California Governor

After five years as governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger came full circle on Friday: The film star who promised to rescue California from its fiscal wreckage without raising taxes signed into law $12.5 billion in tax hikes. With that, the Republican governor broke one of the few bonds left between his shrunken party and California's mainstream voters, marring its hard-won image as a guardian against higher taxes. "Their last gasp has been taken from them," said Larry N.

Democrats auditioning for governor of California stepped one by one onto a Northridge stage Sunday for an opening scene of the campaign to replace Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. There was Gavin Newsom, the hyper-caffeinated mayor of San Francisco, casting his City Hall record as a progressive model for California, if not the world.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom made official Tuesday what Californians who have watched him traverse the state for months already suspected -- he is running for governor in 2010. As might be expected for a campaign that has tried to maximize its presence on social networking websites, Newsom made the announcement electronically: "Today, I am announcing, via Tweet, my candidacy for governor," the Democrat's website declared. "It's official -- running for Gov of CA.

The voter uprising against Sacramento on Tuesday showed that "CA needs wholesale change," Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco wrote on Facebook. "Ready to Buck the System?" asked the Democratic candidate for governor. "Donate 5 bucks to change CA," he wrote. "Goal is 500 people to give 5 bucks to create an army for change."

Occasionally, like a trail of water finding a path through stone, honesty seeps into a political event. Proof came a few days ago at an Orange County gathering for Meg Whitman's campaign for governor. Mary Bono Mack, the Palm Springs congresswoman, braced the crowd with the odds for the EBay billionaire, who is making her first bid for elective office in the 2010 election. "This is an uphill battle, as you know," Mack told the crowd, whose presidential candidate was routed here six months ago.

The fact that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's poll numbers have plummeted to where Gray Davis' were when Schwarzenegger booted him from office might humble an ordinary politician. He'd probably lower his sights. But not Schwarzenegger. The lame duck governor intends to pursue an ambitious legislative agenda the rest of this year and next while pushing ballot measures in the 2010 primary and general elections.

The pictures that dominated the news last week formed two parallel realities. In one, Teddy Kennedy's face was young and unlined, his jaw taut, his bearing vibrant, as he was when he campaigned for his brothers and when he ran for president, with one of his final victories the 1980 Democratic primary in California. In another, the Massachusetts senator was grayed and stooped, if still smiling, as he was when longevity helped him forge a stunning array of accomplishments in the United States Senate.

The matter was urgent, said Mayor Gavin Newsom, the situation intolerable. A group of San Francisco police officers had produced videos making fun of women, gays, blacks and other minorities -- rough-house humor intended for laughs at the station house. "It is shameful. It is offensive," Newsom told reporters summoned to City Hall soon after the videos surfaced. "It is sexist, it is homophobic and it is racist. We're going to make sure that it ends." With his police chief standing sternly by, Newsom announced formation of a blue-ribbon panel to undertake a top-to-bottom review of the San Francisco Police Department.

Seventeen years after Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown clashed in the 1992 race for the White House, the former president made clear Tuesday that bygones will not be bygones: Clinton signed on to support Brown rival Gavin Newsom in the Democratic primary for governor. It is highly unusual -- perhaps unprecedented, according to the San Francisco mayor's campaign -- for a former president to take sides in a California gubernatorial primary. But the bad blood between Clinton and Brown, now state attorney general, runs deep, much as Newsom would like Californians to believe that Clinton's choice is based on merit alone.

If political payback against 1992 presidential rival Jerry Brown had anything to do with Bill Clinton's support of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom for governor, the former president fought hard Monday to convince Californians otherwise. Clinton didn't mention Brown's name as he announced his support for Newsom, Brown's rival in the Democratic primary for governor in June 2010. Instead, Clinton spoke for nearly 20 minutes about protecting the environment and followed that up with a nod to Newsom as a man dedicated to the cause.