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Topic Archive: State & nat'l politics
We reported before that L.A. Times Schwarzenegger reporter Peter Nicholas was leaving Sacramento for the Washington bureau. Now here's the memo from bureau chief Doyle...
Posted June 1, 2007 12:57 PM
Anna Richardson is the former British late-night TV personality who said that Arnold Schwarzenegger pulled her onto his knee, fondled her and asked if her...
Posted August 25, 2006 01:01 PM
Brad Friedman's Los Angeles-based liberal blog has been all over the vote irregularity issues in the Busby-Bilbray congressional race in San Diego County. Friedman is...
Posted June 29, 2006 02:41 PM
Two items: Josiah Beeman, the former aide to San Francisco politicians and Ambassador to New Zealand and Western Samoa for President Clinton, died at age...
Posted June 23, 2006 03:39 PM
Betty Pleasant, the Wave's Soulvine columnist, digs out that congresswoman Maxine Waters has bought a home in Hancock Park—quite a distance from her district covering...
Posted June 8, 2006 01:06 PM
Updated with 100% returns Don't believe the analyses you find in the morning papers. They were all written on spec last night before the results...
Posted June 7, 2006 02:06 AM
• Voting results after 8 pm: Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder results page, Secretary of State results, NBC-4. • Gov. Schwarzenegger will spend election night in...
Posted June 6, 2006 06:15 PM
The New York Times looks from afar at Jerry Brown's quest to be attorney general of California—a quest that figures to take a big step...
Posted June 5, 2006 03:05 AM
♦ The Clippers tie up their NBA playoff series 2-2, beating the Suns 114-107 at Staples Center on Sunday. ♦ USC basketball freshman Ryan Francis...
Posted May 14, 2006 10:27 PM
One day after Alex Padilla showed his hand and announced the endorsement of City Council President Eric Garcetti and nine council colleagues, Cindy Montañez countered...
Posted May 6, 2006 10:53 PM
Well, I can report that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger beat the mayor back from the National Football League meetings in Texas. Two dark SUV's just pulled...
Posted May 2, 2006 03:15 PM
Sunday's New York Times has a piece about the origin of the friendship between supermarket czar Ron Burkle and former President Bill Clinton. dating it...
Posted April 22, 2006 08:18 PM
City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's quest to become the attorney general of California just isn't picking up much momentum. The Field Poll out today shows former...
Posted April 20, 2006 11:11 PM
...you do things like this and send out press releases on it: Los Angeles City Councilmember Alex Padilla today announced that he has filed an...
Posted March 31, 2006 04:27 PM
Rick Jacobs, the Howard Dean campaign chair in California and regular chipper-in of thoughts at the Huffington Post, really didn't like the phone call he...
Posted March 31, 2006 02:21 PM
Rob Reiner has resigned under pressure as chair of the state's California Children and Families First Commission. Gov. Schwarzenegger has appointed Hector Ramirez to replace...
Posted March 29, 2006 11:12 AM
Caspar Weinberger, the former California legislator who served in the Cabinet for Presidents Nixon and Reagan, died at age 88. As Secretary of Defense for...
Posted March 28, 2006 10:01 AM
There were probably some good stories swapped tonight wherever politicos and journalists gather from Sacramento to Washington. Lyn Nofziger, the Copley reporter who became Ronald...
Posted March 27, 2006 11:56 PM
Marching students downtown swarmed onto the Harbor and Hollywood freeways this afternoon, shutting down traffic and prompting some arrests. NBC-4, meanwhile, came up with a...
Posted March 27, 2006 06:25 PM
♦ Saturday's downtown protest march against the Sensenbrenner bill to criminalize giving aid or jobs to illegal immigrants was really big. The LAPD, usually conservative on...
Posted March 25, 2006 11:01 PM
♦ Former West Basin Municipal Water District board member R. Keith McDonald, convicted on ten felony counts of corruption, has asked to delay prison so he...
Posted March 24, 2006 05:50 PM
Andy Spahn, the head of corporate affairs at DreamWorks and political consigliere to Messrs. Geffen, Spielberg and Katzenberg, is heading out on his own. Well,...
Posted March 24, 2006 02:45 AM
Marco Firebaugh, a Democratic candidate for the state Senate in the 30th district of southeast Los Angeles County, died this morning or last night. Liver...
Posted March 21, 2006 10:32 AM
RAND, the Santa Monica think tank, debuted a new Foreign Policy Roundtable series targeting leaders of the entertainment and media communities. Friday night's gathering at...
Posted March 20, 2006 02:13 AM
Just over ten percent of registered voters in the 2nd Board of Education district cast ballots in Tuesday's election—for a total of 13,561 votes. So...
Posted March 8, 2006 10:46 AM
Here's one more thing you can't do on regular radio but can on pay radio. The Young Turks, which airs from here on Sirius Satellite...
Posted January 26, 2006 01:08 PM
A right-wing activist has founded something called the Bruin Alumni Association and published a list of 31 UCLA professors he claims are "radical" for talking...
Posted January 17, 2006 10:54 PM
Miriam Pawel, the reporter on this week's L.A. Times' series on the United Farm Workers union, will be on KPFK's Deadline L.A. Saturday at noon...
