You knew Democrats were in the deep end of the pool over water issues in California back on May 14. That’s when they asked Republican state Sen. Andy Vidak of Hanford to read out loud Joint Resolution 25 in the state Senate. It urged President Obama to find solutions to California’s drought crisis.

It is rare in politics for one party to have to use a member of the opposing party to become the spokesperson for anything. But Vidak came from an area hard hit by the drought. And support from the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives was crucial to getting federal relief.

The trend culminated yesterday when Vidak won another smashing victory — even though 54 percent of the registered voters in his 14th Senate District are Hispanic, and 49 percent are Democrat.

Who said Republicans can’t win the Hispanic vote?

Vidak’s victory, along with that of fellow Republican Janet Nguyen in Orange County, kept Democrats from regaining a two-thirds supermajority in the Senate.

Vidak got 55.5 percent of the vote in a district that encompasses the agricultural kingdoms of Fresno, Bakersfield and Mendota. Democratic Opponent Luis Chavez got 44.5 percent.

Vidak even got a greater percentage of the vote than in 2013, when he won 51.9 percent in a special election, against 48.1 percent for Democrat Leticia Perez.

Vidak, a Visalia-born cherry farmer, with an Animal Business degree from Texas Tech University, ran on a platform of passing a water bond with funding for new reservoirs in it, canceling California’s High Speed Rail Project and voting against “job killing” bills in the State Senate.

Water bonds

Vidak became the spearhead for the Republicans’ stance on the water bonds. As of late summer, scheduled for the ballot was a $11.1 billion bond dating to the Schwarzenegger administration. It had been postponed from the 2010 and 2012 elections because of almost certain voter disapproval. It also contained no money for dams and reservoirs.

Gov. Jerry Brown had offered a $6 billion bond, with $2 billion for dams and reservoirs. But Republicans didn’t think that was enough.

Then, at the crucial moment when the Senate was gridlocked, Vidak offered an $8.7 billion water bond counter-proposal that included $3 billion for dams and reservoirs. That broke the dam of gridlock in the Legislature.

The compromise bond was Proposition 1, $7 billion in water bonds, including $2.7 billion for dams and reservoirs. It garnered bipartisan support across the state. Gov. Jerry Brown, cruising to his fourth term, spent the latter part of his campaign using his own funds to run ads featuring him backing Prop. 1, as well as Proposition 2, a strengthened rainy-day budget fund.

Prop. 1 won easily, 67 percent to 33 percent. Prop. 2 won as well, 69 percent to 31 percent.

Farmers

Vidak’s leadership on the water bond was crucial to his garnering support from the farm community in his district. His campaign website said, pointedly:

“Water Is Our Lifeblood

“No one knows better than farmer Andy Vidak that our Central Valley way of life depends on building reservoirs and more water delivery projects . . . and, he’s deeply concerned that too many local communities can’t even get clean, safe drinking water for their families.

“A respected leader in the fight for more water, Andy Vidak authored the $9.2 billion “Safe, Clean and Reliable Drinking Water Supply Act of 2014” that provides critical water storage, emergency drought relief, groundwater cleanup and more regional water supply projects.”

After his re-election, Vidak also sounded a bipartisan message:

“I’m cautiously optimistic. Common sense has no party lines. I think we’ve got a great message that’s all about jobs, affordable reliable water and affordable reliable energy.”

Analysts are saying Kashkari’s candidacy showed how “moderates” were taking over the Republican Party. For example, the Sacramento Bee reported tonight:

“his advancement was viewed by many Republicans as a hopeful sign of the ideological direction of the party. Many members of the GOP’s professional and political classes believed Kashkari, a moderate who supports same-sex marriage, abortion rights and a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants, could boost the party’s efforts to appeal to young voters and minorities.”

But Whitman held the same positions, yet still lost big — despite spending $180 million of her own money.

And for that matter, Arnold Schwarzenegger held similar views. Although he won two elections, the denouement of his administration in 2010, with record $13 billion in tax increases and $20 billion deficits, along with personal and other scandals, would preclude him winning again — assuming term limits allowed him to run in the first place.

