The four measures, which include a ban on home-built firearms and the importation of firearms across state lines, would add more gun laws to the books of a state ranked by Guns & Ammo magazine as 46th of the 50 states in respecting the Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

After being pressed for his position on four bills by the state’s leading grassroots Second Amendment group, the California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees, Kashkari said on Twitter he “would veto them” if he was governor.

Kashkari: “I was having lunch. Chill dude”

Twitter user and gun-rights supporter Jay Medina first asked Kashkari for his position on the bills early Friday morning. By mid-day, that Tweet had been picked up CAL-FFL.

“Why is @NeelKashkari dodging @JayMedina’s simple question? Is that Kashkari’s definition of ‘leadership?’ Looks like typical wishy-washy politics to us,” the organization asked on Twitter and Facebook.

Kashkari replied, “@CALFFL @JayMedina because I was having lunch. Chill dude. Would veto them.”

Kashkari, who has previously clashed with gun supporters on Twitter, likely headed off a torrent of social media criticism with his quick reply.

California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees welcomes news

CAL-FFL President Brandon Combs, who criticized Kashkari earlier this year for his comments on guns, welcomed the announcement as “a change for the better.”

“Neel Kashkari’s views on Second Amendment civil rights has been a trying experience for us, to say the least,” Combs said. “However, we’re certainly encouraged by his new position and welcome the move towards embracing fundamental individual liberties.”

The organization, a member of the Firearms Policy Coalition, has called on its members to inundate the governor’s office with phone calls, emails, faxes and letters urging Brown to veto four measures:

• Senate Bill 808, authored by incoming state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, would require all gun owners to “obtain a unique serial number or other mark from DOJ prior to making or assembling a firearm” and “within 10 days of making or assembling the firearm, to engrave or permanently affix the unique serial number or other mark to that firearm.” Gun rights advocates say that such a requirement would effectively ban the sale, transfer and inheritance of home-built firearms.
• SB199, also authored by de Leon, would require BB and airsoft guns to “have fluorescent coloration over the entire trigger guard” prior to sale.
• Assembly Bill 1014, authored by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, would create a new category of restraining orders for gun violence and allow what gun rights advocates describe as “firearm seizure warrants.”
• AB1609, authored by Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Salinas, would ban “a resident of this state from importing into this state, bringing into this state, or transporting into this state, any firearm that he or she purchased or otherwise obtained on or after January 1, 2015, from outside of this state unless he or she first has that firearm delivered to a dealer in this state for delivery to that resident.”

Kashkari winning over Donnelly supporters

Kashkari’s recent statements in opposition to new gun control could help him win over skeptical gun owners, who overwhelmingly backed Tea Party Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, in the June primary.

In February, first-time candidate Kashkari committed his first — and arguably only — unforced gaffe of the gubernatorial campaign, when he offended California’s gun owners with an off-the-cuff remark at a College Republican meeting.

“If you’re a single issue voter, and you just want someone to give you a full capacity assault rifle magazine, God bless you, you can go vote for somebody else,” Kashkari told a group of Sacramento State College Republicans. “I’m not your guy.”

The comment inspired a wave of criticism on social media from the state’s most ardent gun-rights activists. CAL-FFL encouraged its 27,970 Facebook fans to, “Tell Neel Kashkari that he’s WRONG about the Second Amendment on Twitter if you disagree.”

That gaffe was compounded during a May gubernatorial debate with Donnelly on KFI AM 640’s The John and Ken Show. Kashkari attacked the Twin Peaks lawmaker for carrying legislation that would take power away from county sheriffs and adopt sweeping reforms to the state’s handgun carry license laws.

“You introduced a bill recently that takes power away from county sheriffs and puts our gun rights in the hands of Kamala Harris – why would you do that?” Kashkari asked Donnelly during their only gubernatorial debate.

The Donnelly-authored bill in question, AB1563, was sponsored by the CAL-FFL. It would have required the California Department of Justice to issue conceal-carry permits to law-abiding Californians. So Harris’ “hands” would have been limited to following the bill.

Afterword, Combs wrote in an open letter to Kashkari, “I encourage you to educate yourself on history. Get a book on civics. Read up on the Second Amendment and landmark cases like D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago.” The cases struck down strict state and local restrictions on gun ownership.

Gun rights advocates appreciate that Kashkari has taken that advice to heart. Combs said, “Perhaps Mr. Kashkari took my advice after all.”

Last Friday, Gov. Jerry Brown officially launched his re-election campaign. Of course, filing the paperwork was a formality for a man who already has raised more than $17 million towards that end.

But Brown’s campaign announcement coincided with what the National Weather Service described as the largest rainfall in Southern California since March 2011.

It may just be a coincidence, our we are underestimating Brown’s political brilliance. The weather, which everyone talks about and no government official can control, might be the only vulnerability to his reelection. In February, a poll conducted on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council found that the drought ranked as voters’ top concern.

The drought is scary politically because, although it’s completely out of human hands, it’s not outside of political blame. Rationing, shorter showers, higher water bills and angry farmers are all things that can be — must be — blamed on someone. And governors make for easy targets.

Rain

So what’s Brown to do?

Back in January, after dillydallying with an emergency declaration, Brown downplayed his responsibility for the drought, while creating a subtle expectation. “Governors can’t make it rain,” he said on Jan. 9. “But we’ll do everything that is humanly possible to allow for a flexible use of California’s water sources.”

It goes without saying that governors can’t make it rain. So, why say it?

“A politician can do anything he wants so long as he manipulates the right symbols,” Brown said four decades ago, according to J.D. Lorenz’s 1978 biography, “Jerry Brown: The Man on the White Horse.”

