Free Republic

One in five Americans calls California or Texas home. The two most populous states have a lot in common: a long coast, a sunny climate, a diverse population, plenty of oil in the ground, and Mexico to the south. Where they diverge is in their governance. For six years ending in 2010, I represented almost 500,000 people in California’s legislature. I was vice chairman of the Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation and served on the Budget Committee. I was even a lieutenant colonel in the state’s National Guard. Before serving in Sacramento, I worked as an executive in California’s...

Former GOP Assemblyman and U.S. Senate hopeful Chuck DeVore has given up his Orange County supervisor bid to move his family to Texas. DeVore has accepted a new job as a visiting scholar at the nonprofit Texas Public Policy Foundation, where he will write a book on "the Texas Model of how low taxes and low government spending, a light and predictable regulatory environment, respect for property rights, and a business-friendly legal climate has turned Texas into America's jobs generating dynamo."

Good-bye, California, I'm going to Texas It’s hard to say “good-bye” – perhaps “au revoir” is better (till we meet again). As some of my friends know, our family has been caring for my aged in-laws, 86 and 82. As with many people who have seen a full life of war and work and raising a family, they need our help. This assistance has consumed our whole family – in fact, it’s the toughest thing – and the most important thing – we’ve done, even more so than running for statewide office. In addition, as with many in the Golden...

A series of messages forwarded to The Daily Caller show a top aide to former Alaska Gov. and possible presidential candidate Sarah Palin mocking top political figures and even her boss’s own daughter, Bristol Palin. RedState.com founder and CNN contributor Erick Erickson is “a total douchebag,” wrote Palin speechwriter and domestic policy adviser Rebecca Mansour in a May 22, 2010, message. “Greasy dumb ass with a talent for self-promotion. He threw himself in at the Gov’s SC rally. Self-promotion.” (Erickson said South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley invited him to the rally). Mitt Romney supporters are “wacky as hell,” Mansour wrote,...

California U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein recently criticized the intelligence community for failing to anticipate Egypt's political upheaval -- but looks like the CIA types should have been reading Chuck DeVore. That's right: the California GOP former U.S. Senate candidate published an analysis back in January warning Egypt was on "the brink of a chaotic transition of power" -- weeks before anyone had even taken to the streets of Cairo. The former Irvine Assemblyman raised his concerns on the issue of Egypt's future in a Jan. 11 piece in Investors' Business Daily entitled "A Restive Egypt Faces Succession; Islamacists May Make...

California’s progressive-era experiment in direct democracy was supposed to elevate the voters above the special interests, allowing voters make law themselves through the statewide initiative process. That this process is now virtually owned by the special interests is yet another example of the immutable Law of Unintended Consequences in government. A brief perusal of the California Secretary of State’s initiative campaign finance disclosure website shows that some $120 million dollars has been raised by 53 groups supporting or opposing California’s nine November ballot initiatives. By comparison, California’s two major candidates for governor have raised or given to their campaigns $176...

Proposition 19: NO – Marijuana legalization My biggest concern with this initiative, aside from the basic policy considerations, are two large unintended consequences: 1) will drug abuse grow, thus putting more of a strain on our out-of-control welfare system; 2) the impact of lawsuits on employers seeking to enforce a zero-tolerance policy (especially important in the defense industry). Proposition 20: YES – Redistricting reform extended to Congress Prop. 20 will make the independent State Commission on Redistricting re-draw Congressional Districts in 2011, instead of the legislature working with liberal interests, just as the independent commission will re-draw Legislative district boundaries...

California GOP Senate nominee Carly Fiorina is skipping a chance to appear with Sarah Palin at a major Republican National Committee fundraiser so she can campaign with Sen. John McCain instead. Fiorina has not yet announced the Saturday campaign appearances with McCain, but a campaign source tells POLITICO that she will be spending her time on the stump with the 2008 GOP presidential nominee rather than his running mate, the former Alaska governor. POLITICO reported last week that both Fiorina and GOP gubernatorial Meg Whitman would be skipping the RNC fundraiser in Anaheim, citing scheduling conflicts. The RNC is heavily...

I’ve poked around the California Senate race for the last several days, in preparation for a piece in the forthcoming National Review. And I discovered, or relearned, something I thought was kind of interesting. You know how many of our band blasted Palin for anointing Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware Senate race, disregarding viability (or so it appeared)? Well, you recall that the GOP Senate primary in California featured three contestants: Carly Fiorina (the ex-CEO and eventual winner), Tom Campbell (the former congressman who is a moderate, basically), and Chuck DeVore (the assemblyman who is a true-blue, four-square conservative). Palin...