So the GOP still hasn’t figured out how to get back in the game of the Golden State.

Brown

Brown’s victory leaves him with large political capital in the state to advance his pet projects, including making environmental restrictions even tighter and building the $68 billion high-speed rail project.

Then there’s the siren call emanating from the Oval Office on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. 3,000 miles to the East.

But things may not go as well for Brown in his fourth and final term as governor as they have in his first three terms. If the national economy tanks, the deficits will come back with a vengeance. And the state’s pension problems just keep growing, his 2013 reform but a drop in a Pacific Ocean of unfunded liabilities.

From anti-rape legislation, to education reform, to health costs and beyond, an anticipated left-leaning consensus has failed to materialize in the Golden State. The resulting controversies, disagreements and difficulties in politicking have thrown a surprising degree of doubt on Democrats’ broader election-year routine.

National Democrats had grown accustomed to a clear, reliable dividing line between identity politics and more general issues. The distinction helped strategists protest the status quo for allies with powerful institutional interests — while microtargeting voters based on criteria like race or ethnicity, sex or gender, age, immigrant status and sexual orientation.

But the new cleavages among California liberals have upset that carefully calibrated approach, leading to close scrutiny and, in some cases, close state elections.

Yes means yes

The phenomenon became hard to ignore when the national political media picked up on sharp disagreements over California’s new “yes means yes” legislation, which requires affirmative sexual consent at universities receiving state funding. Initially, the controversial bill seemed poised to become law without incident.

Outside the state, however, commentators influential among establishment liberals and progressives found themselves at loggerheads over the implications of its strict, invasive rules. As the Los Angeles Times observed, the scuffle — which drew in figures at publications ranging from Vox to The Nation to New York magazine — escalated into “a clash between those who believe the law is too intrusive and those who believe intrusiveness is the entire point.”

For Democrats, the political point has become clear: rather than helping cement a consensus among liberal voters about how to advance legislation concerning sex, “yes means yes” has given voters a stark reason to reassess what they want out of Democrats in that regard.

Given the significance Democrats have placed on the women’s vote in recent years, and the hope they have placed in rising generations of younger voters, the news is especially unwelcome.

Teachers unions

California also gave Democrats a preview of even broader and more fundamental divides on the left.

When Judge Rolf Treu handed down the Vergara ruling, which held public teacher tenure protections to unconstitutionally infringe students’ rights, Democrats split immediately. Some, like Gov. Jerry Brown, went to bat for the teachers unions.

Others, like U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, presented the ruling as a clarion call to improve educational opportunities for all students. Because many underperforming schools and teachers have been found in districts with substantial (or majority) minority populations, some Democrats recognized they could be forced into an uncomfortable choice.

On the one hand, Democrats wished to stand publicly for the interests of minority children and families. On the other, they wanted to defend teachers unions, which have long played a decisive role in Democrats’ political success, especially in California.

These broad political challenges quickly crystallized into a pitched battle over the tenure of one man: California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, a dedicated ally of the teachers unions. Torlakson’s incumbency has become a referendum on his staunch opposition to the Vergara decision.

His challenger, former charter schools executive Marshall Tuck, also is a Democrat — creating an intra-party race as close and bitter as any in recent memory, even though officially the post is non-partisan.

If Tuck wins, an even bigger confrontation will arise, pitting him against Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris, his fellow Democrats, assuming both are re-elected. Brown handily is leading Republican challenger Neel Kashkari, who applauded the Vergara decision.

Harris filed the state’s appeal of Vergara on behalf of Brown. Her opponent is Republican Ronald Gold, who urged her not to appeal Vergara. He asked, “Is she with students, particularly inner city and economically disadvantaged ones, or is she with the teachers unions that support her campaign?”

Even after their expected victories next Tuesday, that’s the kind of headache California Democrats can do without.

