The California Republican Party is holding its annual state convention this weekend in Los Angeles to celebrate unity and kick off their campaign for numerous statewide offices up for grabs this November. But rather than celebrating unity, Republican Gubernatorial nominee Neie Kashkari got kicked in the teeth not once, but twice, by Republican nominees for two statewide offices.
The drama first ensued on Friday evening when Fresno Mayor and Republican nominee for California State Controller Ashley Swearengin told reporters
she he was still mulling whether to vote for Kashkari or Brown. "I'm looking at the two candidates like other Californians are," she said.
Then, Pete Peterson, the Republican nominee running for California Secretary of State, said in another interview that he was not endorsing Kashkari either, or anyone else on the California statewide ballot and he wan not planning to vote a straight party ticket.
In the meantime, Republican nominee for California Lt. Governor Ron Nehring, a former state Republican chairman, was so appalled by the public display of disunity, he vented his fury in a profanity-tinged email to their party bosses, before midnight Friday, after news organizations began reporting the brawl:
"This does NOT help the party, and it distracts from the efforts made to convey a positive theme," Nehring wrote. "The coverage is not of a party expanding its reach. It's about a party that isn't unified because its candidates can't get it together and get on the same page."
Party leaders played down the disagreement. "A lot is being made out of a few tea leaves there," said state party vice chair Harmeet Dhillon.
Some might argue that it is smart politics for both Ashley Swearengin and Pete Peterson to distance themselves from the GOP in a state dominated by Democrats and I would agree with them. Clearly both campaigns are going after swing voters, but I think both candidates are aiming at Declined to State Voters in California. Sixty per cent of Declined to State voters are actually Democrats but they don't want to be labelled as a member of any political party so I suspect these two candidates may have some appeal to this group of voters.
Clearly, there are issues between Neel Kashkari and Ashley Swearengin:
Swearengin has rebuffed Kashkari's efforts to campaign together and broken with him on his signature issue, the bullet train that Brown wants to build between Los Angeles and San Francisco. She supports the project as an economic boost for the Central Valley; Kashkari calls it "the crazy train."
The friction is also partly personal: Kashkari irked Swearengin by not giving her advance warning that he was going to spend a week posing as a homeless man in Fresno in an effort to spotlight poverty and joblessness on Brown's watch.
And as far as Peterson is concerned, he may have the best shot ao any Republican running statewide this fall:
For his part, Peterson said he was declining to publicly back Kashkari because a secretary of state needs to run state elections in a nonpartisan fashion. He also suggested that Republicans should reclaim the progressive reform traditions of the Theodore Roosevelt era.
"I'm not running for a lifeboat," he said.
Clearly, Peterson has some great ideas about updating technology within the secretary of state's office to increase voter registration, etc., and as a Democrat, I totally support those efforts because any increase in the number of voters on the rolls, resulting in increased turnout on election day, will benefit the candidates I support. Unfortunately, no GOP candidate can be trusted to be put in charge of anything related to registering to vote of running our elections process, based on what GOP governors, state legislatures, and secretary of states have done within the last couple of years in stated like North Carolina, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Ohio.
But what diary would be complete about a GOP convention without mentioning the antics of the Tea Party. And yes, they were present in big numbers at the GOP convention. They were raising money charging $10-a-ticket to raffle off a shotgun - no surprise there.
In the meantime, Democratic nominee for Controller Betty Yee is working hard in this election. Yee is one of, if not the most progressive nominees the Democratic Party of California has nominated for statewide office in a generation and she has a great shot at winning this race. To learn more about Yee, please read here - and watch her speech to the Democratic convention, it's awesome:
http://bettyyee.com/
Please Like her on her Facebook page here:
https://www.facebook.com/...
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