elections

EXCLUSIVE: California Globe Interview With President Donald Trump, Part 2

May 19, 2022 By Katy Grimes Leave a Comment

The California Globe had the opportunity to meet with Former United States President Donald Trump Friday in Los Angeles in a one-on-one interview, while he was in the state on business. We discussed the state of the State of California. As expected, President Trump had plenty to say about the politics of our unique state.

This is Part 2 of the series; Here is Part 1.

“The one thing with me is I have a big voice,” President Donald Trump said as we discussed whether or not California’s elections can be cleaned up. “Because nobody ever writes this story – I haven’t seen this story,” he added.

“California is totally corrupt,” the 45th President told the Globe. “And frankly it has to be when you send out 20 million ballots. It has to be.”

Trump continued: “And many people got two, three four or five ballots! I’ve seen this on television. And people say to me ‘I got five ballots.’”

“It’s a disgrace.”

“What the Republicans do is allow it to happen without a fuss,” President Trump said. “The Democrats would go crazy” if they were on the receiving end of mailed ballots, ballot harvesting, and funny business with elections.

“See, I don’t believe the Democrats are a 50/50 Party. I think they cheat on all elections,” Trump added. “Because when you have ‘defund the police,’ sanctuary cities, open borders, all of the drugs you want, no God, no guns, I don’t believe that is a 50/50 Party. I think Democrats cheat in elections, and the Republicans are just as guilty because they let them.”

“Look at Pennsylvania – the Republicans allow them to cheat by being weak,” Trump said. “But I don’t believe they are a 50/50 Party because of all of the things they stand for so strongly – ‘defund the police,’ sanctuary cities, open borders.”

“Look at now – look at inflation,” he said. “We had no inflation. We had it down to a perfect science. We had no inflation and we had low interest rates.”

“I mean this guy [President Joe Biden] is going to be the next Herbert Hoover. Or worse,” President Trump said.

Under President Herbert Hoover, the 31st president (1929-1933), elected on the eve of the Great Depression, the top tax rate was hiked from 25% to 63%. “Perhaps his single greatest policy blunder was supporting and signing into law a tariff act that fueled international trade wars and made the Depression even worse,” USNews reported.

“He could be a combination of Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter,” Trump continued. “Jimmy Carter was almost Herbert Hoover.”

Under President Jimmy Carter, the 39th President (1976-1980) inflation rose from 7% in 1977 by an average of more than 11% in 1979, up to nearly 14% in 1980. “Automobile prices increased 72%. New house prices went up 67%. In 1979 alone, gasoline prices increased 60%. By the time Carter left office, the prime rate was 21.5%, Human Events reported. Gas prices skyrocketed to (inflation-adjusted price) $4.14, which made it the 5th most expensive year in an 85-year span.

“Whereas we had the strongest economy in the history of the world,” President Trump said. “We created the strongest economy in history. There was never an economy like this.”

Click here to read the full article in the California Globe

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Politics, Donald Trump, elections

Woman Finds Box of Mail-in Ballots on East Hollywood Sidewalk; LA County Registrar Investigating

May 12, 2022 By Koko McAboy 4 Comments

The Los Angeles County Registrar’s Office and the United States Postal Service are investigating after 104 ballots were found unopened on the sidewalk in East Hollywood.

The ballots were found by Christina Repaci, who was walking her dog Saturday evening.

“I turned the corner and I just saw this box of envelopes, and it was a USPS box. I picked some envelopes up and I saw they were ballots,” said Repaci.

Repaci said she took them home for safekeeping while trying to figure out what to do next. She sent videos of the ballots to popular social media accounts to share the content and ask for guidance on next steps. Repaci said she called several politicians and the LA County Sheriff’s Department.

“I actually called the Sheriff’s Department. I couldn’t get through, so I emailed them,” she said. “I got an email back from a deputy basically in so many words saying it wasn’t their problem, and to contact the USPS.”

Repaci said after much back and forth, the LA County Registrar’s Office got in contact with her about picking up the ballots. Registrar Dean Logan personally drove to pick up the ballots.