Health insurance costs

Finally, the remarkable divides among California Democrats on Proposition 45 could establish another pattern of disagreement for liberals nationwide. It would give the California insurance commissioner the power of approval over changes in health-insurance rates — including over Covered California, the state’s implementation of Obamacare.

Prop. 45 is sponsored by the left-leaning Consumer Watchdog organization.

It comes down to this: Will Covered Care rates be set as part of the federal legislation, or by the state insurance commissioner because of Prop. 45?

The official Ballot Pamphlet from the California Secretary of State features the dueling liberal visions.

The Pro side insists: “Proposition 45 will lower healthcare costs by preventing health insurance companies from jacking up rates and passing on unreasonable costs to consumers.”

The Anti side retorts: “Prop. 45 creates even more expensive state bureaucracy, duplicating two other bureaucracies that oversee health insurance rates, causing costly confusion with other regulations and adding more red tape to the health care system.”

These political fault lines are just opening up, and are likely to get even larger.

The development has been a long time coming, but only an unexpected sequence of events made it possible. Thanks to an unusual combination of court rulings, scandals and personalities, the Golden State’s electoral landscape has shaped up almost perfectly to offer Republicans a rare opportunity for a public reset on image and substance.

That has added new urgency to some long unanswered questions about how best to balance changes in presentation with changes in policy platforms. Even more significantly, however, the current political moment has given the initiative to a somewhat new breed of moderate-to-liberal Republicans.

The mix of issues that has resonated most with California voters this fall may not be enough for a dazzling Republican victory. But it has proven more than enough to recast the state GOP’s traditionally centrist elite as freshly relevant and inventive.

The Kashkari effect

Neel Kashkari, Republican candidate for governor, has positioned himself at the vanguard of these changes. He has done so in spite of his uphill battle against Democratic incumbent Gov. Jerry Brown.

As Andrew Romano argued at Yahoo News, Kashkari grabbed attention and credibility by doing the one thing the party’s previous two moderate-to-liberal candidates, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Meg Whitman, refused to do — define themselves as proud members of the Republican Party. While Schwarzenegger reveled in his maverick independence, and Whitman ran as a business-savvy outsider, Kashkari set out deliberately to eclipse the red-meat conservative wing of the California GOP and unite the party in a way calculated to grow the base.

“There’s no Republican nominee for anything in the country who has my features — or warts,” Kashkari told Romano. “I’ve demonstrated a model now in California.” Win or lose, Kashkari said, he plans to “stay active,” helping “rebuild the party and fix California.”

For Kashkari, that boils down to an almost exclusive focus on economic issues. But in a departure from the GOP talking points of yore, Kashkari’s definition of economic issues doesn’t center on taxes, but on jobs and education, which are widely perceived in California as the structural pillars of economic vitality.

Moving political goalposts

Traditionally, centrist California Republicans looked on jobs and education through the same pro-corporate, pro-business lens as they did taxes. Now, however, the public view of reform in those issue areas has shifted, giving Kashkari and other state Republicans a different, more powerful angle. Rather than depicting jobs and education as a means to grow productivity within the state’s biggest corporations, the California GOP has begun to describe the two dominant features of Democratic rule: the public pensions crisis and the Vergara ruling.

Vergara found that the state’s seniority-based union contracts violated the right to equal opportunity of the state’s disadvantaged students.

In the first case, job creation has ceased to be a conversation restricted to cutting taxes and incentivizing growth. Instead, it has folded into a broader argument about good governance.

Like Kashkari, Fresno mayor Ashley Swearengin has faced an uphill climb in her bid for state controller against Democrat Betty Yee, a member of the Board of Equalization.

But Swearengin’s resume — guiding Fresno away from the fiscal abyss by standing up to public union abuses — has already helped to recast the state GOP. With so few other stars, Swearengin has had an outsized impact at a fortunate time. The Swearengin GOP has started to take shape as the party that would restore economic vitality by pruning back the tangled rot of public-sector patronage.

