"Kamala Harris’ 'bizarre’ move: no press at kickoff event"

Always wonderful to talk to Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle. 

“I think, frankly, it’s not a bad calculation. ... She needs time to ramp up and know all the issues. She definitely doesn’t want a 'Katie Couric-Sarah Palin’ moment,” Levinson said, referring to the disastrous interview when Palin was a vice presidential candidate in 2008.

“There’s a big difference between being an attorney general and a U.S. senator,” and answers to the complex questions ahead may require a lot of in-depth preparation, Levinson said. That’s especially true in the age of social media, where answers live forever on YouTube and other sites.

Levinson said there’s no danger that Harris will be put in the same camp as Meg Whitman, the 2010 Republican gubernatorial candidate who famously sidestepped reporters’ questions, literally running away from them at one point.

Harris “has seen the microphone before and seems to enjoy it,” Levinson said. “I don’t think she will implode, but she has kicked off her campaign much earlier than other candidates and she is someone who wants finessed answers.”

Harris may also be betting that it is “more harmful for her to have a fairly substantive mistake than it is not to invite the press” to a fundraiser, though she added that in the future, media access will be vital to her perception as a credible candidate.

Who will replace Senator Barbara Boxer? Who won in Los Angeles last week?

I will be on NBC's "News Conference" on Sunday at 7:45 a.m. talking about elections in Los Angeles and who is likely to replace Senator Barbara Boxer. 

"Here’s who’s poised to fight for Barbara Boxer’s Senate seat"

Good to talk with John Wildermuth for this one in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The buy-in for this game is huge,” said Jessica Levinson, who teaches election law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. The winning candidate “isn’t likely to be some unknown person who comes out of the shadows.”
...
Members of Congress “have a lot to lose, but politicians are an ambitious bunch and and always looking for the next step up,” Levinson said.

Is the U.S. Senate anti-democratic?

Yes. Of the 100 members of the new U.S. Senate, the 46 Dems received 67.8 million votes, and the 54 Reps 47.1 million votes. (For those who think this is a partisan statement, it is not, the reverse was true in 2008 and 2012). What does it show? The Senate favors small states. Less than 600,000 people live in Wyoming. Almost 39 million people live in California. Both states get two senators

"The right’s misleading voter mailers"

Thanks to Irin Carmon of MSNBC for the shoutout.

CA State Senate passes a ban on fundraising during the final month of budget negotiations and the legislative session

More from Patrick McGreevy of the LA Times here.

More from Laurel Rosenhall of the Sacramento Bee here.

My long one on the constitutionality of temporal limits here.

Battle Over CA's Public Records Act Was Actually a Budget Deal

Some of you may have gotten whiplash following the latest kerfuffle over California's Public Records Act (CPRA).

First, as part of the budget deal it looked like there would be limited access to government documents. Why? Because the deal provided that the CPRA would be suspended, instead of paid for from state coffers. Specifically, the state is required to reimburse local agencies for the cost of compliance. The anticipated cost of the CPRA totals in the tens of millions of dollars.

Under the budget plan, local agencies would have the ability to opt out of certain portions of the law, those requiring local agencies to help people trying to access information, provide respond to record requests within 10 days, and furnish people with electronic records when they are obtainable.

Then, predictably, there was a significant backlash. And then, equally predictably, legislators reacted. At the end of last week two State Senators introduced a constitutional amendment purportedly intended to strengthen the CPRA. State President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D - Sacramento) and State Senator Mark Leno (D - San Francisco) introduced an amendment, which would require that local agencies comply with and pay the costs of complying with the CPRA.

Finish reading this post on KCET.org. 

Ms. Ravel and Mr. Goodman Go to Washington?

My latest piece on the Huffington Post is here.

Here is an excerpt:

President Obama recently announced the nomination of Democrat Ann Ravel and a Republican Lee Goodman to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Ravel is currently the Chairwoman of the California's watchdog agency, the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). She previously served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Division of the Department of Justice and was the County Counsel for Santa Clara County, in California.

Goodman is an attorney at the LeClair Ryan law firm who served as an adviser for Ron Paul's 2012 presidential campaign and who has argued for the overturning of campaign finance laws.

Many of you may be asking what the FEC does. Great question. I have a short answer for you: virtually nothing. The FEC is an independent regulatory agency charged with administering and enforcing federal campaign finance laws. Small problem, the FEC doesn't do that.

In the 1970s, in the wake of the Watergate scandals that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, Congress enacted the nation's first comprehensive campaign finance framework, the Federal Election Campaign Act. Congress created the FEC to administer and enforce the provisions of the Act. Essentially the FEC should, among other things, work on issues related to campaign disclosure, restrictions on campaign contributions, and public financing of Presidential elections. These issues are vitally important to the integrity of our electoral and political processes.