“He (Logan) picked them up. I made sure he was legit. He gave me a card, and took a photo of the box,” she said.

Repaci described the process as “stressful.”

“It was so much stress and for just one person to get back to me. What do I do here? Now if it happens to someone else, they don’t know what to do. They’ll just put them in a dumpster or throw them in the trash. I just don’t think it should have been this hard to figure out what to do with legal ballots. This is a country of freedom and our votes should matter and something like this should never happen,” said Repaci.

The LA County Registrar’s Office released a statement:

“Our office was notified over the weekend of a mail tray found containing approximately 104 unopened, outbound Vote by Mail ballots and additional mail pieces. Thanks to the cooperation of the person who found the ballots, we were able to quickly respond and coordinate the secure pickup of the ballots. We have reissued new ballots to the impacted voters. Early signs indicate that this was an incident of mail theft and not a directed attempt at disrupting the election. We are cooperating with the United States Postal Service and law enforcement to investigate.

Click here to read the full article at FoxNews

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: ballots, California Politics, elections

DNC Seeks to Boost California Election Outreach

May 2, 2022 By Gillian Brassil 2 Comments

The Democratic National Committee is giving California and at least five other states grants to organize voter outreach ahead of this year’s elections.

The 2022 elections will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the United States House of Representatives in 2023. Many experts are predicting a “red wave” this fall that will hand the chamber to Republicans.

The party of the president, now a Democrat, historically falters in midterm elections for Congress. Adding to Democrats’ worries are President Joe Biden’s declining approval rating for his handling of inflation and pandemic policy and the fact that a large number of Democrats are retiring.

The state-level Democratic Parties of California, Texas, Florida, Minnesota, Maryland and Wyoming will get DNC grants — some, like California, will get money to hire organizing directors, a spokesperson for the DNC told The Sacramento Bee. The directors are meant to recruit and funnel volunteers working on voter outreach into targeted districts across the state for local and national elections.

“The DNC is proud to make these latest investments in the California Democratic Party to expand organizing and voter outreach efforts on the ground,” DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison said in a statement sent to The Bee. “The California Democratic Party has built an impressive coordinated effort to keep Democrats in office, and the DNC is committed to continue helping build upon that work to ensure California Democrats win up and down the ballot this November and beyond.”

The DNC announcement comes weeks before California’s primaries on June 7, 2022.

The last time the California Democratic Party received such a grant was in 2018, another midterm election.

Other states will benefit from such a grant in future roll-outs, the spokesperson said.

Prominent election-tracking organizations have re-rated some House races nationwide. For the most part, mostly, they boosted Republicans’ odds in California.

Though experts said redistricting, the once-a-decade process of redrawing legislative boundaries, favored Democrats in California, Republicans could hold onto the same number of districts that they have now. California lost a seat in Congress due to sluggish population growth, dropping its House delegation to 52 representatives. The lost seat is Democratic, surrounding Los Angeles.

California has 10 Republicans in the House. It would be 11, but former Congressman Devin Nunes resigned to lead former President Donald Trump’s social media company.

The House is currently divided by 221 Democrats and 209 Republicans, with five vacancies. Four vacant seats were held by Republicans. With a 222 to 213 split, Republicans need to win just five more seats in 2022 to take the majority.

Click here to read the full article at the Sacramento Bee

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: Democrats, DNC, elections

The Diminishing Value Of A Trump Endorsement

March 24, 2022 By Mark Z. Barabak 14 Comments

Running for governor as a disciple of Donald Trump, Janice McGeachin has done almost everything short of surgically attach herself to the former president.

It’s not just that Trump is omnipresent in her advertising, or that McGeachin mimics his flame-throwing rhetoric. She’s also modeled Trump’s flamboyantly defiant behavior, challenging Gov. Brad Little, a fellow Republican, in the upcoming primary and, as lieutenant governor, acting to overturn his policies when he left Idaho.