That message has been reinforced by Kashkari’s relentless campaign against Gov. Jerry Brown’s much-loved high-speed rail project. Rather than an engine for future prosperity, as Brown has claimed, Kashkari has presented the bullet train as a quintessential big-government boondoggle: expensive, yes, but even more importantly, a drain on resources, manpower and time.

Rather than simply campaigning against big budgets, Kashkari and Swearengin have worked to campaign against failing policies.

Local opportunities

California Republicans have also enjoyed a late-breaking uptick in political spending, driven by the same sense of pursuing key opportunities no matter how discouraging the big picture may be. In most cases, the gains have symbolic value that can be used to build momentum in the future.

In the redrawn 32nd state Senate district in Los Angeles County, for instance, termed-out and scandal-stricken state Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, inadvertently cleared a path for Republican challenger Mario Guerra. Guerra is running against Democrat Tony Mendoza, a former assemblyman. A GOP victory is crucial to keep Democrats from gaining back a 2/3 supermajority in the upper house.

As a result, the California GOP and donor Charles Munger Jr. have doubled their spending for Guerra, gaining $230,000 worth of television and mail advertising, according to the Sacramento Bee.

From a strategic standpoint, the investment would pay off by helping establish the Republican Party as an opportunity for a fresh start, free from corruption and business as usual.

In the East Bay’s 16th Assembly district, meanwhile, Republican Catharine Baker has pulled even with Dublin’s Democratic mayor, Tim Sbranti. As the Wall Street Journal noted, Baker’s candidacy has been fueled by public outrage over public pensions — and by the endorsement of the San Francisco Chronicle, which applauded her support of the Vergara decision.

Officials at the Covered California insurance exchange, the state’s implementation of Obamacare, worry passage of Prop. 45 could damage its operations, potentially affecting insurance coverage for millions of Californians. But the board has chosen not to notify California voters of their concerns by formally opposing Prop. 45.

“The initiative could seriously undermine the work that we have underway, our operations, and could compromise the terrific movement and progress that we are making with implementing health reform in California,” said Covered California Board Member Kimberley Belshé at the board’s recent meeting (webcast here).

Board Member Diana Dooley agreed. “I personally have very serious concerns about the interaction of the plain language of this initiative and the work that we’ve invested in making the Affordable Care Act real in California and to some considerable degree somewhat successful,” she said.

Those concerns were confirmed in a report by Executive Director Peter Lee, which found, “Proposition 45 could have a significant detrimental impact on Covered California’s operations….”

Prop. 45

Known as the Insurance Rate Public Justification and Accountability Act, Prop. 45 would require health insurance rates to be approved by the state insurance commissioner, similar to the car insurance rate approval mandated by Proposition 103 in 1988.

Lee’s Prop. 45 analysis cited several concerns:

• “Covered California’s role as an active [insurance] purchaser could be significantly undermined if health plans negotiating with Covered California are reluctant to consider or negotiate on factors other than price because of uncertainty about the subsequent price that will be approved (or ordered) by CDI [California Department of Insurance].
• “If for any reason a new rate were not approved in time for open enrollment, plans would ‘default’ to the old rate for the entire next year.
• “Current timelines under Proposition 103 [if applied to medical care under Prop. 45] would provide significant disruption to the offering of plans for the annual open enrollment.
• “One risk that Covered California needs to be concerned about is the potential of health plans withdrawing in advance of or during the rate regulation process. To the extent a mandatory intervenor hearing process is unresolved in time to meet the open enrollment deadline, a plan’s proposed rate could not go forward.
• “Almost 90% of Covered California’s consumers receive federal subsidies to reduce their net premiums…. [I]f the rate change sets a new ‘second lowest silver’ plan, some consumers could see their costs increase due to the adjustment of the prices used for the tax credit calculation and the potential reduction of the purchasing power of the tax credits.”

Warn voters?

The Covered California board members could have laid out their concerns in a resolution opposing Prop. 45 to help voters make a better informed decision ahead of the Nov. 4 election. But they unanimously declined to do so.

