California Democrats have centered around a handful of Republican challengers they hope to tar with Donald Trump’s brush. 

Assemblymen Dante Acosta, R-San Bernardino, David Hadley, R-Torrance and Marc Steinorth, R-Redlands, Assemblywoman Young Kim, R-Fullerton, and state Senate candidate Mike Antonovich have all been hit with the attack, which aims to send them packing by exploiting Trump’s historic unpopularity in-state. “Trump is extraordinarily unpopular in California, even for a Republican in the famously liberal state. Nearly seven in 10 California voters view Trump unfavorably, according to a Field Poll conducted last month. More than half said they hold a ‘very unfavorable’ view of him,” the San Jose Mercury News reported. 

“California Democrats in those races are using a strategy their party has employed in congressional and other contests across the country — spending millions of dollars to link Republican candidates to their party’s nominee for president, even in races where GOP lawmakers have refused to back Trump.”

The Republican nominee has still managed to maintain a hard core of support. But it has been increasingly likely to draw headlines that do little to flatter the candidate. “Supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump staged a protest Tuesday outside the Los Angeles office of attorney Gloria Allred, who represents Summer Zervos — the Huntington Beach woman who claims she was a victim of unwanted sexual advances by Trump,” as the Mercury News noted separately. “Allred and Zervos made headlines Friday when the contestant on Season 5 of ‘The Apprentice’ said during a news conference that Trump kissed and groped her after she approached him about a position in his business empire.”

A state lost

Although the Trump campaign made hay early in the election season by playing up California’s struggles with unlawful immigration, and both the candidate and his team often intimated that they could put the deep-blue state in play with their unconventional approach and populist message, Trump’s stumbles approaching the electoral finish line have put West Coast voters far out of reach. “The controversial GOP candidate’s support has fallen to 30 percent, below the current low-water mark held by George H.W. Bush, who got 33 percent of the popular vote in California in a three-way contest in 1992,” according to ABC 10 News.

“While both presidential front-runners have lost support in the past 17 days, according to a SurveyUSA pre-election tracking poll conducted for KABC-TV in Los Angeles, KPIX-TV San Francisco, KGTV-TV San Diego, and KFSN-TV Fresno, Hillary Clinton’s lead over Trump remains steady at 26 percentage points.” 

But in a reminder that Democrats have not fully addressed voters’ frustrations, Clinton and Trump both dropped three points, while the undecided vote doubled, the station reported.

Team of rivals

Meanwhile, the main target of Trump’s intraparty battles, House Speaker Paul Ryan, has not given up on the Golden State as a critical place to seek and show support. “The Wisconsin representative arrives in California next Thursday and will hold 12 events in seven cities over two days,” the Los Angeles Times noted. “Ryan is expected to campaign with Reps. Jeff Denham, David Valadao and Steve Knight, as well as Scott Jones, who is challenging Rep. Ami Bera. He will also hold events benefiting Team Ryan, a joint fundraising committee.”

“Ryan was already a prodigious fundraiser, raising nearly $50 million this year and transferring more than half to help congressional candidates. But he is barnstorming the nation in the lead-up to the November election. This month alone, Ryan has held more than 65 events in 17 states.”

Despite Ryan’s appeal to sitting Republican representatives in California, the national mood among the GOP has appeared to turn against him amid Trump’s attacks. In a recent Bloomberg poll, for instance, “46 percent of all voters have a negative view of Ryan, and only 37 percent favorable, a drop from earlier surveys this year. More striking, when asked who represents their view of the party, Republicans by 51 percent to 33 percent prefer Trump over Ryan.”

Escalating pension debt may rest on CA Supreme Court ruling

Good morning. Happy Hump Day. While it seems everyone is trying to get footage of Trump speaking candidly in recordings of “The Apprentice,” which we’ll call the “Trump tapes,” we start this morning with some pension news.

A decision by four Marin County public-employee associations to appeal a pension-related case to the California Supreme Court could ultimately determine whether localities have the tools needed to rein in escalating pension debt.

At issue is how far officials can go to reduce some benefits for current employees after a state appeals court has chipped away at a legal “rule” long favored by the state’s unions.

