Opinion

As campaign communications director for City Councilman Michael Wood in the 1993 Los Angeles mayor’s race, I witnessed firsthand how racial stereotypes and innuendo are used to damage the candidacy and unfairly impugn the integrity of a minority candidate. And as Mayor James Hahn gets more desperate in his campaign against City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa,…

Will there be a “Governator II?” Meaning, of course, will the Terminator sign up for a sequel as governor of California? For his part, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he’s so busy reforming California he can’t even possibly think about a second term right now. And if you’re a California Republican, you certainly don’t want to…

Remember when our grade school crossing guards used to say, “The lines are your friends”? Well, that could also apply to members of the Legislature and the California congressional delegation. After every decennial census, the Legislature is required to redraw the boundaries of all legislative and congressional districts to take population growth and shifts into…

In the current campaign, much has been made of some eerie comparisons between George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st president of the United States, president of the United States, and his (partly) eponymous offspring, George W. Bush, the 43rd. Each launched a war against Iraq and each considers himself liberator of a Middle Eastern domain…

Remember how we all used to snicker when Politburo elections in the old Soviet Union regularly returned margins of 99.9 percent for the victors? Well, now have a laugh at our own expense: The current elections for the Legislature and Congress in California are barely more competitive. In 2001, the Legislature adopted and the governor…

President Bush recently created a furor by using images of 9/11 victims being removed from the World Trade Center in his first flight of reelection campaign commercials. Perhaps understandably and predictably, many survivors and relatives of those killed called it an inappropriate expropriation of tragedy for political purposes. Although I respect the strongly held feelings…

Appearing recently on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger boldly predicted that President George W. Bush will carry California in November. If he truly believes that, he must be smoking more than just his trademark stogies. First, there is the little matter of Bush’s sorry showing in 2000. He and his GOP apparatus spent…

This just in: Despite Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election, the California Republican Party remains a Good Ol’ Boys’ Club. And Arnold himself has joined the fraternity. Recently, the new governor endorsed his first statewide candidate — former Secretary of State Bill Jones for the GOP nomination to face Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer. In doing so,…

At first, you may think it presumptuous of me to offer advice on your upcoming State of the State address. But I have helped governors in two states with their annual reports to the people, and had a ringside seat during the term of your Democratic predecessor, who learned a few hard lessons along the…

In a particularly inauspicious moment early in his first year in office, Gov. Gray Davis let loose at an editorial board meeting with the notion that the Democratically controlled Legislature’s “job” was to “implement my vision.” This unfortunate remark set off a predictable orgy of opprobrium — some of it involving obvious questions about Davis’s…