Jerry Brown Doesn't Like My Language Written by Melanie Morgan    Thursday, 19 August 2010 14:11 Well, too damn bad.I don't like wealthy liberals mingling with people who support terrorists and give money to people who murder U.S. troops in Iraq.I am seriously pissed.Here is SF Chronicle's Joe Garofoli on the controversy. "...We're a bit dizzy here as we're entered Bizarro Bay Area World with word of not one, but TWO conservative protests of Democratic AG/guv candidate Jerry Brown.First, one happened outside Brown's Attorney General's office in Oakland Thursday morning, organized by the California Republican Party. Yes, a street...

Compare the high-debt states to the states shown in blue that voted for Obama—the linkage between debt and voting behavior is visually clear. According to Moody’s, the average state per capita debt of the 28 Obama states is $1,728 while the average debt in the 22 McCain states is less than half, at $749. This information alone says a lot about voters and their attitude towards government and debt.

SACRAMENTO — Sen. Barbara Boxer's popularity with Californians is falling as she finds herself in a statistical tie with her Republican challenger, former Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive Carly Fiorina, according to a Field Poll released Thursday. The survey found 47 percent of likely voters support Boxer while 44 percent back Fiorina, a gap that is within the poll's margin of error. The result is similar to the last Field Poll, taken in March. That survey showed Boxer with 45 percent support, compared with 44 percent for Fiorina. Meanwhile, the senator's popularity has fallen. Just 41 percent of voters say they...

With the election season more than halfway over, the "tea party" movement has notched some impressive victories but also learned a hard lesson: There are limits to the power of its anger-fueled insurgency. The movement scored a big win this week in South Carolina, where state Rep. Nikki Haley romped past a four-term congressman to win the GOP nomination for governor. Still, for all the attention the tea party movement has gotten and all the passion of its followers, a rough accounting at the ballot box shows the movement has just about as many losses as victories. Money has proved...

At the election night party of "tea party" favorite Chuck DeVore in Tustin, Carole Mullner and her daughter Stephanie Perez were among the first to arrive. Outfitted in red T-shirts branding them as "insurgents" for DeVore, they enjoyed a rare moment of calm after months of campaigning for the Republican Senate candidate. Mullner, an artist and member of the West Covina Tea Partiers, set aside her work in January to hunt down volunteers and raise money as DeVore's "ambassador" for the cities along the 210 Freeway. Perez, a 31-year-old member of the Chino Hills Tea Party, served in that same...

Sarah Palin endorsed Carly Fiorina over Chuck DeVore in California, and Terry Branstad over Bob Vander Plaat in the Iowa governor's race. In doing so, she rebuffed standard "tea party" picks for candidates who were more mainstream. As usual, the mainstream media has found a way to criticize these choices. With a few surprising endorsements in recent Republican primaries, the self-styled rogue of GOP politics has reaped an angry response from some of her own supporters and a fresh round of speculation about her own presidential ambitions in 2012. ...Shelby Blakely, executive director of the Tea Party Patriots' online publication,...

Some of Sarah Palin’s riskiest endorsements scored major victories Tuesday for the former Alaska governor, showing off her power in Republican primaries. Palin had four primary endorsements in play – Carly Fiorina, Nikki Haley, Terry Branstad and Cecile Bledsoe – and three won or moved on to a runoff. Palin served different roles for each candidate – sometimes spotlighting conservatives not well known to the national scene while at others validating conservative credentials to an unsure grassroots and even stepping in to deflect nasty attacks. Perhaps Palin’s most powerful demonstration came in South Carolina, where her endorsement propelled a major...

Former EBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman and Former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina held early leads in the Republican races for governor and U.S. Senate respectively. With about 7% of the vote counted from around the state, Whitman is earning 65.6% of the Republican vote, compared to 25.3% for Steve Poizner. Fiorina has 59% of the early vote, leading former Congressman Tom Campbell and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine), who have 22% and 16% of the vote respectively. In other races, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, a Republican, and San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris, a Democrat, are leading...

