Leading Republican Candidate for Governor of California Wants to Restrict Initiatives

Posted on by July 6, 2009
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According to George Will’s column of July 6, Meg Whitman wants to increase the number of signatures needed for an initiative to get on the California ballot. Whitman has a fair chance of being the Republican nominee for Governor of California in 2010. Senator John McCain has endorsed her. She was head of eBay and is a billionaire. According to George Will’s column, she also wants to decrease the number of Assembly districts. California only has 80 members of the lower house of its legislature, and already the average Assembly district has a population of 423,400.

Powerful Nevada Democrat Prefers Caucus to Presidential Primary

Posted on by July 6, 2009
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The Las Vegas Review-Journal recently interviewed Nevada State Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford about his work on the national Democratic Change Commission, the body that is thinking about the party’s 2012 presidential selection process. See here (scroll down one item). Horsford is an enthusiastic proponent of presidential caucuses, rather than presidential primaries, at least for his own state. He said, about the 2008 Nevada Democratic caucus, “It was the best party-building effort in the party’s history. We registered 40,000 new Democrats in 90 minutes…The neighborhood interaction that takes place through a caucus helps to connect communities and individuals.”

The Nevada Democratic caucus in 2008 was in January, and Horsford said he will fight to maintain Nevada’s position in the schedule as one of the 4 states permitted to go first. The others are South Carolina, Iowa and New Hampshire.

California Legislative Hearing on Bill to Ban Paying Circulators Per Signature

Posted on by July 6, 2009
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The California Assembly Elections Committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday, June 7, at 1:30 pm, in room 444, on SB 34. SB 34 makes it illegal to pay initiative circulators on a per-signature basis.

California has no budget yet. According to this story, the Senate will not hold any hearings on any non-budget bills, but the Assembly will hold such hearings this week.