Photo courtesy of atlantablackstar.com

The Senate campaign of California Attorney General Kamala Harris has displeased Democratic insiders, who worry that their leading candidate to replace Sen. Barbara Boxer hasn’t run a tight enough ship.

Spokesman Nathan Click recently admitted the operation was “changing campaign managers and making moves to reduce costs,” after what the Sacramento Bee reported was “unusually heavy spending in recent months.”

“Click said the campaign was making spending cuts involving consultants and staff but declined to detail them,” the Bee noted, although the resignation of campaign manager Rory Steele — replaced by senior adviser Juan Rodriguez — was not as easily concealed.

At issue was the campaign’s eyebrow-raising spending, which included repeated, relatively lavish expenditures on Harris’s hotel accommodations. “Cam­paigns typ­ic­ally shell out big bucks on me­dia buys, staff salaries and ex­pens­ive fun­draisers. But spend­ing it on hous­ing, par­tic­u­larly when far cheap­er op­tions are avail­able, is atyp­ic­al, cam­paign vet­er­ans say, and even Har­ris’s fel­low Demo­crats have taken no­tice,” according to National Journal:

“It’s not as if the Cali­for­nia at­tor­ney gen­er­al had money to burn, either. She’s already spent more than 40 per­cent of the $6 mil­lion she’s raised since be­com­ing a can­did­ate in Janu­ary, an alarm­ing burn rate for a can­did­ate who is also on her second cam­paign man­ager and third fin­ance dir­ect­or. In her latest fun­drais­ing re­port, cov­er­ing the peri­od of Ju­ly through Septem­ber, the dis­crep­ancy between money com­ing in and money go­ing out was es­pe­cially acute: $1.8 mil­lion to $1.4 mil­lion.”

Champagne tastes

Compounding the problem, Harris’s taste for high-end living recently landed her in a crisis of a different sort — a state ethics probe involving the Fair Political Practices Commission.

“A $21,000 spruce-up of her San Francisco loft by designer-to-the-stars Ken Fulk wound up putting state Attorney General Kamala Harris under the microscope for possibly accepting an illegal gift,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “The A.G. eventually ended up in the clear — but not before cutting a check for more than $10,000.” After the FPPC made some inquiries, “Harris asked Fulk for an accounting for any money she still owed on the job and sent in a final check for $10,245,” the paper added.

California law bars elected state officials “from receiving a gift or gifts totaling more than $460 in a calendar year,” according to the Los Angeles Times, “with a few exceptions.”

Even with her name cleared by the FPPC, Harris has faced a difficult time turning the page on the broader pattern of conduct underscored by her relationship with Fulk. “Har­ris’s frivol­ous spend­ing on air­fare, lux­ury cars, and ho­tels is highly un­usu­al for a Sen­ate can­did­ate that has a re­l­at­ively com­pet­it­ive race,” one nation­al Demo­crat­ic strategist told National Journal. “And the cam­paign is in the fin­an­cial mess that it’s in be­cause of its de­cision to do those things.”

New vulnerability

The scrutiny directed at Harris would be significant regardless of her position heading toward the state primary election. But with California’s new top-two runoff system, known as the “jungle” primary, her missteps have taken on much greater significance. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who also wants to succeed Boxer, has been running a less polished underdog campaign. But she has begun to expand her base of support beyond Southern California, where it remains very strong. According to the Orange County Register, Sanchez recently roped in Central Valley endorsements from Rep. Jim Costa, D-Frenso, and former Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, and even made inroads in Harris’s San Francisco backyard with a nod from Silicon Valley Rep. Anna Eshoo.

With Republicans divided and the state GOP occasionally willing to simply sit out an election in the hopes of helping control the winning Democrat’s agenda, Harris has looked increasingly vulnerable. “Sanchez is more of an ideological centrist, as shown by her most recent spate of endorsements, and thus would more naturally draw support from business and conservative groups, as well as Republican voters,” Dan Walters noted at the San Jose Mercury News. In addition to wiping out a gender gap, “Sanchez could pull Latino votes away from Harris.” The momentum has California’s Northern California liberal establishment on edge, fearing the specter of the more left-leaning candidate losing out in yet another runoff election.

And a recession — a deep one — is about the only thing besides health problems that could prevent the re-election of Gov. Jerry Brown next year. Reported the Chronicle:

“Despite California’s high unemployment and poverty rates, 58 percent of registered voters approve of how Brown is doing his job — the highest mark of the 75-year-old Democrat’s third term, according to a nonpartisan Field Poll released Thursday. His highest-ever Field mark was a 69 percent approval notch in March 1976, during his first term….

“Neither yardstick shows any of Brown’s announced or expected Republican challengers — former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of Twin Peaks (San Bernardino County) or former U.S. Treasury Department official Neel Kashkari — getting more than 16 percent of the vote against him in the June primary….

“The poverty rate in California — nearly 24 percent — is the highest in the nation under a new calculation that includes cost of living, according to federal census figures, and the state’s 8.7 percent employment rate is fifth-highest in the U.S.”

The problem for Republicans is that poor people are the most likely to vote for Brown. Because they’re poor, they get government benefits, which Brown has increased in his last two budgets.

The Obamacare debacle is going to slam Democrats nationally. They likely will lose some seats in the California Legislature; and some California seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. (Neither U.S. senator from California is up for re-election this year.)

That’s something for the GOP. They well could end the Democratic supermajorities in both houses of the California Legislature. However, that means Democrats could use 2014 as the time to pass tax and other bills with their supermajority before it might evaporate on Dec. 1.

Statewide

It’s still going to be hard for Republicans to win any statewide race, not just the governorship. AG Kamala Harris and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, eyeing succeeding Brown in 2018, easily should win re-election. Democrats have near locks on the other constitutional offices.

Aside from the Schwarzenegger fluke because of the 2003 recall, the last statewide office Republicans have won was Steve Poizner for insurance commissioner in 2006. There were four reasons for that. As an entrepreneur, Poizner had the right background for the job. He also spent a lot of his own money his campaign. His opponent, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, was involved in a scandal. And Cruz’ main campaign platform — seriously — was his diet program. Actual campaign official statement: “I want to become an example to others to lead healthier lives by losing weight myself. Obesity in California costs $7.7 billion a year.”

It’s not entirely impossible for a Republican to win for governor or the other offices. But it’s hard to devise a scenario where it happens.

If you have a GOP victory scenario, please put it in the comments. They need help.

Seeing this book for sale at Amazon.com immediately raised two questions. First, have we all collectively lost our minds? I mean, yes – Conrad’s title contains one of the foulest, most evil words in the English language. But that was what the man wrote a century ago in times very different from our own. Have we become so fearful of offending people that we must now speak in a secret code?

In any case, the second question raised by this publishing abomination, What ever became of Cruz Bustamante? If you recall, back in February 2001 then Lt. Gov. Bustamante “slipped” and dropped the old N-Bomb on top of 400 African-American trade unionists in Emeryville during a speech on, of all things, civil rights leaders. He apologized profusely, but the story never really went away.

Anyway, Bustamante has been out of office since January 2007, when his second term as Lt. Governor ended. I asked around the office, but no one seemed to know where the guy ended up. After a quick Internet perusal, I found the answer: he’s running Bustamante & Associates, an Elk Grove-based government consulting firm that has, at best, enjoyed mixed results.

In May 2008, the Irwindale City Council rejected a proposed $60,000 contract (with an additional $6,000 in expenses) with Bustamante & Associates “to provide consulting services,” citing the city’s “current financial status.” But six months later, National City’s council approved a smaller $36,000 contract “to perform government affairs consulting services” with the firm.

-Anthony Pignataro