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, the conservative Orange County Republican who began running for US Senate in November 2008, just conceded the race. Here's the prepared text of the concession speech of the man we liked to call Chuck D from the OC: My friends, I just completed my telephone call to Carly Fiorina, to congratulate her on her victory this evening. She is our party's nominee. I endorse her. I will support her. I will vote for her. And I call upon all of you to do the same in November. We traveled a long road to get here. When I...

<p>Will you take a minute today and call your friends and family to come out for Chuck? Tweet it out, Facebook it. Make it happen.</p> <p>If you're in California use this tool to get out the vote and find registered Republicans in your zip code.</p>

Chuck DeVore Speaks in Defense of Israel

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore is running last in the polls, but he figures there's a way he might actually eke out a victory in Tuesday's GOP Senate primary. "I think it all comes down to turnout," DeVore told reporters during a conference call this afternoon. And if turnout is low, as expected, DeVore said it could help him because his supporters are passionate. "Voter intensity is key,"

While Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, took the stage late into a pro-Israel rally held in front of the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles this afternoon, the candidate for the U.S. Senate made sure to give a louder and more fiery speech than those of the nearly two dozen people who came before him. Almost all of the speakers, which included Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., defended the actions of Israeli soldeirs who last week boarded a Turkish ship trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. The soldiers killed nine people aboard...

Andrew Riley, a 59-year-old carpenter from Roseville, plans to vote for former businesswoman Carly Fiorina in the GOP Senate primary on Tuesday. He says she's got a better chance than former Republican Rep. Tom Campbell of defeating Democrat Barbara Boxer this fall. "We need some people in there who are business-savvy," said Riley. "I'm thinking she's going to be picking up more momentum." In the closing days of the heated GOP Senate campaign, both candidates are making appeals that they're best suited to knock off Boxer, a three-term incumbent. But as rank-and-file Republican voters ready for the election, they appear...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- Chuck DeVore, candidate for the Republican nomination for United States Senate in California, issued this statement in response to Democratic attacks on Carly Fiorina over the past 48 hours: "I called upon Carly Fiorina once to explain how she'll defend her profound vulnerabilities in a general election. I now repeat that call. Republicans deserve to know how she would make the fight against Boxer about something other than herself: because right now, she is failing to do that. "Republicans in California have known structural disadvantages: the Democrats have more money, more registered voters, and more media...

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, the only Republican U.S. Senate candidate in the state who could afford a significant television advertising campaign, has opened up a 15-point lead over her nearest opponent just days before Tuesday's primary, according to a Field Poll released today. The first-time candidate, who campaigned up and down the state and was endorsed by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, has the support of 37 percent of voters compared with 22 percent for former South Bay Rep. Tom Campbell - who led Fiorina by six points in a Field Poll in March. Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, more...

WASHINGTON – Behind in the polls and the race for money, Senate GOP candidate Tom Campbell has dropped his plan to run network television ads statewide, an admission that the campaign is in dire financial shape as the campaign enters its final days. It's bad news for the former congressman and good news for Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard and the front-runner in the race. She led Campbell by 38 percent to 23 percent in the latest Los Angeles Times/USC poll. "We had a buy reserved through the end of the campaign, and we canceled," Jamie...

Carly Fiorina is up with a new TV ad in the California Senate race slamming Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) for "talking about the weather" (i.e. calling climate change a national security issue) when she should be talking about something really scary, like global terrorist plots to kill us all. Trouble is, Fiorina has often found herself talking about the "weather," and even expressing concerns about it while mad bombers were likely plotting our demise on foreign shores. Fiorina, in her new commercial: "Terrorism kills. And Barbara Boxer wants to talk about the weather...we've had enough of her politics. I'll work...

Got Ovaries? Vote for DeVore Let’s chat about the race for the U.S. Senate Republican primary, shall we? Let’s talk sex and conservatives. As a woman, I am told I should fall in line and vote for Carly Fiorina. We girls should stick together, right? Ms. Fiorina herself said that women should vote for her because she’s not a “white man” like her conservative opponent, Chuck DeVore. "With all due respect and deep affection for white men, I am married to one," Fiorina said at a breakfast at Americans for Tax Reform, according to The Hill. "But [Barbara Boxer] knows...

The unabashedly liberal candidate Tom Campbell has pulled his video ads. Presumably he was unable to get his money back from the robo-callers so don't be surprised if you get a call or two from his campaign this last week of the campaign. His website will remain up as well. Other than that it's bye-bye to Tom. This presents both an opportunity and a question for the Chuck DeVore campaign. The opportunity for Chuck DeVore is Carly Fiorina no longer has liberal Tom Campbell to position herself as a Conservative against. Standing next to Tom, just about anyone looks like...