Posted January 13, 2006 01:59 PM
Another Pellicano case guilty plea, Arnold's illegal problem, Patterico and Hiltzik go mainstream, DA Cooley wants to reform three strikes—plus the end of the UFW...
Posted January 11, 2006 01:24 AM
Turn the page for the fill-in on Gov. Schwarzenegger's fat lip, the latest on the Times' UFW investigation, Eric Garcetti week at the city council,...
Posted January 9, 2006 02:11 AM
Back in 2001, former Clinton Administration official-turned-D.C. lobbyist Jarvis Stewart mused that he might someday open an L.A. office to help celebrities "learn how to...
Posted January 6, 2006 02:18 AM
I don't know whether Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik is the paper's designated hitter or just is being allowed to take his Golden State blog...
Posted January 4, 2006 12:38 AM
Few culture war causes strike me as more dishonest and less trivial than the Fox News-promoted meme that liberals are anti-Christmas. (Excuse me while I...
Posted December 20, 2005 09:27 AM
Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman's party to raise campaign cash for Senate Democrats was supposed to be the last big Hollywood political event of the...
Posted December 16, 2005 12:49 AM
LA Weekly Deputy Editor Joe Donnelly had a pleasant enough interview with Mike Lacey, the New Times co-founder who will soon be in charge of...
Posted December 5, 2005 11:33 AM
To see an earlier side of Arnold Schwarzenegger, check out the video LA.com found of Mr. Universe at Carnival in Brazil talking about how at...
Posted November 21, 2005 03:16 PM
Voters rejected every one of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's so-called reform measures, as well as the other propositions on Tuesday's ballot. The only one that could...
Posted November 9, 2005 02:23 AM
Patt Morrison reviews Sen. Barbara Boxer's co-written first novel in today's LAT and calls A Time to Run "a passable political thriller of wishful thinking...
Posted November 5, 2005 10:57 AM
The lede of a front-pager in this week's L.A. Business Journal calls Adelphia "the cable company that can do no right." The Deborah Crowe story...
Posted October 16, 2005 10:36 PM
A little bit late today... ♦ Mayor Villaraigosa asked for an outside review of the DWP's power failures and appointed Forescee Hogan-Rowles to the agency's board....
Posted October 14, 2005 09:41 AM
Republican State Sen. John Campbell of Irvine came close yesterday—but not close enough—to winning the coastal congressional seat given up by Christopher Cox. Campbell will...
Posted October 5, 2005 10:19 AM
Kim Day got the offer she couldn't refuse to leave as head of LAX personally from Mayor Villaraigosa's in-house counsel Thomas Saenz and deputy chief...
Posted October 1, 2005 10:43 PM
Matt Szabo has been in the campaign trenches as a communications guy with Bob Hertzberg and others. He blogs today that Arnold Schwarzenegger's standing ovation...
Posted September 27, 2005 03:11 PM
Joe Scott blogs today about the Warren Beatty-for-governor rumors, which are being fed by the actor's political speeches around the state. Beatty told ABC last...
Posted September 22, 2005 12:05 PM
• Looks like Gov. Schwarzenegger announces Friday that he will run for reelection, the Times says. Also, La Opinión says its reporter was denied entry to...
Posted September 15, 2005 01:26 AM
Torrance City Councilman Ted Lieu won the special election to replace the late Mike Gordon in the 53rd assembly district. There would have been a...
Posted September 14, 2005 11:25 AM
If you have a spare thou lying around, you too can dine with William F. Buckley and the editors and publisher of The National Review...
Posted September 6, 2005 11:30 AM
Longtime local conservative blogger Xrlq posts that he has been summarily banned from posting comments at Hit and Run, the blog of (loosely) Los Angeles-based...
Posted August 15, 2005 01:12 AM
The L.A. Times has a story saying that American Media, the tabloid publisher that backed off Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was running for governor and...
Posted August 12, 2005 01:58 AM
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's political committees have paid him $166,859 the last three years for renting space in the Main Street Plaza he owns in Santa...
Posted July 20, 2005 11:44 AM
Gov. Schwarzenegger says he'll give up the millions he arranged for just days before taking office. His statement: Statement by Governor SchwarzeneggerRegarding American Media Governor...
Posted July 15, 2005 04:39 PM
Gov. Schwarzenegger's lucrative deal with the fitness magazines makes the front page of Friday's New York Times. Andrew Pollack goes with the $5 million figure,...
Posted July 14, 2005 11:07 PM
Geez, you try to skate by for a few hours and stuff starts to pile up in the in-box... • Former Burbank mayor and current city...
Posted July 14, 2005 05:43 PM
Actually it came in Monday afternoon, while I was otherwise occupied. It's an exit email from Edward Headington, leaving as communications director for State Sen....
Posted July 12, 2005 12:26 AM
Up in Sacramento, Political Pulse bought the Capitol Weekly website and newspapers and plans to launch a state political news portal later this summer. The...
Posted June 30, 2005 03:30 PM
The office of state Assemblyman Mike Gordon announced that he died today from the brain tumor that was diagnosed in February, shortly after he took...
Posted June 25, 2005 01:11 PM
The Liberty Film Festival, which got some attention for its debut last year as a West Hollywood showcase and schmoozefest for conservatives, is coming back...
Posted June 15, 2005 02:46 PM
There's no rest for the politics weary. No sooner is the mayor's race over than the drumbeats begin for the governor's agenda-pushing special election, called...