The reward for McGeachin’s performance is Trump’s “Complete and Total Endorsement,” which followed her pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago and makes Little one of only two Republican governors in the country seeking reelection to be openly opposed by the ex-president.

Not that the endorsement — make that Total Endorsement— seems to be doing much good. Less than two months before the May 17 primary, McGeachin (pronounced Mick-GHEE-hin) is fighting for credibility and traction in a race that polls show her losing badly.

She is not alone in facing those difficult straits.

Trump coaxed former Georgia Sen. David Perdue into the Republican primary against Brian Kemp after the governor committed the heresy of refusing to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state. But Perdue is also struggling ahead of the May 24 GOP primary, as are candidates Trump endorsed in Senate primaries in North Carolina and Alabama.

All of which suggests Trump’s sway over Republican voters — and, by extension, the Republican Party — is diminishing the further he gets from the White House.

“A president’s endorsement is going to carry more weight than an ex-president’s endorsement,” said Q. Whitfield Ayres, a GOP strategist with extensive experience in congressional and gubernatorial races nationwide. “Especially an ex-president without access to Twitter and social media.”

Polls reflect the waning of Trump’s influence.

A January survey by NBC News found that more than half — 56% — of Republicans interviewed described themselves as more supportive of the GOP than of Trump personally, while 36% saw themselves as more supportive of Trump than of the Republican Party.

That’s a near-total reversal from 2020, when 54% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they considered themselves more supportive of Trump than of the party, and 38% were more supportive of the GOP than of Trump.

In a separate measure, a Quinnipiac Poll last month showed, by a 52%-36% margin, Republicans sided with Mike Pence over Trump on the question of whether the former vice president could have overturned the 2020 presidential election, as Trump urged.

Of course, much could change before Republicans vote in May. But if Idaho — a state Trump won by nearly 2-to-1 over Joe Biden — is any indication, it will take more than a blessing from the former president to boost his preferred candidates into office.

Issues matter and so, most especially, does the quality of each candidate.

Little, 68, an affable third-generation rancher and former head of the Idaho Assn. of Commerce and Industry, is a living embodiment of the business-oriented pragmatic conservatism that has long held sway here.

As governor, he’s cut taxes and regulations and kept a light hand during the COVID-19 pandemic, which allowed businesses to stay open during the worst outbreaks but pitched the healthcare system into crisis for several months.

His reelection strategy essentially amounts to doing his job and ignoring McGeachin.

On Tuesday, Little appeared in the governor’s ceremonial office — marble columns, gold drapery, big Western oil paintings — to announce “a new online, one-stop shop” to find public meeting information for the state’s executive branch agencies. Standing before a bank of cameras, Little also worked in a lighthearted reference to his aggressive deregulation efforts, saying anyone who didn’t know his record was “living on a foreign planet.”

For her part, McGeachin, 59, was a mainstream conservative during a decade in the Legislature before transforming herself — like many seeking opportunity and advancement in the Trump era — into an acolyte of the man she calls “the greatest president of our lifetime.”

Her campaign has consisted largely of attention-seeking stunts, with COVID-19 the wedge she’s used to break from Little. (The two were elected separately, not as running mates.)

On two occasions when the governor left the state, McGeachin used her temporary authority to issue executive orders prohibiting localities from enforcing mask mandates and testing and vaccine requirements. Little immediately reversed her actions and secured an opinion from the state attorney general limiting McGeachin’s powers in his absence.

The governor, for good measure, also stopped telling the lieutenant governor his travel plans.

Lately, McGeachin’s candidacy has further degenerated.

Click here to read the full article at the LA Times

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Donald Trump, elections, Republican

Harris’ Home-State Problem

February 25, 2022 By Mark Z. Barabak 7 Comments

Low polling partly reflects California’s impersonal politics

In Montana, they describe the state as one small town with a very long main street.

People know their politicians on a first-name basis, and if they’re not necessarily considered a friend, they at least have the familiarity of a neighbor.

California might be described as a collection of various states, with no single thruway.