GOProud has endorsed former HP CEO Carly Fiorina in her battle to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer. Via press release: Today, GOProud, the only national organization representing gay conservatives and their allies, endorsed Carly Fiorina for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in California. “Carly Fiorina is the candidate conservatives can trust,” said Jimmy LaSalvia, Executive Director of GOProud.

Having attended a speech of Nikki Haley’s in Atlanta last year, her run for Governor of South Carolina is one I’ve followed. Living here, I’ve also watched the California Senate race. Both situations seemed to be stable: Haley was stuck in fourth, while in California Tom Campbell was staying ahead of second place Carly Fiorina. Then Sarah Palin intervened, and both Haley and Fiorina shot into first place in new polls. Now we have confirmation of both events. Sarah Palin carries respect in the Republican Party. Public Policy Polling checked both primaries. In South Carolina, they show Haley running away...

When Carly Fiorina launched her campaign for U.S. Senate late last year, she wanted little to do with Sarah Palin. "I've never met her," Fiorina replied when asked about the former Alaska governor's leadership skills. "Next question." And Meg Whitman, the front-running GOP candidate for California governor, probably wasn't planning to ask Dick Cheney or Newt Gingrich to endorse her when she launched her ubiquitous ad campaign last fall. But as the races for governor and senator go down to the wire before the June 8 primary, big name Republicans are jumping into the fray with endorsements — 11th-hour nods...

Capitulating to his dwindling campaign treasury, Republican Senate candidate Tom Campbell pulled his television advertising Tuesday and in the closing days of the primary race will rely on Internet appeals and telephone calls to make his case to GOP voters. The move creates an enormous hurdle for the former congressman at a time when his chief rival, Carly Fiorina, has loaned several million dollars to her campaign and, on the strength of a generous round of TV ads, has shot ahead in what was once a close contest to replace Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. Fiorina, the former head of Hewlett-Packard...

n the wake of Chip Hanlon's post about Carly Fiorina arguing in 2000 for passage of Prop. 26 -- which would have lowered the threshold for passing local school bonds from a two-thirds to a simple majority, and which lost 51.3% to 48.7% -- the Fiorina campaign sent us this response from spokeswoman Julie Soderlund: “Carly has said many times before that she’s going to run on her record, not away from it. Back in 2000, along with figures like Pete Wilson, she saw merit in enabling localities to vote for school construction bonds and only school construction bonds, in...

Now Carly Fiorina tells us that she regards Jesse Jackson with reverence, and she actually worked with Jesse Jackson. And how many millions of dollars did she authorize for Jesse Jackson when she was CEO at Hewlett-Packard? (Hint: at least $15 million) Yet, minority business leaders themselves have been at the forefront of exposing that Jackson took the money and ran, focusing more on shaking down American corporations to finance his Rainbow Coalition/Operation PUSH gambits than actually to help African Americans, Latinos, and others gain access to meaningful employment in the high-tech community. California Republicans have to consider whether the...

Global warming fairy tale believer.

March 10, 2010: Carly Fiorina, a Republican candidate for Senate in California, says cap and trade legislation "take already painful jobless numbers and make them dramatically worse."

Conservative Radio Talk Show Host, Mark Levin, issued a clarion call to conservatives:  don't sell out conservative candidates for moderates who don't stand on principle.  He also points out that it is CONSERVATIVE candidates, and not appeasers or moderates, who win elections.This is one of the most inspiring messages for conservatives that has been made in the 2010 election cycle and is worth a few moments of your time to listen to - CLICK HERE TO LISTEN.

http://www.news10.net/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=82411&catid=2

Rand Paul appears to have weathered the political storm he stirred up in Kentucky, and Carly Fiorina has gained a solid lead over Tom Campbell in the California GOP primary fight. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul addresses a luncheon meeting of the Lions Club in Bowling Green, Ky., Tuesday, May 25, 2010. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke) In Kentucky’s Senate race, a Courier-Journal and WHAS11 Bluegrass Poll shows Paul, a first-time candidate and son of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, with a modest lead over Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway a week after his remarks raising questions about part of the 1964...

