campaign against whoever ends up being his actual Democratic rival come November.

Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, who represents parts of the west San Gabriel Valley, was in Texas over the weekend as a surrogate to Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Romero is a member of Obama's National Latino Leadership Committee.

Obama's use of Romero in Texas makes sense. She is a woman and a Latina, the two demographics that have been traditionally in Clinton's camp but which Obama has been increasingly able to woo to his side. And it looks like his heavy targeting of Latinos is working: CNN's latest poll has Obama with a statistically insignificant lead in Latino-heavy Texas, a must-win state with 228 delegates as stake. In fact the Longhorn State is the largest delegate prize remaining, and has been described by Clinton's campaign as a "firewall," along with Ohio, where the New York senator plans to stop Obama's increasing momentum.

It is safe to say that a loss in Texas and Ohio for the former first lady pretty much ends her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The Sacramento Bee is reporting that Karen Bass of Los Angeles has put together enough votes to win the Assembly speakership, beating out a crowded field that included top candidates Anthony Portantino of Pasadena and Kevin De Leon of L.A.

The deal was apparently reached last night, with exiting speaker Fabian Nunez helping Bass, his top lieutenant, secure the votes. Assembly Democrats will caucus in closed session this morning before officially voting for Bass as speaker in once the regular session starts at 9:30 a.m. She will be the first African American woman to lead the chamber.

Portantino gave it a good run, raising lots of money and generating a fair amount of buzz, with the Sac Bee's Dan Walters saying as late as last week that he was the top candidate for the spot. But he apparently could not beat the strong, L.A.-centric coalition put together by Bass and Nunez, or come up with a Willie Brown-style, bi-partisan coup despite his deftness at coordinating with Republicans (he was the only Democratic member of La Canada Flintridge's City Council and did just fine there).

What San Gabriel Valley residents have to consider is whether this will actually hurt the area's already poor prospects at securing state funds. According to Brown's book, "Basic Brown," the Assembly has always been a harsh place, with the losers always suffering for their perceived impertinence by the winners. Brown was crammed into the smallest office in the Assembly after voting against then-anointed Speaker Jesse Unruh and was marginalized after losing a speaker fight to Leo McCarthy before he himself meted out justice to Charles Calderon and the Gang of Five, stripping them of their committee chairmanships when they tried to force him out of the speaker's seat.

Just as Portantino might have steered more money to the Valley as speaker, will he have a harder time providing for his constituents for having challenged Bass? It doesn't seem that this was a particularly nasty fight, with most Dems falling in line behind Bass and Portantino praising the L.A. assemblywoman in an L.A. Times article, saying she will do a "great job."

Hopefully things have changed from the rough and tumble Capitol days of the 70s and 80s and any backlash is minimal.

Hillary Clinton's slide in the race for superdelegates continues, with the defection of civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis of Atlanta earlier today.

Lewis, who has campaign for months on behalf of Clinton, said in a statement that he changed sides in order to "express the will of the people" after Obama won the Feb. 5 Georgia primary with 90 percent of the black vote, a scenario that was also repeated in Lewis' own Atlanta district.

Lewis' switch-a-roo also comes on the heels of the decision by another black Georgia congressman, David Scott, to jump from Clinton's bandwagon to Obama's.

The nature of superdelegates' commitment to candidates is fickle and historically follows the front-runner. With Obama's 11 straight primary wins, that pattern seems to be repeating itself, with Clinton's lead in the superdelegate count now at 241 to 183, according to the independent blog Democratic Convention Watch. In January, before Obama's momentum-shifting Super Tuesday performance, Clinton's superdelegate lead was 160 to 60. That means Obama has eaten into Clinton's superdelegate lead by 16 percentage points.

Obama's total delegate count is 1,371 to Clinton's 1,274, according to Democratic Convention Watch. 2,025 delegates are needed to secure the Democratic nomination.