“I think the beauty and the right kind of influence of this board is to remain as apolitical as possible,” said Board Member Robert Ross. “I’m philosophically opposed to taking any formal position on this ballot measure or any other. I think there’s plenty of politics to go around. Let it go on and let’s try to keep it out of the deliberations of this body.”

The board’s decision to remain neutral on Prop. 45 was welcomed by more than a dozen Prop. 45 supporters who spoke at the meeting.

“People will differ in their analysis of whether Prop. 45 will make the world better for consumers or not better,” said Betsy Imholz, representing Consumers Union. “But one thing is indisputable, that the insurance industry is unanimously and vociferously opposed to it. Were you to align with that position, I think it would create a bad public image.

“And were it to pass, I think the public would be watching closely and questioning your implementation of the act. You don’t need that. None of us needs that. We just want to move forward with the very successful work that you’ve been doing over the past several years.”

Elizabeth Pataki, a retired intensive care nurse representing the California Alliance for Retired Americans, agreed.

“Since Covered California is prohibited under California and federal law from spending taxpayer money to campaign for the ballot initiatives, and since you negotiate with the powerful health care industry to ensure Californians must buy health care and have access to that care, as such it’s very important that you avoid taking sides and getting involved in a political fight with consumer advocates on one side and the health care industry on the other,” she said.

“We need Proposition 45 because there have been 185 percent increases in rates, which have caused severe difficulties. Those severe difficulties include working people and retired people going bankrupt. Proposition 45 will apply the same rates as car coverage. It does not undermine the Affordable Care Act. And it’s public, it’s transparent, it’s open. The public can see what’s happening.”

Concerns

Only one person argued that the board should make its concerns public about Prop. 45.

“We have substantial experience with Prop. 103,” said Steve Young, representing the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of California. “From our position, Prop. 45 was a sham. What it is represented to be is not in fact what it would be. We believe and are sure that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that the Prop. 103 rating law, or especially the public intervention process, has done anything to lower insurance costs in property casualty insurance.

“Our view is Covered California itself already has done and will continue to do more to temper and lower insurance costs for California consumers than Prop. 45 ever could. So our view, while we certainly understand your position, is that it would be appropriate for you to call a pig a pig, and take a position against Prop. 45.”

Although the Covered California board has sought to stay above the political fray, it has found itself mired in it anyway.  Consumer Watchdog, which is leading the campaign for Prop. 45, on Monday sent a letter to Attorney General Kamala Harris seeking an investigation of the agency’s no-bid contracts and suggesting Covered California is in collusion with insurance companies against Prop. 45:

“Covered California has refused for months to release information requested by Consumer Watchdog under the Public Records Act concerning the agency’s communications with insurance industry executives about Prop. 45 …. Californians deserve to know the truth about hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts and industry influence at Covered California before they vote November 4th.”

Dooley responded to criticism at the September Covered California meeting. “I … am deeply troubled by the politicization of the work that we’ve done and the suggestions that necessarily come up in a political campaign,” she said. “And the characterizations that have been made and may continue to be made that we are not a sufficient steward of consumers.

“I kind of take personal offense at that because I’m here because of my consumer commitment. And I think we have established a reputation of openness and evidence of consumer protection.”

Covered CA problems

In other action at the meeting, Lee told the board that many Californians who called Covered California in the previous month were put on hold for as long as 40 minutes while those whose citizenship was in question were moved to the front of the call line.

The number of suspected illegal residents, who were in danger of losing their insurance eligibility, had grown to 148,000. Prioritizing their cases reduced that to just 10,474 clients whose legal residency is still in question, according to a press release.

Lee told the board that, although the law requires illegal residents be dropped from coverage after 90 days, Covered California has extended their coverage “well beyond that.”

As he gears up for the final stretch of his bid for an unprecedented fourth term in office, Brown has chosen to focus closely on his own fortunes and his own political brand. Rather than stumping around the Golden State, as Democrats have hoped, Brown has largely bowed out of his party’s push to reclaim a legislative supermajority in Sacramento.

