In case any California voters want recommendations for today's voting on statewide offices and propositions, here are mine. With one exception, they match the ones that wu ming posted last night. (To see where and why we differ, you have to read to the end.)
Prop 14: NO
Prop 15: YES
Prop 16: NOOOOO
Prop 17: NOOOOO
Attorney General: Kamala Harris (it's between her and Facebook's Chris Kelly)
Insurance Comm'r: Dave Jones
Superintendent for Public Instruction: Tom Torlakson
Lieutenant Governor: Janice Hahn
Reasons and rationales offered below.
Reasons and rationales (links are to longer discussions):
Propositions
Prop 14: Anti-progressive, will suck money away from national races, allows a party to game the system by putting forward only two candidates where candidates from the other party may split the vote.
Prop 15: Good, common-sense, campaign finance reform. Republicans hate it.
Prop 16: PG&E spends consumers' money trying to eliminate competition from cities wanting clean energy.
Prop 17: Mercury Insurance wants to make it easier to offer better rates to people who can afford insurance while not having to offer those rates to less wealthy drivers.
Attorney General: I like Nava and Lieu and Torrico, but I like Kamala Harris just as well and she's the only one who can beat the free-spending, non-progressive, underqualified former Facebook privacy czar Chris Kelly. We need to rally behind Harris. Look at the poll from my linked diary; those other votes are useless.
Insurance Commissioner: Dave Jones's legislative record on consumer issues is superb. He's been preparing for this position for years. Hector de la Torre is a nice guy, but he gives the impression that he's running for this position because he looked down the list of statewide offices and thought this would be the easiest race. His pitch is that the Insurance Companies treated him badly once. Jones is far better on substance.
Superintendent for Public Instruction: Tom Torlakson. See wu ming's discussion on this, linked above. Torlakson is progressive and has the support of unions and teachers. If Aceves has a progressive agenda, it hasn't been part of his pitch. Romero just seems to want to bust unions.
Lieutenant Governor: Here is where wu ming and I disagree. I prefer Janice Hahn to Gavin Newsom. First, she's part of the Hahn family, and that usually means good news. Second, because I'm not living in San Francisco, I don't feel the need to get Newsom the hell out of the Mayor's office, as many seem to want. Third, and most importantly, this is a vote for all of the people who will be running against Newsom in the years to come. Newsom is avariciously ambitious. If elected, he will just spend his time plotting his ascension to Governor, brokering deals, collecting chits, etc. Well, I can think of a dozen names I would rather see as our nominee for Governor in 2014 (if Brown loses) or 2018 (if he wins) or 2022 and beyond. We have an amazing Secretary of State, Debra Bowen; a strong Controller, John Chiang; Dave Jones, Kamala Harris, and Tom Torlakson, discussed above; and many state legislators to boot. These are progressives who do their jobs. Why put Newsom in a position to beat them in a primary? I'd rather he stayed out of statewide office, where he'd just get in the way of the excellent people we can nominate in future years who may just not be able to match him in terms of fundraising.
Those are my recommendations for today; the comments are open to yours.