Former Star-News Star reporters Todd Ruiz and Gary Scott have some sound takes on last night's debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Ruiz nicely sums up the likely frustration most Democrats must feel at watching their two top candidates, so closely matched in ideology and skill level, go at each other like rabid dogs.

Scott, now a producer for Warren Olney's radio show, dissects the debate in a play-by-play style, cutting through the candidates' veiled and indirect responses and helping to make sense of what exactly they were saying to each other.

The accusations of plagiarism (with permission), combined with the alleged circulating by her staffers of a photo of Obama in Somali garb (even though her camp is denying they had anything to do with it), show that Hillary Clinton is really starting to feel the heat.

And she should. The latest polls show Obama leading in Texas for the first time, and eating into Clinton's lead in Ohio. That combined with her loss of superdelegates (and Obama's additions) make for an ominous prelude to the big three primaries in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

I’ve been told he’s a long shot. That he is not Latino. That he’s not from L.A. That there are closer associates to Nunez that have a much better shot at the speakership.

But that hasn’t stopped Pasadena Democrat Anthony Portantino from positioning himself at the forefront of the race to succeed Fabian Nunez as leader of the California Assembly, according to the SacBee’s Dan Walters.

When we last wrote about this, we noted that Portantino was a prolific fund-raiser with ties to labor unions and in his first term in office, all apparent prerequisites for a successful speaker candidate. But at the time it seemed that while the former La Canada Flintridge mayor had a better chance at the post than his other colleagues in the San Gabriel Valley Caucus, he was likely a long shot compared to LA-centric, Nunez proteges such as Karen Bass or Kevin De Leon.

Since then Portantino has raised even more money ($535,000 in 2007) and according to Walters, could soon up his union clout by securing support from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

My girlfriend, born and raised in Maui, weighs in on Obama's Hawaii victory

"So Obama took Hawaii in a landslide.  That Clinton love can never trump local boy love. Hawaii will always vote for their own, we’re just very loyal in that way.  We also think we are so different from others, that the only one who can really represent us is one of our own. This is Hawaii making a run for the white house, even though he is now a Chicagoan."

Incidentally, she still is a Hawaii citizen, somehow still holding on to an HI driver's license and refusing to covert to California citizenship. 

A Wisconsin win (according to CNN) further cements John McCain as heir apparent to George W. Bush's seat at the head of the Republican party.

On the other end, Obama will likely take most of Hawaii's 20 delegates, since he was born and educated on Oahu. A friend of mine who sells commercial real estate on the islands, says the social strata there is mostly based on where folks went to high school, and Obama's pedigree traces back to Punahoe, Hawaii's most exclusive prep school, which gives him more cache on the islands than even a former first lady and current senator.

Wisconsin will likely go to Obama as well, though by what margin is unclear at this point. AP is reporting that about a quarter of votes cast in the Wisconsin primary were by independents, who have generally gravitated toward the Illinois junior senator. And Latinos -- Clinton's strongest voting block -- make up only 4.7 percent of Wisconsin's population, according to the U.S. Census.

Utter bafflement about the electoral process swept over me once more today as I noticed on CNN that there is a presidential primary scheduled for Washington state on Tuesday. Wait a minute, I thought, wasn't there already a caucus there two weeks ago?

Yes, I was remembering correctly.... but apparently with the goal of sowing more electoral confusion, the state Democratic party also holds a primary. I read an article in the New York Times on the subject, and it was missing one of the key Six W questions: WHY? Frankly, I am not sure the author of the article had any idea what the answer to the question was.

So I went straight to the source, the Washington secretary of state, and my question was first on the list of Election FAQs:

Q: Why does Washington have a Presidential Primary?

In 1988, more than 200,000 Washington voters signed an Initiative to the Legislature proposing that a Presidential Primary be held. The Legislature adopted the initiative in 1989. The law states:

The…presidential nominating caucus system in Washington State is unnecessarily restrictive of voter participation in that it discriminates against the elderly, the infirm, women, the disabled, evening workers, and others who are unable to attend caucuses and therefore unable to fully participate in this most important quadrennial event that occurs in our democratic system of government.

