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Posts Tagged ‘Janice Hahn’



Key Questions Emerge as Dem Party Confab Opens

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

As the Calbuzz National Affairs desk settled into our sky box high above the floor of the California Democratic Convention, our battalion of political correspondents buttonholed delegates, honored guests and party hacks alike to answer the 10 key questions looming over the weekend events:

1-Will Jerry Brown manage to stay awake for the Young Democrats party? With Brown’s unopposed stroll to the party’s nomination for governor sucking all drama from the proceedings, Crusty’s job this weekend is to energize the several thousand activists on hand, who are in a grumpy frame of mind because of Meg-a-Million’s fast start on the Republican side. The under-30 set, who weren’t born the last time Jerry was governor but whose enthusiasm will be important come November, are in particular need of wooing; alas they don’t start partying until 9 p.m. tonight, and the 72-year old Brown’s handlers must hope he hasn’t slipped into his jammies by then.

2-Can Dr. H avoid the paparazzi? The second annual Dr. P.J. Hackenflack Democratic Convention Dinner is scheduled for tonight at a hush-hush exclusive location, with a celebrity-packed A list roster of glittering guests. But in the land of TMZ, a fish as big as Dr. H will be hard-pressed to protect his privacy.

3-Will United States Senator Barbara Boxer Herself stalk out when some rude blogger calls her “Ma’am”? At last year’s convention, California’s junior senator looked like a mortal lock for re-election, but things seemed to start to unravel for her when she famously condescended to a top military officer at a committee hearing not long after. Now the episode has become a metaphor for Boxer’s arrogance and sense of entitlement after 18 years in office, amid the worst political atmosphere for arrogant, entitled incumbent Democrats in a generation.

4-Has Jerry improved his salsa steps? The headline act of the weekend is Los Lobos, which will be performing at the L.A. Convention Center on Saturday night. Political observers will be watching closely to see if Brown’s awkward moves have improved from the ’70s when he was kicking it with girlfriend Linda Ronstadt at Lucy’s El Adobe.

5-Will this be Nancy Pelosi’s last state convention as Speaker? Talking to the most liberal crowd outside of Cuba, Pelosi will no doubt be hozannaed to the heavens, if not nominated for sainthood, for her leadership in passing health care reform.  She should enjoy it while she can, since the legislation is viewed considerably less favorably by voters in the districts of dozens of Democratic members, whose defeats could trigger a Republican takeover of the House.

6-Will Mickey Kaus collect any items for his blog? Kaus, the Mr. Crankypants blogger who’s mounted a symbolic centrist challenge to Boxer, has been banned from speaking to the convention by Democratic Party Minister of Annoyance John Burton.  Mickey writes some of the smartest contrarianisms on the web, so hopefully he’ll at least pick up some stuff for his site.

7-How many times will the words “Goldman Sachs” be uttered from the podium? Even before theSEC’s legal move against the giant investment bank on Friday, Goldman Sachs was emerging as a leading villain of coming Democratic rip jobs on eMeg, whose seamy history as a board member challenged the limits of ethics, if not the law. Brown previewed the line of attack late Friday, when he combined a shot at Whitman’s Wall Street connections with her effort to buy the election: “The rules of democracy are not changed just because a billionaire decides she wants to be governor…You can’t have a hostile takeover of the democratic process.”

8-Will Gavin Newsom and Garry South make it pistols at 10 paces? Political consultant South has done some serious trash talking about Prince Gavin, who quit the campaign  for governor that South was running and now is running for Lieutenant Governor, against South’s new client, L.A. City Council member Janice Hahn. The pair got within a few feet of each other at a convention bash last night, but Gavin wouldn’t even look at Garry: “He’s conflict and confrontation averse,” said South.

9-Will anybody top the spread put on by the CCPOA? The California Correctional Peace Officers Association– thank you Michael Flores —  set a high bar with their Friday cocktail party reception honoring Speaker John Perez: salmon-caviar canapés, satay chicken, crab cake balls, fresh shrimp, pot stickers, egg rolls and an open bar. Today’s “Taco Truck Throwdown,” presented by Perez and Senate leader Darrell Steinberg could mount a serious challenge. Rest  assured Calbuzz will be there to do some Actual Reporting.

10-Will live blogging drive traffic or drive away traffic? Calbuzz will be indefatigably bringing every minute of non-stop action from the podium, assuming we get up in time.