It’s possible to spend a lifetime within its borders and never come remotely close to one of California’s elected statewide leaders, who are most often seen as strangers, or known by whatever image of them shows up on television.

Which helps explain why Vice President Kamala Harris faces such dismal approval ratings among her fellow Californians.

“Voters don’t know her that well,” said Katie Merrill, a longtime Democratic strategist.

And that’s after four statewide elections.

What they do know is largely refracted through the negative publicity Harris has faced as a result of her travails in the White House — less-than-sure-footed appearances, an onerous portfolio — and her failed 2020 run for president.

It’s not a great look and has done nothing to ease the doubts voters had even before California’s junior U.S. senator assumed the vice presidency.

A recent poll conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times found just 38% of the state’s voters approved of Harris’ performance as vice president, while 46% disapproved. That’s a sharp drop from last summer and, not surprisingly, tracks a similar decline in President Biden’s standing.

As Merrill pointed out, “The vice president’s ratings are almost always tied to the president’s ratings. [Biden] is struggling right now, so it makes sense that Kamala Harris, as vice president, would also be suffering.”

It’s also typical for a vice president’s approval ratings to lag those of the president. The job, which consists of doing whatever the chief executive wants and never, ever overshadowing him, is inherently subservient and diminishing. That’s true whether the vice president is male, female, white, Black or Asian American.

What may be surprising — at least superficially — is the fact that Harris isn’t doing better among those who presumably have a rooting interest in her success, her fellow Californians. Home-state pride and all that.

But as Harris learned during her ill-fated White House bid, there is no such thing as a favorite son or daughter in California politics.

Not long before she quit the 2020 contest, polls showed Harris running a distant fourth among Democratic hopefuls, with support from fewer than 1 in 10 of her fellow Californians. It wasn’t just Harris; former Gov. Jerry Brown lost the state in two of his three presidential runs.

That’s the nature of California politics.

People might come to blows rooting for the San Francisco Giants versus the Los Angeles Dodgers. But no one, outside of immediate family, paid staff and some political activists, develops that sort of devotion to, say, their governor or California’s two U.S. senators.

The state is physically huge, and with nearly 40 million residents, the only way to effectively campaign is through TV advertising and social media. That’s not like someone standing in your living room or dropping by your coffee shop to ask for your vote, and it doesn’t make for a very lasting or intimate connection.

Harris’ dismal approval rating among Republicans surveyed in the UC Berkeley poll — just 5% — was no surprise. Nor was her poor standing among voters without a party preference, with just 31% approving.

Click here to read the full article at the LA Times.com

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: elections, Harris

Changing California One Election At A Time Is a Goal We All Want To See

February 15, 2022 By Lou Barnett 5 Comments

Changing California one election at a time is a goal we all want to see.

But how?

“You owe it to your philosophy to study how to win.”

Morton C. Blackwell, Founder of the conservative Leadership Institute and the Virginia Republican National Committeeman

Founded in 1979 by Morton, a veteran of President Reagan’s Administration, LI provides training in campaigns, fundraising, grassroots organizing, youth politics, and communications. The Institute teaches conservatives of all ages how to succeed in politics, government, and the media.

And Campaign Leadership Training is coming to California but, first, how good is this?

Since 1979, LI has trained more than 200,000 conservative activists, leaders, and students. The Institute’s unique college campus network has grown to more than 1,700 conservative campus groups and newspapers.

While many liberal organizations exist to increase the involvement of liberal activists, few similar organizations exist to serve conservatives. Because conservatism tends to focus on the power of ideas, most conservative organizations are think tanks that focus on policy or legislation.

LI increases the number and effectiveness of conservative activists and leaders in the public policy process. The Institute doesn’t analyze policy; it teaches conservative Americans how to influence policy through direct participation, activism, and leadership.

Virtually all significant conservative organizations across America now employ Institute graduates.

Meet three of LI’s 200,000 trained conservative leaders who you probably already know:

Grover Norquist – Americans for Tax Reform

“ Without effective activists on the ground, policy reform faces tremendous uphill challenge. By far, the easiest way to change government is from the grassroots, and in order to drive that kind of change, conservatives must be effective in the trenches. The Leadership Institute makes that possible.”