Bucking the trend

Despite Democrats’ dominant position, the party’s worries have extended to the top of its state leadership. The new state Senate leader, Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, recently revealed his concerns to the Los Angeles Times. Although he did not shed any light on party leaders’ “negotiations” with the Brown camp, de Leon admitted he was “actively pursuing the governor to make appearances.” Sizing up his party’s challenges, de Leon said the upcoming election was “going to be the most challenging in more than a decade, so we absolutely have our work cut out for us.”

Democrats have fretted this year over a series of scandals, disagreements and internal divisions that have blunted the force of their policy agenda. On a growing number of issues, especially the influence of teachers’ unions, Democrats have taken contrasting positions.

The race for Superintendent of Public Instruction pits two Democrats — incumbent Tom Torlakson and challenger Marshall Tuck — against one another in an officially nonpartisan contest that has unofficially split key figures within the party into two surprisingly hostile camps.

In that kind of uncertain atmosphere, the rallying influence of a strong governor with substantial popular support would be a much-needed political balm. Brown, however, has not governed predictably, and his sometimes idiosyncratic approach toward his own party has created discomfort among Democrats who now must plead for his public support.

In advancing California’s high-speed rail project, for instance, Brown provoked irritation and concern among progressive environmentalists by diverting cap-and-trade fee revenue away from climate mitigation efforts toward the train’s infrastructure requirements — an investment that would not lessen carbon emissions for perhaps decades.

In light of Brown’s apparent determination to stray from the reliable ideological confines of his party’s far left, or its more moderate pro-business center, his hesitancy to take to the stump this election season makes his relative silence understandable.

Handpicked exceptions

Reluctance notwithstanding, Brown has chosen to take a handful of carefully chosen actions in the run-up to November. Perhaps most notably, although he has not taken to the stump on her behalf, Brown has pointedly endorsed Libby Schaaf, a candidate in the crowded race to replace Oakland Mayor Jean Quan. (Voters have soured on the incumbent Quan, but her challengers have failed to catch voters’ enthusiasm.) Schaaf, a councilwoman in the city where Brown was a popular mayor for eight years, also worked for Brown.

As the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out, Brown’s past endorsements have not necessarily made or broken the campaigns of candidates he supported. Still, at a time when his public favor is so strongly coveted, Brown’s choice to endorse Schaaf underscored his approach to November and beyond. Close friends and allies will be embraced, if somewhat quietly. Others may have to wait for a gift that will never come.

Meanwhile, Brown has turned his eye on his legacy and the state’s future. Sidestepping a brewing scandal involving PG&E’s cozy ties to regulators, Brown announced he returned campaign contributions from six of the utility’s officials.

And in his first ad buy of the season, Brown has chosen to push Propositions 1 and 2, the ballot measures that would secure his sought-after water bond and rainy-day fund. In the ads, Brown does not even mention his bid for reelection.

That hasn’t been immediately evident from the frenetic activity surrounding his final month of campaigning. Using a string of concept-driven political stunts, ranging from free prizes to a masquerade as a homeless man, Kashkari has established a reputation for putting elbow grease into his run for governor.

Yet into the active effort and strident rhetoric Kashkari has added a relatively tongue-in-cheek approach to the uphill run before him. Unusual for a Republican trying to make a name in other states — but not so out of place in California — the combination of smarts, sarcasm and street hustle has inspired the media, if not Democrats, to take a closer look.

A new brand

Interest has swirled around whether Kashkari plausibly can portray a character that many have referenced but few have embodied — a “different kind of Republican,” as The Economist put it. Over the summer, some conservative stalwarts began to notice Kashkari’s recipe for change involved scrambling old battle lines, not simply moving to the progressive left or the pro-corporate center.

In a column hailing Kashkari, George Will depicted him as the heir to Barry Goldwater, who in 1964 famously lost in a landslide to President Lyndon Johnson — yet inspired a conservative movement that elected Ronald Reagan president in 1980. “If California becomes a purple state and Democrats can no longer assume its 20 percent of 270 electoral votes, Republicans nationwide will be indebted to the immigrants’ son who plucked up Goldwater’s banner of conservatism with a Western libertarian flavor.”