One of the problems with the FEC is that it is set up to allow for partisan deadlock. The FEC is comprised of six members, there can be no more than three members of the same political party, and four votes are required for the agency to take any action.

Another problem is that the five current members of the FEC are all serving expired terms. These "holdovers" include three Republicans and two Democrats.

Brinks Trucks in the Campaign

Here is another post by the terrific Ciara Torres-Spelliscy. 


One open question vexing voters in 2012 is how much corporate money is influencing the election.  The reason that this basic question is so hard to answer is the broken system we have for reporting money in politics.

Of course, some money in politics can be easily traced thanks to the yeoman’s work of organizations like the Center for Responsive Politics, which runsOpenSecrets.org and the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which runs FollowTheMoney. But these two groups are only as strong as the underlying disclosure laws.

The loopholes in these disclosure laws are big enough to accommodate an armored Brinks truck full of campaign cash. Just like a real Brinks truck, voters can’t see through the truck to tell exactly how much money is in play.

The problem, as I’ve written about at greater length here and here, is the use of two types of non-profits: 501(c)(4)s and 501(c)(6)s. Combined with the FEC’s inadequate reporting rules (some of which a court has already ruled violated the APA in the Van Hollen v. FEC case), 501(c)(4)s and 501(c)(6)s provide the perfect subterfuge for big corporate campaign spending. 

The long and the short of the way the tax law and the campaign finance regulations interacts boils down to this: if a corporation funnels its political dollars through a nonprofit, the public is none the wiser.

This sorry state of affairs is unnecessary. A functional FEC would have fixed this disclosure problem long before the 2012 election. Legislation such as the DISCLOSE Act introduced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is intended to provide transparency of our elections process.

As I write this, there is a filibuster in the Senate on the DISCLOSE Act. Voters want a transparent election where who is trying to sway their vote is crystal clear. We hold our democracy out as the light of the world. Wouldn’t it be better if this were actually true instead of mere rhetoric? 

"Senate passes short-term extension of Patriot Act provisions"

"The Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a bill that would extend through May three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are set to expire later this month. The move is designed to buy time for lawmakers to fully debate and hold hearings on the controversial counterterrorism surveillance law."


WaPo has more here. 

"Senate Should File Electronically — Saving Money, Time, Reputation"

Roll Call has more here.

"Here we go again. Campaign finance reports for the fourth quarter of 2010 were due to be filed Jan. 31 — and those from House Members, the Republican and Democratic parties and all their campaign committees were instantly posted on the Web.
But not the Senate’s."

"Senate Adjusts Rules, But Keeps Filibuster"

The WSJ has this report.

"Drive to alter filibusters fizzles as Senate adopts modest fixes"

The LAT has more here.

Deal Reached on the Filibuster?

Not really. Click here for more from the NYT.

"U.S. House Votes to End Campaign Finance System, Senate Unlikely to Agree"

Click here for more from Bloomberg.

The Senate recess will be filled with Filibuster talk

The debate over whether and how to reform the filibuster process will likely occur behind closed doors until January 24th, when the Senate reconvenes.

Democratic hopes of reforming the filibuster with a simple majority vote, as opposed to a two-thirds vote, seem dim.

Click here for more from Politco.

Will the Filibuster go nuclear?

All eyes will be on the Senate today to see if they can and will reform the filibuster.

Proponents of filibuster reform have claimed that they can change the filibuster rules by a simple majority vote on the first day of a new session (today!), but that they otherwise need a two-thirds vote for such reform. Proponents want to, among other things, end secret holds and force members who want to filibuster to be present (meaning the mere threat of a filibuster will no longer be sufficient).

For more, click on articles from these news outlets: NPR (piece argues in favor of reform), WaPo (piece by Sen. Mitch McConnell argues against reform), WaPo, WaPo (Ezra Klein responds to critics), Bloomberg, and NYT.

Joe Miller's fight to be the senator from Alaska will end in 2010

After his opponent, incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski, was certified as the winner of the Alaska senate race, Joe Miller decided to end his legal fight and concede. Click here fore more from the AP.

At long last, introducing the senator from Alaska, Lisa Murkowski

The official vote tally has been certified. After weeks of legal wrangling over whether and how to count write-in votes, Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski has been certified as the winner of her infamous match-up with Tea Party candidate Joe Miller. Alaska, congratulations, you have two senators who will be officially sworn in on January 5, 2011. Click here and here for more.   

Is the seemingly endless Alaska Senate race drawing to a close?

Yet another loss for Tea Party candidate Joe Miller. Reuters reports that a federal district judge dismissed Joe Miller's lawsuit challenging his loss to Lisa Murkowski in Alaska's election for a Senate seat. The judge lifted the injunction that he had previously imposed. That injunction delayed certification of the election results. The election is expected to be certified on Thursday, December 30th.

Murkowski, the incumbent, will be the first Senate candidate to win based on a write-in campaign since 1954.