Posted June 14, 2005 05:15 PM
Howard Kurtz's column this week in the Washington Post visits with Stephanie Miller, the L.A.-based host for Air America, the talk radio-for-liberals service. As recently...
Posted June 14, 2005 12:14 AM
Maria Shriver tells the New York Daily News' Lloyd Grove that she had no contact with anyone at NBC about the Schwarzenegger biography by Laurence...
Posted June 7, 2005 12:57 PM
Laurence Leamer, author of Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger, lost a shot at promoting the book on "Today" because of Maria Shriver, according to...
Posted June 5, 2005 11:54 PM
Turns out that Sen. Hillary Clinton's appearance at Roland Emmerich's house was just the kiddie portion of her Wednesday night stay in L.A. She raised...
Posted June 3, 2005 12:42 AM
At the end of yesterday's column on the Senate filibuster compromise, L.A. Times political correspondent Ron Brownstein alerts readers that his new wife recently became...
Posted May 31, 2005 04:15 PM
• Longtime Channel 7 weatherman Johnny Mountain joins the rival Channel 2 news on May 8. He will work the news at 5, 6 and 11...
Posted May 4, 2005 10:39 PM
Former mayor Richard Riordan will leave his post as state Education Secretary on June 30, Gov. Schwarzenegger's office just announced. With deep regret I have...
Posted April 27, 2005 04:02 PM
R. Gregory Stevens, 42, was a houseguest of the actress in Hollywood for Oscar weekend, the Washington Times says. She found his body Saturday morning,...
Posted March 4, 2005 11:36 AM
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger raised more than $23 million in contributions, mostly from the usual suspects—critics typically call them "special interests"—in his first full year as...
Posted February 1, 2005 06:07 PM
KCRW has decided on Tony Blankley, editorial page editor of the Washington Times and former Newt Gingrich press secretary, to hold the conservative seat on...
Posted January 25, 2005 11:31 AM
Scanning the Sunday Opinion section yesterday, I completely missed that Hugh Hewitt wrote the second installment of the Times' new commentary spot, "Outside the Tent."...
Posted January 24, 2005 11:08 PM
The Roundup, it's called, is from the editors at Political Pulse and AroundtheCapitol.com. It joins Rough and Tumble ("a daily snapshot of California public policy...
Posted January 19, 2005 11:25 AM
Three network execs and producer Mary Mapes lost their jobs after an independent report concluded that a bogus "60 Minutes Wednesday" story on President Bush's...
Posted January 10, 2005 01:25 PM
L.A. blogger Patterico has split his annual year-end rant from the political right about the Los Angeles Times into two installments. Part one finds liberal...
Posted January 3, 2005 09:39 PM
Joe Scott wrote a notes column called "The Body Politic" that ran on page two of the Herald Examiner during the 1980s. It was a...
Posted December 14, 2004 02:08 AM
Political and media hands have been lamenting the demise of the annual holiday party thrown in Hancock Park by the Times' Janet Clayton and her...
Posted December 13, 2004 12:57 AM
* Updated with newest posts at the bottom • The February issue of Hustler will carry the story by Michael Collins and Mark Cromer that liberal...
Posted December 8, 2004 01:56 PM
The California Journal is halting publication in January—at least temporarily—after 35 years. A non-profit board has tried to build an endowment to keep the monthly...
Posted December 2, 2004 05:29 PM
The recalled ex-governor has joined the Los Angeles law firm of Loeb and Loeb. An AP story says Davis had been a lawyer before, briefly,...
Posted December 2, 2004 12:49 PM
KPFK and the nation's other Pacifica stations are preempting normal programming on Thursday to raise money for preserving the Pacifica radio archives. From 6 a.m....
Posted November 30, 2004 11:41 PM
CityBeat has added Andrew Gumbel, the Los Angeles correspondent for The Independent in London. They are calling the column American Babylon; this week's first offering...
Posted November 24, 2004 02:34 PM
California First Lady Maria Shriver has dropped her push to have the state history museum in Sacramento reinvented as a women's museum. It will remain...
Posted November 24, 2004 01:29 AM
A year since Gov. Schwarzenegger took over in Sacramento, KPCC's road-traveling talk host, Kitty Felde, takes Talk of the City to the capital on Friday...
Posted November 18, 2004 06:10 PM
Janelle Brown gives downtown the 36 Hours treatment in today's New York Times Escapes section. Chinatown galleries, dinner at Ciudad, Saturday morning at the flower...
Posted November 12, 2004 10:25 AM
The LAPD press room at Parker Center is named for Norman "Jake" Jacoby, who reported on the cop beat from 1935 to 1991 for City...
Posted November 8, 2004 10:12 PM
Forget any talk of national healing. On today's L.A. Times op-ed page, former major league baseball player-turned-Christian broadcaster Frank Pastore warns Kerry voters that America...
Posted November 5, 2004 09:31 AM
Regarding that pledge of blue-red civility and support for the president that blogger Jeff Jarvis made over the weekend, Reason magazine's Matt Welch dissents on...
Posted November 4, 2004 10:14 AM
Some Republicans are crowing that George W. Bush racked up the most popular votes of any president in history. It's true, but misleading: John Kerry...
Posted November 3, 2004 12:13 PM
High profile New York blogger Jeff Jarvis, reacting to the last wave of "spit and bile and venom" from ultra-partisans as the presidential campaign comes...
