Political Notebook – State of the CA GOP

For those of you in a vacuum – you probably are not aware of the arena fight now that a new arena has been approved for the kings.

A lot of us here in the Placer CRA are not King’s fans. Some, even less so after some of our local GOP electeds decided to grandstand on the issue.

It seems a group has shown up to run an initiative to gut the project. Then, recently the prime funder of the effort turns out to be a jilted suitor for the Kings from Seattle.

It gets worse, GOP consultant Tab Berg waited until the day before the revelation to leave as the consultant – not two weeks ago when it appears everyone found out.

Why is that significant? In the intervening two weeks, Berg pulled in a bunch of markers and rammed down an endorsement of the no on arena effort by the Sac GOP – who incidentally shut down all debate and discussion to do so.

OOPS. Now Berg has taken his cut and run and the Sac GOP is left holding the bag.

Oh, and don’t look now – but the Sac GOP is getting an FPPC anal exam. They just got served recently over the California Republican Leadership Fund debaucle. The CRLF was a money operation that was used to fund mostly moderate Republican candidates in target districts… mostly by Charles Munger.

That brings us to Stanislaus. Yikes.

Unlike the article that Dave Gilliard and Doug LaMalfa got planted in the Bee three years ago about nebulous and never proven charges against Placer… there was an article in the Modesto Bee about Stanislaus.

There are several problems. Donations over $32,500, coordination, the decisions made without the knowledge and consent of the full committee and the like. The same goes for Sacramento, apparently.

Contrast this to Placer where Dave Gilliard is purportedly still pushing the moderates (who were helped in to control by the local Tea Party and the local electeds) to try and get the former Chair and Treasurer hauled in front of the grand jury.

If the story about Gilliard pulling the strings is true, it looks like it is too bad for him as there are real problems elsewhere that the FPPC is chasing.

So when the local Tea Party members brag about getting rid of the old guard – in favor of Mike Holmes and Jon Green (both of whom are over 70) and others… maybe they should take a look at the articles about other Cent Coms. But, we digress, it might take the fun out of a witch hunt and require unheard of discernment from the Tea Party.

Now, we actually feel sorry for Charles Munger in all of this. Why? While we still fault him for attacking Conservatives in R vs R races while we lost 8 legislative seats – he spent a ton of money trying to win a few other races. (Tateishi, Rios, Zink, etc.) They all lost.

Now, the funding vehicle is being dismantled because the people that put it together didn’t do their job right and tried to tightly control everything, which will cost them everything…

… which closes the loop… control lost 8 seats, control has several cent coms in a state of chaos and we get to sit here blogging about it all. (While trying to figure out how to win an election or two in 2014…)