So the state adopted a primary because the caucus is undemocratic and discriminates against many residents of the state. So I guess question #2 should be: Why on earth does the state still have a caucus?

No answer on that one available.

Meanwhile, the primary appears to be largely pointless: according to the secretary of state, the Democratic party gets to choose whether to seat delegates based on the results of the caucus or the primary or a combination of both, and according to the New York Times, they've already decided:

“We’ve chosen our delegates,” said Kelly Steele, a spokesman for the state Democratic Party.

Chosen them in a manner a majority of voters in 1988 believed was "unnecessarily restrictive" and "discriminatory." But, hey, this is 2008..... after the Florida debacle maybe the caucus doesn't look so bad.

Colleague Alison Hewitt pointed us to this hilarious widget from Slate which pokes fun at the exaggerated enthusiasm the Illinois junior senator has generated in the press, otherwise known as "Obamania." The encyclopedia is a collection of Barack-inspired neologisms invented by Slate's writers such as a "baracktogenarian" (any Obama supporter over age 21) or "barackronism" (An Obama statement that is not in its correct historical or chronological time).

... After all, it didn't hurt Darrell Steinberg's run for the state Senate presidency.

The L.A. Times is reporting that within hours of Steinberg's unofficial selection as Senate President Pro Tempore in a closed session meeting of Senate Democrats, controversial lobbyist Richie Ross began sending out e-mails ostensibly bragging about his long term relationship with his "friend and client," Steinberg. He also goes on to urge his lobbying contacts to "keep that relationship in mind" if they need any help in the future.

In past posts, we have mentioned how Chuck Calderon's relationship with Ross may be a handicap in the Industry legislator's quest to succeed Fabian Nunez as Assembly Speaker. Ross has been much maligned in the past as one of the only political consultants in Sacramento to also work as a registered lobbyist, with government watchdogs making the seemingly obvious argument that people who get paid by special interests to promote their agendas should not at the same time get paid by politicians to counsel them and run their campaigns.

Because of the controversy surrounding Ross -- whose activities have prompted lobbying reform efforts in Sacramento -- GOP strategist Allan Hoffenblum told the Tribune in an earlier story that the next speaker of the Assembly "should not have been a client of Richie Ross." And both Calderon and Ross' ties to Indian gaming have been criticized in the past.

Ross is registered to lobby for two Indian gaming tribes, though neither of them is the Morongo tribe, which would have been allowed to expand its casino under the Calderon-sponsored Assembly Bill 266. The bill died on the governor's desk, but the tribe got its expansion wish granted anyways with the passage of Prop. 95 earlier this month.

Apparently, Steinberg's ties to Ross did not affect his chances for Senate president. Perhaps the lobbyist/consultant should not be considered that much of a liability for Calderon either. Maybe he should even be looked at as an asset. 

After all, it's impossible to say that Ross's deep Sacramento connections (going back to his days as chief of staff for the indomitable Speaker Willie Brown) didn't actually help Steinberg win the Senate presidency.    

As if we didn't know he had the nomination already. But Mitt Romney's plea to his delegates to switch their allegiance to John McCain at the Republican convention would nearly earn the Arizona senator the 1,191 delegate votes needed to clinch the GOP nomination.

McCain is almost automatically assured of the nomination, and Romney's gift would take "almost" out of the equation. According to RealClearPolitics.com, McCain already leads remaining rival Mike Huckabee, 825 to 240. If all of Romney's 291 delegates switch over to McCain, he will only be about 70 votes shy of the nomination.

It is doubtful that Romney's delegates will refuse his request. It makes no sense for Republican delegates to prolong a viable challenge from Huckabee, an ordained baptist minister who enjoys little popularity with the GOP establishment -- he is too far to th