Posted November 1, 2004 02:55 PM
The late Richard Avedon's portraits of the election season run for 32 pages in this week's New Yorker. They are great. A slide show can...
Posted October 28, 2004 09:53 PM
The Daily News of Los Angeles backed George W. Bush in 2000 and praises the president for his guidance after 9-11, but says "for all...
Posted October 24, 2004 09:45 PM
Both Steve Lopez and Patt Morrison write columns in today Times playing off the governor's quip about getting no sex from Maria for two weeks...
Posted October 20, 2004 04:14 PM
The Sacramento newsletter Political Pulse has found a new way to generate income from its election coverage. On Thursday, editor and co-publisher Anthony York will...
Posted October 19, 2004 11:16 AM
On the Times op-ed page, journalist/First Lady Maria Shriver defends her role in pushing the California State History Museum to become the California Women's History...
Posted October 19, 2004 01:17 AM
Prompted by the gay media speculation about Rep. David Dreier and other recent events, the local chapter of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association...
Posted October 17, 2004 11:25 PM
The governor has "left the state," the late Friday email advised Sacramento reporters. Well, where did he go and when might he be back? "It's...
Posted October 16, 2004 12:07 PM
William Bradley, who filed scoop after scoop out of the Schwarzenegger camp during and after the recall campaign, contends in the LA Weekly that the...
Posted October 14, 2004 07:30 AM
The Times picked liberal columnist Patt Morrison to review Ann Coulter's newest book, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must). She begins by...
Posted October 8, 2004 10:29 AM
The L.A. Press Club annual meeting that was originally scheduled the night of last week's presidential debate will be held tonight. This is the one...
Posted October 6, 2004 03:02 PM
Sacramento Bee opinion blogger Dan Weintraub passes along two new polls that pick up a slide in Kerry's lead over Bush among California voters. In...
Posted October 5, 2004 10:16 PM
Analyzed at Cinemocracy: You’ve got a three-act structure (four if you include the vice presidential encounter), recurring characters, and a narrative line driven by the...
Posted October 5, 2004 10:30 AM
Today's LA Weekly runs a follow-up story from Doug Ireland to his piece last week alleging that congressman David Dreier is (gasp) gay, conservative and...
Posted September 30, 2004 12:04 AM
Times reporter Scott Martelle, currently assigned to the Barbara Boxer-Bill Jones Senate race, will move over to the Style desk after the election to cover...
Posted September 22, 2004 09:22 PM
The New America Foundation, based in Washington and headed by Ted Halstead (co-author with Michael Lind of The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics),...
Posted September 22, 2004 05:53 PM
Conservative critiques of Robert Scheer are about as newsworthy as a Scheer blast at George Bush or Rush Limbaugh. But Kevin Drum, the SoCal-based house...
Posted September 22, 2004 01:19 PM
Seymour Hersh chats about his book Chain of Command with Lawrence O'Donnell on The Politics of Culture Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. on KCRW (89.9 FM...
Posted September 20, 2004 10:55 PM
In the October issue of Los Angeles magazine, Steve Oney traces the transformation of Arianna Huffington from first foreign president of the Cambridge Union debating...
Posted September 17, 2004 05:15 PM
Jay Leno phoned up the LA Weekly's Nikki Finke to talk about media and politics after she wrote about him and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Weekly...
Posted September 15, 2004 02:54 PM
Talk radio ideologue Hugh Hewitt has a long blog piece seeking to compare the controversy over Dan Rather's probably fake documents about George W. Bush...
Posted September 14, 2004 11:11 AM
The New York Times calls last Sunday's profile of Haim Saban the L.A. media mogul's "most extensive interview in years." In the piece, Andrew Ross...
Posted September 7, 2004 12:40 PM
Sure the media (and of course, we bloggers) wrote about them a lot, but Paul Colford writes in the New York Daily News that the...
Posted September 3, 2004 10:28 AM
Syndicated columnist Jill Stewart (Daily News, Register, Pasadena Weekly) has the cover story in the September issue of Wired on her favorite Koll-i-fornia governor. Headline:...
Posted September 3, 2004 12:29 AM
Hollywood producer Rob Long is in New York to do up the RNC alongside Warren Olney at KCRW — the station's Republican analogue to Harry...
Posted September 2, 2004 01:08 AM
Reason's convention blogger Matt Welch catches up with former California AG Dan Lungren and, in a Madison Square Garden stairway, with Pat Buchanan. An excerpt...
Posted September 1, 2004 12:19 AM
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gets a prime speaking slot tonight at the Republican convention to introduce himself to the national party. In today's L.A. Times, Joe...
Posted August 31, 2004 12:48 PM
After a night of parties, the Republicans get going today in New York. KCRW's Warren Olney goes on the air from the convention at 1...
Posted August 30, 2004 12:44 PM
Some things to note from while I was gone: • Larry McCormick: The co-anchor of the KTLA "News at Ten Weekend Edition" began at channel 5...
Posted August 30, 2004 12:37 AM
Another batch of questionable public relations contracts with a political twist has caught the media's eyes. The Times' Jason Felch reports today that the giant...
Posted August 9, 2004 02:21 AM
Singer Linda Ronstadt, the girlfriend of Jerry Brown back when he was governor, got booed out of the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas for talking...