Whitman Expands Primary Lead; Fiorina Pulls Out From The Pack In the governor's race Whitman is 24 points ahead of Steve Poizner but 6 points behind Jerry Brown. GOP Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina has clear lead but moderate Tom Campbell fared best against Sen. Barbara Boxer. A recent L.A. Times/USC poll found that more people knew of Meg Whitman in May than in March, yet her favorability rating has stalled with less than a third of voters saying they think well of her. Cathleen Decker May 29, 2010 After plummeting in recent polls, Republican Meg Whitman has regained her commanding...

o anti-establishment outlet for California GOP voters' anger By Rob Hotakainen rhotakainen@mcclatchydc.com Published: Saturday, May. 29, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 1A WASHINGTON – Angry at politicians and deeply disillusioned about the future, California's GOP voters are clearly in an anti-establishment mood. But they will have little chance to express it in the June 8 election, experts say. "The sentiment is genuine, but it doesn't have an obvious outlet," said Jack Pitney, political science professor at Claremont-McKenna College. Despite their claims to the contrary, the candidates seeking to become governor or senator are all political or corporate insiders. In...

The conversation eventually became quite heated, going from Fiorina's defense of Prop. 26 on the merits -- it had bipartisan support from Republican former Gov. Pete Wilson and the business community, and was narrowly tailored towards the cause of school construction -- to Fiorina ripping on DeVore's third-place position in the polls. "I'm sure it's very frustrating for Chuck DeVore to have so many conservatives supporting me," said Fiorina. "But I wonder why, maybe it makes him feel better, maybe it makes Chuck DeVore, who is dog-paddling at 14% in the polls, maybe it makes him feel better to belittle...

Carly Fiorina’s dramatic exit from Hewlett-Packard in 2005 was covered extensively by the media, and the former chief executive offered her side of the story in her memoirs. But as she campaigns for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination against two rivals, some voters say they are still trying to sort out what happened and how they feel about her dismissal. One of them -- Craig Covello of Folsom -- took his chance to question her Wednesday night before an audience of several hundred people who gathered for a forum sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots of El Dorado Hills. "Since...

In case you were wondering whether last night’s hotly debated Survey USA numbers were outliers, wonder no longer. It’s hard to build name recognition in a state as big and expensive as California, and Fiorina is the only one of the Senate candidates who’s known to more than half of Republican primary voters. 46% have a favorable opinion of her to 17% with a negative one and 37% having no opinion. By comparison 54% of voters have no opinion about Campbell to 28% with a positive one and 19% with an unfavorable one, and DeVore is even less well known...

California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina said Tuesday she did not vote for former Rep. Tom Campbell in his 2000 Senate race against Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, an assertion her opponents seized on to question her loyalty to the GOP. Fiorina's comments came during a contentious portion of a radio debate where the three GOP candidates vying to challenge Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer posed questions to each other. After Fiorina said she didn't vote for Campbell in a contest he lost by more than 2 million votes, she quickly added, "I didn't vote for Dianne Feinstein either." Conservative state Assemblyman Chuck...

So, in 2000, a Prop 26 was on the ballot. What did it do? It was an attempt by Prop 13 opponents to undermine that 2/3 majority protection-- in the name of the children, of course! Well, voters solidly rejected this end-run on Prop 13, but one GOP Senate candidate supported it whole-heartedly: Carly Fiorina. Forget what I wrote on Friday. The silver lining about Tom Campbell's apparent collapse in the polls is this: conservatives may not have to make a "who do I think can win?' judgement between Fiorina and DeVore

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- DeVore for California is privileged to announced that former Congressman Duncan Hunter, Sr., has endorsed Chuck DeVore for United States Senate in the California Republican primary. Former Congressman Hunter has a distinguished record in our nation's service. He served in Vietnam from 1970 to 1971 as an officer in the U.S. Army's 75th Ranger Regiment. In 1980, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as part of the "Reagan Revolution." In the course of a distinguished 28-year career in Congress, he established himself as a leading conservative voice on national security and foreign affairs....

California's three GOP Senate candidates found some common ground today. All three said they want to get tough on illegal immigration. All three said they oppose government bailouts of failed companies. And all three said they oppose tax increases. Former Rep. Tom Campbell, former businesswoman Carly Fiorina and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore met in their third and largely uneventful debate on the "John & Ken" show, a Los Angeles radio talk show. Among their pitches: DeVore said companies should be allowed to go bankrupt before receiving taxpayer help. "You have to let capitalism work," . . .