P.S. Late Friday Calbuzz stumbled onto an oddity: Newsom’s reception — sponsored and approved by labor unions — was catered by non-union restaurateur Wolfgang Puck.  At first, Calbuzz thought this might have been a bonehead,  rookie mistake at the all-union-all-the-time Demo convention. But it turns out steady hand Cal Strat consultant Jason Kinney, who worked his butt off to organize the event, got the whole deal sanctioned by all the key state and local labor groups. And in fact, the sponsors of the event included the teachers, nurses, faculty and farm workers unions.  On your behalf, Calbuzz tested the martinis and the chocolate at Newsom rival Janice Hahn’s and found them far superior to Puck’s potato chip, red licorice and crudite spread. But, Newsom’s event at the Target Terrace above the Grammy Museum had live entertainment with Lisa Loeb, Benji Madden and Steven Weber while Hahn just had a boom box.

Hahn: Newsom Don’t Know Much About Lite Gov

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Democrat Janice Hahn’s lieutenant governor campaign this morning has dropped a 55-second web video on Gavin Newsom’s head that’s pretty darn funny. If you like Sam Cooke and you’re not Newsom, who is  considering jumping into the gov lite race now that he crapped out of the heavy gov race, that is.

The intro on Hahn’s web site says: “There’s been a lot of talk lately about whether or not Gavin Newsom is going to get into the Lt. Governor’s race. So, we made a quick must-see video about what Gavin doesn’t know about being Lt. Governor.” Here at Calbuzz, we make no judgment about Prince Gavin’s worthiness to be lieutenant governor. We just like a good goof. Maybe  Hahn consultant Garry South  (formerly Newsom’s)  can call it  “Whether You Like It Or Not, Part II.”

Gavin’$ Problem; M&R and the Politics of Outing

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Calbuzz has assiduously avoided writing about the race for (and machinations around) the office of Lieutenant Governor because we think  a) it’s a stupid statewide post that b) nobody cares about.

But while chatting with consultant Garry South about something else altogether, he mentioned that our old pal (and his former client) Prince Gavin Newsom of San Francisco could have some trouble if he decides to jump into the Gov Lite race.

South, a serious student of fund-raising rules in California, argued that under Fair Political Practices Commission regulations, as amended in 2000 by Prop. 34, Newsom’s major donors from the governor’s race – those who gave him anything more than the $6,500 limit in the LG’s race – cannot be tapped for more cash.

“They can’t give him another dime,” South insisted. “They’re maxed out.”

Of course, South is conflicted on this issue, since he’s now working for Lite Gov candidate Janice Hahn of the L.A. City Council, who, until Newsom started nosing around in the race, appeared to be facing only Kern County state Sen. Dean Florez for the Democratic nomination.

This isn’t about transferring money from one account to another, which Jerry Brown can do – making it possible for him to go back to the same people who gave him $6,500 for Attorney General and ask them for the difference up to $25,900, the maximum for a governor’s race.

We don’t recall a situation in California in which a candidate wipes out a governor’s campaign account and then wants trade down to another statewide office.

But Newsom friend and (for now) unpaid adviser Jason Kinney (South’s old ally and partner at California Strategies), says the Prince’s people have consulted with two different campaign law attorneys and have been told that Newsom can indeed go back to those maxed-out donors and get cash for a lite gov run – if he decides to file.

And Roman Porter, executive director of the FPPC, told Calbuzz he agrees with Kinney Newsom et al. The limits, he said, apply “per candidate, per election – it’s a separate election.” (BTW, Porter was actually at the hospital where his wife was in labor when he came to the phone to offer his perspective – way above and beyond the call of duty.)

Now, we’re not lawyers (we just pay them). But when we read the law (including the definition of a candidate) and when we think about it, South’s got a point. When you strip away all the parenthetical and qualifying clauses and update the dollar amounts the law says: Except a candidate for governor, a candidate for statewide elective office may not accept from a person any contribution totaling more than $6,500 per election.

 

If the law is designed to limit influence by a donor, why would it allow the donor to buy $25,900 in Gavin Newsom for Governor and then, when that collapses, another $6,500 in Gavin Newsom for Lieutenant Governor?

On the other hand, you can see why South would want to wipe out that $3 million funder base that Newsom tapped in his aborted governor’s campaign.

Injunction to follow.

In & out burger: Chroniclers Phil Matier and Andy Ross, the Butch and Sundance of California political reporters, fearlessly jumped off a journalistic cliff Sunday Feb. 7, when they identified as gay the federal judge now presiding over the volatile Prop. 8 case — Vaughn Walker.