Posted July 20, 2004 09:42 AM
In Monday's New York Times, Los Angeles bureau chief John Broder analyzes Gov. Schwarzenegger's sound bite about the Democrats from the weekend: The "girlie men"...
Posted July 18, 2004 10:32 PM
The top editorial in today's L.A. Times, headline Show Riordan the Door, urges Gov. Schwarzenegger to use the latest blooper by Richard Riordan to do...
Posted July 10, 2004 10:35 AM
I don't think Richard Riordan is long for the state education secretary post, but we'll see. The latest is that the mother of 6-year-old Isis...
Posted July 9, 2004 01:08 AM
Robert Tagorda hasn't quite left town yet, and he blogs today that when his friend suffered a diabetic seizure in Santa Monica over the weekend,...
Posted July 6, 2004 06:29 PM
California will vote on measures covering stem cell research to mandatory DNA testing of felons, and yet again two more on Indian gambling. The propositions...
Posted June 29, 2004 05:53 PM
Top left on the front page of Thursday's New York Times (at least in California), Charlie LeDuff and John Broder of the L.A. bureau proclaim...
Posted June 24, 2004 11:07 PM
The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, the largest business group in town, today endorsed the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative that will...
Posted June 18, 2004 10:04 AM
Every so often, the mail brings something that lets L.A. Observed give a glimpse behind the scenes of how things really get done. This installment...
Posted June 17, 2004 12:59 AM
Joel Kotkin, the Valley-based author and political analyst, proposes in The New Republic that Reagan conservatism's ideological heir for Californians is not Bush or anyone...
Posted June 11, 2004 03:19 PM
The Democratic candidate's Disney Hall fundraiser — called off last night after the death of Ronald Reagan — is now set for June 24. Just...
Posted June 8, 2004 03:35 PM
Guests who were planning to attend Monday's John Kerry campaign fundraiser at the Walt Disney Hall have been emailed and called alerting them the event...
Posted June 6, 2004 08:55 PM
Dan Weintraub reports on his California Insider blog that Gov. Schwarzenegger has returned from a short getaway to an undisclosed location. The reason the locale...
Posted June 2, 2004 03:11 PM
Friday was International Media Day for Gov. Schwarzenegger, who spent several hours sitting in his Los Angeles office relieving the backlog of requests by the...
Posted May 22, 2004 11:14 AM
The deputy governor and senior confidential adviser/media image consultant to Arnold Schwarzenegger -- and by that I mean Maria Shriver -- guests on Jay Leno...
Posted May 21, 2004 10:54 AM
Michael Huffington clarifies the record in a piece by Robin Abcarian in today's LAT, saying that he is bi not gay, intends (unlike ex-wife Arianna)...
Posted April 20, 2004 02:21 PM
Democrat George Smith tells the tale in the Village Voice of how he came to be, for a one-week media cycle, what he calls "an...
Posted March 30, 2004 10:24 PM
Miller is the Hollywood stuntwoman who came forward just before the recall election last fall to publicly allege that Arnold Schwarznegger groped her, then was...
Posted March 22, 2004 01:10 AM
Former L.A. City Council member Jackie Goldberg, now in the state Assembly, and her partner of 28 years, poet and activist Sharon Stricker, were among...
Posted March 9, 2004 01:17 AM
Says AP, via Yahoo and I Want Media: "Gov. Schwarzenegger, the former action figure and champion bodybuilder, has inked a deal to become executive editor...
Posted March 5, 2004 03:40 PM
Or can it? The New York Post's Keith J. Kelly says today that Gov. Schwarzenegger "is close to signing a deal with the parent company...
Posted March 5, 2004 10:27 AM
Arnold Schwarzenegger returned in triumph to "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno Monday night, and who should drop in but Gray Davis. The two govs...
Posted March 2, 2004 02:13 AM
Well I guess there really is a presidential primary here next Tuesday. Tomorrow (Friday) at 10 a.m., John Kerry has scheduled a UCLA speech "where...
Posted February 26, 2004 03:51 PM
Heading into Thursday's debate at USC, John Kerry leads John Edwards in California by a whopping 32 points, the latest L.A. Times Poll finds. The...
Posted February 23, 2004 10:45 PM
To continue the politics theme for one more item, the California presidential primary is less than two weeks away. But as Kevin Drum at Calpundit...
Posted February 20, 2004 10:00 PM
That's how much the campaigns spent in last year's recall election, the L.A. Times writes, based on campaign reports and interviews. Some of the biggest...
Posted February 4, 2004 11:51 AM
The L.A. Press Club is hosting an informational chat with "key political advisers and campaign strategists" in the California primary on Thursday. None, apparently, had...
Posted February 3, 2004 01:35 PM
Dan Weintraub, the Sacramento Bee columnist-blogger (California Insider) whose take on Arnold Schwarzenegger during the campaign and his first months in office has been largely...
Posted January 29, 2004 10:21 PM
Dean Singleton, Hearst, Copley & Scripps. (From Editor and Publisher, thanks to Brooks for the tip). Earlier: LAT campaign gifts...
Posted January 26, 2004 03:37 PM
The Boston Globe's Ideas section (via Commonwealth Magazine) maps out the "10 regions of U.S. politics" and puts L.A. in a narrow, brown sliver that...