In August, a California appeals court ruled against the Marin County Employees’ Association in its case challenging a 2012 state law reining in pension-spiking abuses – i.e., those various end-of-career enhancements (unused leave, bonuses, etc.) that public employees use to gin up their final salary and their lifetime retirement pay. …

Even though the dollars at issue are relatively minimal, the case has become a major flashpoint. California courts have long abided by something known as the “California Rule.” It’s not a law or even a rule, actually. It refers to a series of court rulings concluding that once a pension benefit is granted to public employees by a legislative body (board of supervisors, city council, state Legislature), it can never be reduced – even going forward. 

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “(Secure Choice) has several provisions protecting the state (and employers, which are required to enroll employees into Secure Choice) against liability. … To protect against losses, the state plans to invest in low-risk securities, like treasury bonds or the federal MyRA program, while another section in the law allows for the state to adopt recommendations that address “risk-sharing and smoothing of market losses and gains.” CalWatchdog has more. 

• “Feminist attorney Gloria Allred, who has represented an army of women in legal actions against rich and powerful men — Bill Cosby, Tiger Woods, Anthony Weiner and ex-Clippers owner Donald Sterling among them — is demanding the release of footage from Donald Trump’s reality show, ‘The Apprentice,'” reports Politico. 

• “When Palo Alto software entrepreneur Ron Unz led a campaign to ban bilingual education 18 years ago, California erupted in an acrimonious debate that drew national attention, with proponents expressing fears about the decline of English and opponents charging racism and predicting an educational Armageddon. But today, in a sign of the Golden State’s dramatically changing demographics and politics, the campaign to roll back the “English-only” Proposition 227 seems low-key and uncontroversial, overshadowed by a bevy of hot-button ballot initiatives and the emotionally charged presidential race,” writes The San Jose Mercury News. 

• “Opponents of Donald Trump have launched a crowdfunding effort to raise cash that could cover the legal costs of unveiling more lewd video featuring the GOP presidential candidate,” reports LA Weekly. 

Legislature:

• Gone ’til December.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @THEMMEXCHANGE

Although other people have been surprised, I must say that I haven’t been surprised at any of the revelations about ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his gutter morality. When he ran for governor back in 2003, all the indications were there: The sleazy Hollywood history. The explicit interview with a pornographic magazine; he said that his answers were just exaggerated stories to amuse readers.

Then there were the stories in the L.A. Times of him groping and abusing women on movie sets. At the time, pro-Arnold Republicans attacked the “liberal bias” of the Times for printing the truth. Of course, it turned out Arnold himself was a “liberal,” as in libertine.

If you read the bios of Arnold, he had an interesting relationship with bodybuilding magazine publisher Joe Weider, a kind of father-figure for Arnold. As somebody put it, they both conned each other — and made millions. Weider used Arnold as the poster boy for his magazine empire. Arnold used Weider to catapult himself into the top of the bodybuilding industry.

So, for Arnold, life is just one con after another.

Early on, Arnold admitted he used steroids, back when they were legal, to inflate his muscles to cartoonish proportions. Arnold’s main accomplishment was repeatedly, day after day, pulling out a needle, filling it with steroids, and injecting the drug into his veins.

He was a phony from the word go.

Now, more revelations are promised. It looks like he’s going to be spending his next decade in family court for paternity and palimony lawsuits. Gloria Allred — who else — says more sleaze revelations are coming:

“Investigators are all over the place,” said Allred in an interview with The Chronicle Monday. Asked about tabloid reports that the former governor’s infidelities could parallel that of Tiger Woods, Allred — who has represented at least two of the golf great’s mistresses — said, “The genie cannot be put back in the bottle.”

“It’s out — as much as he has tried to do damage control and control this story,” said Allred. “He’s probably now just a sad little man waiting for the next bombshell to going to go off.”….

Allred is reported to be representing Gigi Jeffers — also known as Gigi Goyette — who said that as a 17-year-old and former actress on “Little House on the Prarie,” she had a sexual relationship with Schwarzenegger.

What a creep. That supposedly took place back in 1975, so it’s possible child-abuse charges could be brought against him. After all, if clergy can be charged with abuse decades later, why not an ex-governor?

May 24, 2011