Goldwater turned his electoral blowout into an opportunity to shift the national Republican Party. Kashkari’s underdog status has afforded a similar opportunity — and the political press has picked up on the strategy. Rather than offering the media a retread of tales of California Republicans’ past, Kashkari has presented a surprising spectacle. Wealthy political novices from business backgrounds, such as Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, have tried to unseat top-tier Democrats before. They failed — leading national political journalists to question why the state GOP was willing to tolerate such a bad investment.

Kashkari, who is not personally short on cash, has raised a far more modest campaign chest. But his small budget has become a buzz-building advantage. Not only has it fueled the kind of stunt-driven campaigning that grabs headlines, it has given state Republicans a feeling that neither donors nor the party have thrown good money after bad. And it has changed the media narrative, differentiating Kashkari from the political losers who have come before him.

The shift hasn’t necessarily played well with Kashkari’s natural allies across the country — Republicans close to Wall Street. After hitting the stump for him in early summer, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie couldn’t find time to share the state with Kashkari in the election season’s final weeks. Rather than a personal slight, however, the decision was strictly business: Christie was dispatched by the Republican Governors Association to help put well-positioned candidates over the top.

West coast credentials

The absence of monied East Coast support isn’t really a disadvantage for Kashkari. Earlier in his primary campaign, he had to shake his political association with the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP — the massive 2008 bailout program he was instrumental in designing and implementing under President George W. Bush. Kashkari seems to have determined that the West Coast — not Wall Street or his home state of Ohio — is the most hospitable territory for his brand of Republicanism.

Indeed, the swell of attention surrounding his approach has led some observers to suggest Kashkari could emerge from even a losing campaign as a powerful force in California Republican politics. Asked by the Santa Monica Mirror if he would consider a race for Senate in the years to come, Kashkari was blunt. “In all honesty, I’ve never ruled out any of those opportunities,” he said. Although, he added, he was “100 percent focused on November,” Mirror columnist Tom Elias placed his bet “on Kashkari starting right in on his next effort.”

And whereas he’s running against an incumbent this year, the next California U.S. Senate race is for the seat of Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in 2016. Last month the Chronicle reported:

“Sen. Barbara Boxer says she has yet to make up her mind about seeking a fifth term in 2016, but there’s no shortage of signs that the Democrat may be opting out.

“It’s not just that she has less than $200,000 in her campaign account, compared with $3.5 million at this stage before her last election fight. Some comments from those who know the 73-year-old senator are also telling.

“‘She is not running for re-election,’ said one longtime Democratic fundraiser with deep ties to Boxer, who spoke only on background.”

Of course, she still might run. But if she retires, the open field, combined with Kashkari’s experience with this year’s campaign, could give him a big leg up in 2016.

The same thing with Gov. Jerry Brown’s re-election campaign chest of $23.6 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. But which he isn’t spending, according to the Chronicle, because “he’s conducting one of the most unusual re-election campaigns ever witnessed by state voters — one in which he hasn’t starred in a single TV or radio spot, campaign mailer, or Web video.” And he spent just $132,000 in July, August and September.

So, might as well have some fun and let “What happens in Vegas stay in Vegas.”

Meanwhile, Republican opponent Neil Kashkari, who is running at only about 40 percent in polls, holds “about $680,000 in the bank, with $142,000 in unpaid bills.” On the positive side for Kashkari, in 2010 Republican Meg Whitman blew $180 million of her own dough against Brown, and also finished with just 41 percent. So Neel’s votes will cost about 1/180th that of Meg’s.

What will Brown will do with all that campaign moolah he doesn’t spend? Probably not Vegas. Probably another city to the East. Do I hear a special tune?

Pete Peterson, the Republican candidate for Secretary of State, plans to use the entrepreneurial qualities of Californians to reignite the greatness of the Golden State.