Posted January 18, 2004 10:13 PM
Editorial writers mostly liked Gov. Schwarzenegger's State of the State speech last night. Steve Lopez doesn't join them. L.A. Times: Masterful...Schwarzenegger delivered a tough but...
Posted January 7, 2004 11:50 AM
Well, education cuts aren't off the table anymore. The L.A. Times says Gov. Schwarzenegger will propose cleaving $2 billion out of the ed budget today...
Posted January 6, 2004 12:56 AM
Gov. Schwarzenegger, who used to say he wouldn't play the political fundraising game, has accepted $750,000 in contributions in recent weeks. Dan Weintraub at California...
Posted December 10, 2003 10:19 AM
Gov. Schwarzenegger has dropped his private probe into the groping charges against him, which Dan Weintraub says makes sense -- "nobody understood what the investigators...
Posted December 9, 2003 10:38 AM
Robert K. Dornan, the conservative who lost his House seat to Loretta Sanchez in Orange County in 1996 (and lost to her again in '98),...
Posted December 5, 2003 01:54 AM
The L.A. Times covers the dust-up over last night's Beverly Hilton gathering of Hollywood liberals. It seems Drudge was incorrect when he leapt to the...
Posted December 3, 2003 01:11 AM
In addition to the reconstruct of the Times' Arnold stories, the new issue of American Journalism Review has a piece on newspaper blogs. In it,...
Posted December 3, 2003 12:18 AM
Two takes on Gov. Schwarzenegger's stand on runaway film production, by Alex Ben Block in Television Week and Matt Welch at Reason magazine's blog Hit...
Posted November 25, 2003 12:40 AM
Looks like the Democrats in Sacramento have anointed another L.A. lawmaker to be the next Assembly Speaker. Dan Weintraub says it is Fabian Nunez, the...
Posted November 21, 2003 01:33 AM
The media scene, from AP and Gary Delsohn in the Sacramento Bee. It was L.A. Times staffer Jeff Rabin who Schwarzenegger complimented as "this gentleman...
Posted November 19, 2003 10:06 AM
KCRW plans to carry the Schwarzenegger swearing-in ceremony live at 11 o'clock this morning. Meanwhile, historian and state librarian Kevin Starr in the L.A. Times'...
Posted November 17, 2003 01:04 AM
Bill Bradley notes in the LA Weekly that the Schwarzenegger administration "is shaping up so far to be less bipartisan than advertised, even though it...
Posted November 13, 2003 12:06 AM
Burt Pines used to be the elected Los Angeles city attorney and most recently has been the judicial appointments secretary for Gray Davis, helping the...
Posted November 11, 2003 11:31 PM
Margita Thompson, the press secretary for Dick Riordan's campaign for governor last year, is going to do the same job for the new Guv. She...
Posted November 10, 2003 05:47 PM
Dan Weintraub's California Insider reported Sunday night that Richard Riordan will be appointed Gov. Schwarzenegger's secretary for child development and education, probably today. Given the...
Posted November 3, 2003 12:02 AM
Katie Roiphe, in a piece for Slate, ponders the evolution of USC law professor and feminist author Susan Estrich, who wrote a column strongly attacking...
Posted October 23, 2003 01:30 PM
That's the secret, not-to-be-uttered-in-front-of-Him nickname that some on Schwarznegger's staff have for Arnold, says Lloyd Grove, the new gossip at the New York Daily News....
Posted October 16, 2003 05:00 PM
Matt Labash has a pretty funny Boy on the Bus report from the final days of the Schwarzenegger campaign at the Weekly Standard site. He...
Posted October 13, 2003 02:17 PM
Bunch of interesting L.A. presence on Schwarzenegger's transition team, including Richard Riordan and Eli Broad (do they go everywhere together?) and Democrats like mayor Jim...
Posted October 10, 2003 05:09 AM
A&E is planning to begin production on a TV movie called "See Arnold Run." Says the New York Times: The movie will trace what its...
Posted October 9, 2003 02:48 AM
Mickey Kaus's long explanation of why he voted as he did is pretty interesting, dare I say brilliant. Read the whole thing, as they say....
Posted October 8, 2003 02:40 AM
Turnout in today's election could hit 65%, the Field Poll says. That would be the most in any California election for governor in 20 years,...
Posted October 7, 2003 12:31 PM
The final Field Poll of the recall race shows the Schwarzenegger lead solidifying -- 36% to 26% for Bustamante. They were even in the previous...
Posted October 3, 2003 11:21 AM
Yesterday in New York, the question "Is California Crazy?" was debated at lunch by Ron Reagan, Tom Hayden, Bill Simon, Barry Goldwater Jr. (the long-lost...
Posted October 2, 2003 02:28 PM
Dan Weintraub takes a big swig at the Schwarzenegger debut party in Sacramento....
Posted October 1, 2003 03:51 PM
The new L.A. Times Poll pretty much agrees with all the others (except CNN-USA, which seems to have overstated everything). Barring the unforeseen, the outcome...
Posted October 1, 2003 01:50 AM
Yes the Indian casinos are the biggest spenders in state politics, but they aren't the reason California is in a hole. Arnold has taken their...
Posted September 26, 2003 01:26 AM
New Republic writer and now blogger Gregg Easterbrook says that Schwarzenegger could not possibly have written the op-ed under his name in the Wall Street...
