The only thing I'm concerned about in CA is the Repugs redistricting ambitions ... and this doesn't help that Demsare falling by the way side.
California Politician's Rise Is Struck a Blow by Scandal
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/national/09shelley.html?oref=login
By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: January 9, 2005
OS ANGELES, Jan. 8 - Six months ago, Kevin Shelley, the California secretary of state, was generating national attention for his efforts to ensure the integrity of the voting process and was considered a promising candidate for governor or the Senate.
Now Mr. Shelley, from a well-known San Francisco Democratic family, finds his political career in tatters because of scandals involving fund-raising and the way he has spent tens of millions of dollars of federal election money to carry out the voting overhaul he trumpeted. He is facing investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a federal grand jury, a state personnel board, the California Legislature and the federal agency that provides money to states to upgrade voting systems.
Several California newspapers have called on Mr. Shelley to resign. A Democratic state senator has announced she will challenge him in 2006, and leaders of the state Democratic Party, while publicly supportive for now, quietly say they hope he will quit. His handling of the federal election money will be the subject of a hearing by a joint legislative committee on Monday, but it appeared that he would not be forced to testify.
Mr. Shelley's travails come as two other prominent California Democrats are under scrutiny. Don Perata, the top Democrat in the State Senate, and Mayor James K. Hahn of Los Angeles are facing investigations over charges of fund-raising abuses or political favoritism.
The wounding of several of the state's top Democrats gives Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger an opening to pursue his ambitious efforts to overhaul the state's pension system, its troubled prisons, its education financing formulas and the drawing of political districts, which the Democrats, who control both houses of the Legislature, have used to cement their control. The governor introduced these measures, all of which are likely to be opposed by Democrats and their union allies, in his state of the state address this week.
Elizabeth Garrett, director of the University of Southern California-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics, said that Mr. Shelley's once-promising political future now appeared bleak. And she said that because of his temper and undisguised ambition, he has few friends to rally around him.
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