Brown’s rain quip was manipulating the right symbols. It was picked up by almost every major media outlet. Here are three of the headlines:

• Sacramento Bee: “Jerry Brown says ‘governors can’t make it rain'”;
• KCRA: “Brown meets with drought task force, pledges help“;
• Capitol Public Radio: “Governor Brown: Governors Can’t Make It Rain“.

All of this inoculated Brown from the real issue. “Politicians certainly can’t make it rain, but they can build the kind of water storage facilities that a growing population in a dry state needs to weather the lack of future rainstorms,” observed UT San Diego columnist Steve Greenhut. “That’s the real issue here.”

In February, when GOP candidate Neel Kashkari used this argument, the Sacramento Bee featured a headline, “Neel Kashkari blames Jerry Brown for drought.”

Symbols

Brown continues to be effective because, as Lorenz put it, he cultivates “an ambiance of possibility that gave the viewer space: space to project his fondest wishes onto Jerry, space to identify with Jerry.” Brown’s especially good at cultivating these symbols by a “do and say the opposite” routine.

Kenneth Burke coined the term “perspective by incongruity” for intentionally “violating the ‘proprieties’ of the word in its previous linkages.” The “word” in this case is “Brown.”

“Perspective by incongruity” might as well be the slogan of Brown for Governor 2014.

Brown’s “born-again tax cutter” of 1978 gave us the Proposition 30 tax increase of 2012.

The governor, who signed 11 new gun laws last year, simultaneously says more gun laws won’t solve the violence in Oakland.

And for most of this year, he’s been a candidate by not campaigning.

So, why not create an expectation of gubernatorial rainmaking in January, then rain-delay a campaign announcement?

“Don’t think that a paper from the governor’s office is going to affect the rain,” Brown said at the January 9 press conference. Two months later, “Gov. Jerry Brown files papers in Oakland for re-election” on the same day the rains came.

Just as the latest storm wasn’t “a drought-breaker,” a campaign announcement timed with the rain isn’t a campaign maker. However, it creates a rhetorical problem in which Brown can supply himself as the solution. The “Top Story” on the governor’s official website? It’s: “Governor Brown Signs Drought Legislation.”

“Like the rain this weekend, this package is badly needed to help mitigate the effects of the historic drought California is facing,” Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, D-Los Angeles, said in the news release on the announcement. “But also like the rain, we need to see more.”

The incumbent Democrat governor, according to state disclosure reports released recently, raised $9.9 million last year — with the overwhelming majority of those funds coming from big corporations, labor unions, oil companies and high-worth individuals that routinely lobby state government.

“When you’ve been through the experience like Jerry Brown went through with Meg Whitman, your gut tells you that you better go out and raise as much money as you can because there might be some millionaire or billionaire lurking in the shadows that will try to spend you out of office,” Garry South, one of the state’s leading Democrat campaign consultants, told Bloomberg.

Brown’s Republican opponents will have only a fraction of the governor’s campaign funds. Former Treasury Department official Neel Kashkari, who launched his campaign in January, has yet to file any campaign disclosure reports. Former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, who dropped out of the race in January, raised slightly more than half a million dollars last year.

Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, reported just $54,299 in cash on hand at the end of the year, after raising $374,212 for his gubernatorial campaign in 2013. However, Donnelly’s fundraising picked up steam after the campaign filing deadline. In mid-January, Donnelly’s campaign received $20,000 from the California Houndsmen for Conservation, which is not factored in the latest cash-on-hand figures.

Neither Cindy Sheehan, the Peace and Freedom’s candidate, nor the Green Party’s Luis Rodriguez filed disclosure reports.

Brown’s fundraising dependent on max-out contributors

Brown’s fundraising in 2013 was largely dependent on max-out contributions from large special interest groups. Under state law, individuals and corporations may contribute up to $27,200 per election. In 2013, Brown’s average campaign contribution was $17,713, with 287 contributions of $10,000 or more. That high average was buoyed by 198 campaign checks of $25,000 or more – with 167 checks written for the legal maximum, $27,200.

Several of those max-out contributions are drawing questions about mixing state business with campaign finances. One max-out contributor, Occidental Petroleum, according to a report by Bloomberg, has an interest in California’s pending review of the state laws governing hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as fracking.

“Brown took two checks in January for $27,200 each from GEO Group Inc. (GEO), the second-largest U.S. prison operator,” observes Bloomberg. “The donations come after GEO, based in Boca Raton, Florida, last year won a five-year contract worth as much as $150 million to house 1,400 of California’s inmates at two of the company’s jails in the state.”

The governor’s office denies that campaign contributions affect state business. “Contributions have no bearing whatsoever on the state’s legal filings,” said Evan Westrup, Brown’s spokesman.

Campaigning strategy

Brown’s opponents have gotten creative with their limited funds. In contrast to Brown’s high-budget campaign, Donnelly has focused on a grassroots effort, which includes a two-week statewide bus tour. The campaign has more than 40 stops scheduled in its 1,000-mile journey across the Golden State.

“We’re hitting the road to save California!” Donnelly explained on his website. “Over the next two weeks, I’ll be aboard our campaign bus, The Liberty Express, visiting with you and holding events throughout the state.”

In 2010, Brown’s campaign held $12 million

At the same point four years ago, Brown’s campaign reported nearly $12 million in the bank, according to the Associated Press. This year’s campaign chest, thanks to the power and influence of incumbency, is $5 million better, or a 41 percent improvement.

Brown also proved that a penny saved is a penny earned. The report shows Brown spent just shy of $208,000 last year, a relatively low sum for a statewide campaign. The largest expenditure was for two $25,000 bonuses paid to Angie Tate, one of the best Democratic fundraisers in the state, and Edward Ruthrauff, a Brown aide.