Posted September 25, 2003 07:24 PM
In case you can't find your ideal political mate among the 135 candidates on the recall ballot, here are 26 more who have qualified as...
Posted September 25, 2003 01:08 AM
Scoring the big debate: -"Gray won" - Dave Jensen, Condor blog -"I'd say (Cruz) won" - Outside the Beltway blog -"I don't think anyone won"...
Posted September 25, 2003 01:07 AM
The recall election is back on for two weeks from today, compliments of the 9th Circuit. Unanimous 11-0 decision that the ACLU says it won't...
Posted September 23, 2003 12:40 PM
From the September poll by the Public Policy Institute of California: Both independents and moderates are evenly split on the recall. A higher percentage of...
Posted September 21, 2003 01:59 PM
Republican strategist and commentator Arnold Steinberg, in Tim Rutten's L.A. Times column today: Schwarzenegger's strategy requires a docile news media, and he's getting one. Steinberg...
Posted September 20, 2003 01:46 PM
Arnold's campaign requires every staffer to sign a five-page confidentiality agreement, including a clause that the agreement itself is a secret. The L.A. Times received...
Posted September 19, 2003 10:29 AM
Lou Cannon will be on Life and Times Tuesday night (7 p.m., Ch. 28) to talk about his fifth book on Ronald Reagan. He also...
Posted September 15, 2003 04:09 PM
Loyola law professor Rick Hasen is blogging on the 9th Circuit court order delaying the recall election, a move he supported in a brief. Incidentally,...
Posted September 15, 2003 11:38 AM
Bernard Weinraub in the NYT covers the Huffington fundraiser in Holmby Hills Tuesday night: ...the liberal-come-lately newspaper columnist who has frequently opened her Brentwood home...
Posted September 11, 2003 10:10 AM
Peter Ueberroth has cancelled his public appearances and called a 1 p.m. news conference, apparently to make his exit from the recall race, AP reports....
Posted September 9, 2003 11:22 AM
Round two of the independent recall polls begins with the Field Poll today showing Davis behind 55%-40%. Bustamante is still ahead of Schwarzenegger 30%-25%, with...
Posted September 9, 2003 12:27 AM
I thought of Mike Davis a couple of weeks ago when the LAT ran an astounding photo from up around Lancaster of a billboard bent...
Posted September 4, 2003 12:06 AM
A selection from the August Index: Rank of California governor Gray Davis's approval rating in May among the lowest in the 55-year history of the...
Posted September 2, 2003 12:56 AM
Bruce Cain, the Berkeley professor and politics junkie who has been quoted on the recall more than most of the candidates, is leaving for four...
Posted August 27, 2003 06:14 PM
Rough and Tumble points to 39 recall items in the media (and a couple of blogs) this morning, and the race is just getting started....
Posted August 27, 2003 10:33 AM
Tim Rutten takes on and pretty much destroys the myth of the liberal Hollywood monolith, and along the way quotes the author-blogger Roger L. Simon...
Posted August 22, 2003 10:30 PM
Jack Kavanagh at Rough and Tumble has ramped up his posting pace in response to the recall, adding stories often through the day and recently...
Posted August 21, 2003 12:02 AM
If you search on Google for recall candidate Garret Gruener, a sponsored link comes up for the Gruener for Governor campaign: "Cut through the clutter....
Posted August 19, 2003 11:03 AM
Arnold S. plans to unveil his first TV ads on Wednesday and has formed an independent fundraising arm, Arnold Schwarzenegger's Total Recall Committee, that sure...
Posted August 18, 2003 06:30 PM
L.A. Times political writer Mark Z. Barabak was one of the gang on CNN's Reliable Sources on Sunday and disclosed that the day Schwarzenegger was...
Posted August 18, 2003 10:59 AM
Cruz and Arnold are tied in the new Field Poll (yes, Bustamante is ahead 25%-22%, but it's within the 5% margin of error (PDF file))....
Posted August 16, 2003 01:10 AM
Recall Watch has come back online with its one-of-a-kind monitoring of the cash flow into campaigns -- including $1 million from Peter Ueberroth to himself....
Posted August 15, 2003 03:57 PM
Hugh Hewitt provides a handy guide in the Daily Standard for media bookers in need of wisdom on the recall, and the Orange County Republican...
Posted August 15, 2003 01:02 PM
I keep trying not to post about the recall, but it's hard. In tomorrow's LA Weekly, Marc Cooper lets loose his inner Jill Stewart and...
Posted August 13, 2003 09:11 PM
Film critic Henry Sheehan (Film Week on KPCC-FM) looks at the Schwarzenegger boomlet from another angle and predicts that, win or lose, by running he...
Posted August 12, 2003 11:27 AM
Editorial cartoons on the recall -- ten pages of them -- compiled by Daryl Cagle. Thanks to Prestopundit for the link....
Posted August 12, 2003 01:34 AM
Long story by advertising reporter Stuart Elliott in the New York Times Business section today on Lester Terry Tate Speight, the lone joke recall candidate...
Posted August 12, 2003 01:15 AM
Among media heads, the big winner in the first phase was Dan Weintraub, the Sacramento Bee columnist who began blogging his analysis and opinions in...