A case study pitting an individual’s right to privacy versus the public’s right to know, the uncharacteristically nuanced M&R column stirred upset and concern in several quarters  – including their own newsroom. By outing Walker with their hetero-normative insensitivity, the argument went, the boys not only created an irrelevant distraction in the middle of the trial, but also handed gay marriage foes a handy argument to discount any trial rulings, or eventual decision, that undercut Prop. 8.

“What’s next?” one denizen of Fifth & Mission bitterly complained, “Tailing him to a bar? Peeking at his magazine subscriptions or his Netflix account?”

The thoughtful Brian Leubitz, who blogs about the trial at the Courage Campaign’s excellent Prop 8 Trial Tracker , argued the case against publicly disclosing Walker’s sexual orientation by raising this comparison:

So, did anybody comment about Justice Alito’s gender when he wrote the outrageous opinion in Ledbetter v Goodyear Tire that said that under the Civil Rights Act women could not sue after 180 days from the discriminatory decision, even if they didn’t know about the decision for years? The decision that ultimately spurred the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Act because it was so egregious?

Breaking it down, Calbuzz sees three key questions:

1-Did M&R “out” Walker?

No. Our dictionary defines “outing” as “The exposing of one assumed to be, or wishing to be, considered heterosexual as being gay, lesbian, or bisexual.” Although he hasn’t advertised his sexual orientation, Walker by all accounts has made no secret of it, either.

Matier and Ross went out of their way not to out Walker, and their reporting showed pretty clearly that he didn’t feel outed: First, they called him up to ask him directly about his sexual orientation, to which he gave a “no comment.” Not long after, however, they received a call from another federal judge, described as a “friend (and) confidant” of Walker; this judge told them he had spoken to Walker, who was concerned that “people will come to the conclusion that (Walker) wants to conceal his sexuality.”

“He has a private life and he doesn’t conceal it, but doesn’t think it is relevant to his decisions in any case, and he doesn’t bring it to bear in any decisions,” said the judge, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the Prop. 8 trial.

“Is it newsworthy?” he said of Walker’s orientation, and laughed, “Yes.”

2-Is Walker’s sexual orientation a story? Yes.

The backgrounds of judges matters, and Walker’s is no less a story as Alito holding  membership in the Federalist Society, or Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” speech. Walker clearly doesn’t hide his sexuality and, if he ends up overturning Prop. 8, its backers will use everything they can to challenge the legitimacy of his opinion in the appeal or the media, or both.

At that point, the Chronicle would find itself explaining why they didn’t report the fact in the first place, just as the Portland Oregonian did a disservice to readers in the 1990s by sitting on information about former Senator Bob Packwood sexually harassing a series of staffers, and then was caught out when the facts were disclosed by another news organization. Journalists are in the business of making information public, not withholding it, or calculating in advance the potential political impacts of publishing or not.

3-Does it make a difference to the case? It shouldn’t.

For starters, as state Senator Mark Leno pointed out to M&R, no one made an issue of the sexual orientation of members of the state Supreme Court when they heard the first challenge to Prop. 8. So why should Walker being gay matter any more or less?

Also, there’s plenty of evidence that the judge keeps his personal beliefs separate from his professional actions and values, and holds himself to the ethical standard famously compounded by the late Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter:

As a member of this court, I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.

 

Walker was reviled in the gay community for years because he represented, as an attorney, the U.S. Olympic Committee when it won a case disallowing San Francisco’s Gay Olympics from using that name. In fact, as Chron editorial page editor John Diaz pointed out in a strong follow-up edit on Tuesday, there’s great irony in the suggestion that Walker is in the tank for the gay community:

Vaughn Walker almost lost his chance to reach the federal bench because of claims that he was anti-gay and hostile to civil rights. Two dozen House Democrats, led by Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, opposed his nomination because of his alleged “insensitivity” to gays and the poor. His first appointment, from President Ronald Reagan in 1987, stalled out in the Senate Judiciary Committee…Back then, Walker struggled to assure skeptical liberals that, as a judge, he could rule with impartiality…

Bottom line: Chronicle editors made the right call in publishing the M&R column as is, and in doing so followed the most fundamental principle of the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists:

Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know.

Press Clips: Nice work by Jackson West at NBC Bay Area in shedding light on eMeg Whitman’s claims about layoffs during her tenure at eBay…High Concept of the Week, from Steven Pearlstein in the Washpost: Obama should show some leadership…High Concept II, from Alan Mutter: journalists should get paid.

Today’s sign the end of civilization is near: It’s open season on Smokey the Bear.