Jim Jordan – US Rep OH

“ If you want to accomplish anything of significance, it’s never easy. It’s always hard. But we need to stand up. If there is not a strong United States of America, the world gets truly dangerous. Thank you LI for training young people in these values.

Kat Timpf – Fox News

“ As part of my job at the Leadership Institute’s Campus Reform, I received TV training that taught me the skills I needed to feel confident in my first few appearances — and then the feedback on those appearances that I needed to sharpen them. I hadn’t had any kind of formal TV training beforehand.”

Sign up for the LI Campaign School in Glendale, California, March 11, 12 and 13.

Ideal attendees are current and prospective candidates, campaign advisors and staff, volunteers, and activists interested in impacting public policy.

Attendees will learn how to:

Create a campaign plan
Inspire people to get involved and vote
Build a strong base of supporters
Raise funds
Target, identify and mobilize voters

Register Now

www.LeadershipInstitute.org/LosAngelesCA

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: elections, foxnews, jim jordan

GOP Holds Double-Digit Lead Among Independent Voters Ahead of 2022 Midterms: Poll

December 28, 2021 By Calle Patteson 1 Comment

A new poll indicates that self-described independent voters would prefer, by an 18 percentage-point margin, that Republicans regain control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.

The poll by John Zogby Strategies, released last week, found that 45 percent of independents want the GOP in charge of the House and Senate, compared to 27 percent who want Democrats to keep their majority. The remaining 28 percent said they were undecided.

The same survey found that Republicans held a three-point advantage, 46 percent to 43 percent, on the generic congressional ballot.

“In my four decades of polling, Democrats need about a five percentage-point advantage [in] nationwide congressional preference in order to maintain a majority of Congress,” pollster John Zogby said in a statement. “With a three-point Republican lead, and a substantial lead among independents, signs are pointing today to the possibility of a big Republican advantage going into 2022.”

A new poll indicates that self-described independent voters would prefer, by an 18 percentage-point margin, that Republicans regain control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.

The same survey found that Republicans held a three-point advantage, 46 percent to 43 percent, on the generic congressional ballot.

The same poll put President Biden’s approval rate at 46 percent, with 52 percent of respondents disapproving of his performance. While Biden’s approval number is higher than in some other recent polls, Zogby noted that 40 percent of respondents said they “strongly” disapproved of the president’s work.

Click here to read the full article at NYPost

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California Politics, elections, Republican

Court Approves Lying to Voters to Pass Bonds

December 7, 2021 By Jon Coupal 3 Comments

If ever voters needed a reason to vote no on every single bond measure that appears on the ballot, here it is: The Court of Appeal for Third Appellate District just ruled that, despite all the lies voters were told about California’s infamous High-Speed Rail project, taxpayers have no remedy, even though the project as it exists today bears no relation to what voters were told when they approved the $9.9 billion bond in 2008.

Californians were promised a super-fast train that would travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco in about two and a half hours; the ticket price would be about $50; the total cost of the high-speed rail would be about $40 billion; and there would be significant private-sector support –money from investors — to build the project.

Even before the 2008 vote, transportation experts were warning that the project would become a massive black hole into which California taxpayers would be committed to pouring hundreds of billions of dollars. In fact, a 2008 study sponsored by the Reason Foundation and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Foundation predicted that the promised total cost of $45 billion would quickly turn into $100 billion or more, stating that “There are no genuine financial projections that indicate there will be sufficient funds.” The only error in the study now appears that the dollar amount was too low.

The HSR project has been the target of multiple lawsuits, including a few that challenged the legality of the entire enterprise. But it now appears that the last legal roadblock to this continued wasting of taxpayer dollars has been removed. In Tos v. State of California, the court ruled that even though nothing the voters were promised in 2008 could possibly become true, the bonds could now be sold to finance the project.