Posted August 11, 2003 01:37 PM
OK, we have official candidates now -- 158 or so -- and the real race is on. Schwarzenegger starts out on top of course, but...
Posted August 10, 2003 01:13 AM
Rick Orlov in the L.A. Daily News quotes an unnamed Richard Riordan aide saying that "the mayor was stunned. He was amazed and angry. He...
Posted August 8, 2003 10:33 AM
The California Supreme Court declines to intervene in the recall election. Details to come. Update 4:59 p.m.: Prof. Hasen at the Election Law blog has...
Posted August 7, 2003 04:44 PM
That's the headline (minus question mark) at Slate.com, where Timothy Noah's Chatterbox insists that even though Schwarzenegger has pumped money into Holocaust education and is...
Posted August 7, 2003 04:25 PM
On Warren Olney's national show on KCRW, Daniel Weintraub and longtime Republican consultant Arnold Steinberg are saying that if Schwarzenegger truly did not tell his...
Posted August 7, 2003 01:37 PM
The most intriguing story of the day is Jim Rainey's inside the L.A. Times, quoting an unnamed confidant of Richard Riordan saying the ex-mayor was...
Posted August 7, 2003 10:29 AM
Dan Weintraub at the Sacramento Bee reports that former baseball commissioner and Los Angeles Olympics chief Peter Ueberroth is now thinking of sliding into the...
Posted August 7, 2003 02:01 AM
After Schwarzenegger left, a giddy Jay Leno -- who connected on at least a dozen good jokes in his monologue -- continued his roll: "That...
Posted August 7, 2003 12:55 AM
Schwarzenegger tells Jay Leno on tonight's show that he's running for governor. The question now is what kind of game was Schwarzenegger playing when he...
Posted August 6, 2003 06:03 PM
Until Ann Coulter came along and cheapened the whole concept. L.A.-based blogs Hit and Run (Matt Welch) and the Volokh Conspiracy (Eugene Volokh) both smack...
Posted August 5, 2003 11:43 AM
The website that aggregates recall news and campaign contribution reports and bravely (stupidly?) has a discussion forum claims it has been "subject to a hacker...
Posted August 5, 2003 11:09 AM
Los Angeles blogger Robert Garcia Tagorda (Priorities and Frivolities) has the only site I know of that mixes politics with regular takes on the Dodgers....
Posted August 5, 2003 10:56 AM
George Skelton, the L.A. Times columnist in Sacramento, suggests doing something that would have more effect in the state Capitol than replacing Gray Davis: make...
Posted August 4, 2003 03:19 PM
Sitcom writer-producer Bill Prady, the showrunner for "Good Morning, Miami," recently went to Vegas, got lucky at craps and won $3,500. Just enough to pay...
Posted August 4, 2003 10:08 AM
John Broder's report in tomorrow's New York Times quotes an unnamed consultant who has worked for both Riordan and Schwarzenegger: "There's a very interesting game...
Posted August 1, 2003 12:53 AM
Recall Watch keeps a running tally of cash flow into the various committees pro and con on the recall, and links to news stories. It...
Posted July 31, 2003 10:02 AM
Claudia Eller and Michael Cieply in the L.A. Times say Schwarzenegger's got issues if he wants to eschew politics and remain a film star. In...
Posted July 31, 2003 01:18 AM
Marc Cooper attended the weekend strategy session at Arianna Huffington's house and thinks she is running for real, as an independent, but with a solidly...
Posted July 31, 2003 12:29 AM
For those of us who don't care strongly either way -- and who remember voting on all this less than a year ago -- the...
Posted July 29, 2003 02:01 AM
The recall calculus is altered if what Dan Weintraub of the Sacto Bee reports on his blog is true: that Schwarzenegger has opted not to...
Posted July 28, 2003 09:55 AM
Replacing his old chief of staff. Too rich. Also the other Huffington. The ballot could be crowded with Huffingtons....
Posted July 25, 2003 06:02 PM
I've put together a new grouping of links to sites on California news and politics, high in the right-hand sidebar. It's just a start, will...
Posted July 25, 2003 01:07 AM
Mickey Kaus takes what I think (not being a recall junkie) is the contrarian view and suggests it is likely that Gray Davis beats the...
Posted July 24, 2003 12:45 PM
On the front page of the New York Times today are two dead Husseins, one Private Lynch and congressman Darrell Issa. The money man behind...
Posted July 23, 2003 01:01 AM
If Arnold Schwarzenegger can run for governor, then what about Ozzy Osbourne, says the LALATimes....
Posted July 22, 2003 01:41 PM
The Daily News front page banners a story on lessons for the recall folks to take from last year's Valley secession fight. The connection is...
Posted July 21, 2003 01:05 PM
There's a website pushing Arianna Huffington to join the mini-race to replace Gray Davis if he is recalled, and some Democratic activists are talking her...
Posted July 19, 2003 07:13 PM
The New York Times reports that Democrats are all riled up about New York mayor Michael Bloomberg's suggestion that city offices -- from his on...
Posted July 18, 2003 06:52 PM
After a furious month of posting on his Sacramento Bee blog, Daniel Weintraub hasn't added an item on the Davis recall -- or anything else...
Posted July 14, 2003 10:39 AM
It'll be nasty on both sides, but Davis has no goodwill left to spend. Says John J. Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont-McKenna: "He...
Posted July 10, 2003 01:02 AM
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