There is a disturbing message here for all California voters and taxpayers. When it comes to bond measures, nothing that is promised in the law authorizing the bond is worth the paper it is written on. If a bond act states that voter approval will authorize the construction of a high school, don’t be surprised if the revenue is later used for a prison. While that may be an extreme example, it is not beyond the realm of possibility.

Even more disappointing is the fact that whenever a state or local government spends bond funds for a project that deviates in substantive ways from what was described in the ballot material presented to the voters, there will be no legal remedy. The voters’ only option to prevent this bait-and-switch is to adopt a policy of blanket rejection of all bond measures.

Click here to read the full article at the OC Register

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: elections, hi-speed rail, Voting

California Redistricting: Four Key Questions

December 4, 2021 By Sameea Kamal 1 Comment

California’s independent redistricting commission reaches a key milestone by releasing its preliminary congressional and legislative maps for public comment. But many changes are likely before final districts are adopted in late December for the 2022 election.

It took weeks of long, late-night meetings full of wonky debate and digital line drawing — as well as a haiku and at least two songs as public comment.

But on Nov. 10, California’s independent redistricting commission reached a key milestone: Its first official maps are out.

The citizen panel voted unanimously to release preliminary congressional, state Senate and state Assembly districts for public comment.

The commission’s work is far from done, however. It acknowledges that these preliminary maps are far from perfect, and that it will need the six weeks before its Dec. 27 court-ordered deadline to fix them before adopting final districts for the next decade, starting with the 2022 elections. On its schedule: At least four public input meetings starting Nov. 17, then 14 line-drawing sessions between Nov. 30 and Dec. 19.

“It’s messy. It’s very slow,” commissioner Linda Akutagawa said just before the Nov. 10 vote. “But I do believe that it is a process that has enabled as many people who seek to be engaged in this process to be engaged.”

The commission is working toward “final maps that will best reflect everybody,” added Akutagawa, a no party preference voter from Huntington Beach who is president and CEO of Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics.

Some key questions as the 14 commissioners start their next phase:

How much could the maps change?

A lot, commissioners concede.

While they’re required to follow a specific set of criteria, with equal population numbers being the highest priority, there are different ways to achieve those goals.

The draft maps that were approved Wednesday night are generally along the lines of the final round of “visualizations” that the commission worked on this week. They include reworked congressional districts in Northern California, the Central Valley and San Diego in response to public feedback.

For example, the progressive city of Davis was moved from a U.S. House district with politically conservative, rural areas in Northern California in earlier maps into a more urban, liberal district that includes parts of Yolo, Solano and Contra Costa counties.

To meet its self-imposed deadline so it could avoid meetings around Thanksgiving, the commission also put a pin in several areas that need further work, including congressional and legislative districts in Los Angeles.

Who are some early winners and losers?

The commission responded to concerns about earlier maps that combined two congressional districts represented by longtime African American representatives into one, and kept them separate in the latest maps. Commissioners were also able to keep the Hmong community united in congressional maps, and kept Native American tribes mostly united in Congressional and state Assembly maps.

The commission also addressed concerns from community members in Orange County’s Little Saigon by ensuring they were in the same state Senate district. San Joaquin County community leaders who wanted less divided districts are also likely happy with the draft maps.

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Meanwhile, voters in and near Tracy who were disappointed with being grouped into a congressional district with the Bay Area were relieved to see their city placed back with the Central Valley.

But other areas and advocacy groups are on the losing end so far.

Inyo and Mono counties, where officials asked to be kept together, were split in congressional and Senate districts, as was the city of Santa Clarita in Senate maps.

Advocates say that proposed state Assembly districts divide Asian Americans and Pacific Islander communities in San Francisco.

“Losers” also include voters in Sacramento County, which hasn’t been as vocal in the process and is in danger of being sliced into several congressional districts, according to Jeff Burdick, a political blogger and 2020 congressional candidate.

And the uncertainty surrounding the districts is making it difficult for candidates and campaigns to get going for the June primary, some political professionals told Politico.

Click here click to read the full article on CalMatters.org

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California, elections, politics, redistricting