Clout

In 1994, the Republicans took back the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. The significance of that victory is hard for some younger people to appreciate, as the parties now seem to rotate power. The House then was the Democratic Party's fiefdom. The Gingrich Revolution was a tectonic shock. By the spring of 1995, Americans were talking as if we had suddenly adopted a parliamentary system with House Speaker Newt Gingrich as the prime minister. Really. President Clinton was asked at a news conference if he were even relevant anymore.

California Republicans don't have a lot of reasons for optimism — they lost every statewide race in November, their share of the state's voters is plummeting and proposed new districts could give Democrats a supermajority in the Legislature and more seats in Congress in 2012. But one surprising bright spot has been the House of Representatives. When the GOP took control of the body last year, many of those who rose to lead the 112th Congress were members of California's congressional delegation.

Jobs are slowly coming back, but that's small comfort to more than 13 million Americans who remain unemployed. For every current job opening, four people are still looking for a job. Many others have given up even trying to find work. The American economy is trapped in a vicious cycle. Those who are unemployed can't afford to buy much more than bare necessities, while people who are working are getting skimpier paychecks. This means consumers don't have much purchasing power, which has made companies reluctant to hire more employees or raise the wages of those they have.

Anyone looking to write off Mitt Romney over the healthcare issue got a rude awakening after the GOP presidential contender Monday raised a staggering $10.2 million in a single day. Last week wasn’t the former Massachusetts governor’s easiest. Romney attempted to deal with his biggest political liability—his support for a state healthcare plan that resembles the law passed by the Democratic Congress last year—head on in a speech in Michigan. The effort earned him brickbats from pundits, zings from other GOP presidential candidates and the continued mistrust of a wide swath of conservative voters.

California's annual budget stalemates helped persuade voters to approve a series of ballot initiatives in recent years aimed at reducing the bitter partisanship and gridlock in Sacramento. Among them was Proposition 14, a measure passed last year that eliminated party primaries in races for the Legislature, statewide offices and Congress. Last weekend the state Republican Party responded by announcing that it would begin holding unofficial primaries in 2014 to nominate candidates before the official ballots are cast.

Reporting from Sacramento -- The major political parties are scrambling to blunt the effect of the "top-two" voting system that Californians approved at the ballot last year. Party bosses' bid to retain their clout, which the new "open primary" was intended to dilute, comes to a head for the state GOP this weekend. At the party's convention, which opens Friday, a group of conservatives including the California party chairman wants to codify the power to crown their party's nominees with early endorsements ?

Los Angeles' public employee unions put their substantial political muscle into defeating their chief target, Bernard C. Parks, in the city election ? and found themselves trailing by a sliver as Parks was narrowly exceeding the tally needed to avoid a runoff. It was a rare setback for the city's most powerful political agents and one that spurred debate over whether, under fire nationally and in various states, the public employee unions had lost ground even in a favored city. As supporters celebrated around him early Wednesday, Parks insisted that he had won because he had been unafraid to blame what he views as overly generous employee pensions and benefits for setting the city on a path to insolvency ?

California's minority population has grown substantially, most dramatically in the interior of the state, according to new census figures that project a sharp rearrangement of the state's political power during this year's redistricting of legislative and congressional seats. Political power will shift away from traditional strongholds such as Los Angeles and San Francisco and into the Inland Empire and Central Valley. Minorities, whose representation in the Legislature and the California congressional delegation has never matched their population numbers, could see increased opportunities to gain control of elected offices.

Charlie Sheen has been far too busy with his at-home drug rehab project lately to spend much time reading, say, his contract. But he seems sure of one thing: It contains no provision that says he can't enjoy himself as he pleases. "I haven't read it," the wayward star of CBS' hit sitcom "Two and a Half Men" told radio host Dan Patrick last week, but "I don't think it covers, 'Let me totally dominate and interfere with your personal life.'" Sheen was referring to a morals clause, the contractual provision that since the early days of Hollywood has governed any conduct by a performer that might pose problems for the studio.

Los Angeles City Council members are known for keeping a finger on the pulse of constituents, sorting out who are political friends and who are not. Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar may have taken that practice into new territory by assigning his City Hall staff to prepare lists that graded civic leaders numerically on their level of support for him, according to three former Huizar employees. Those lists, drafted during his first five years as a councilman, ranked dozens of people on their support for Huizar and influence in the 14th City Council district.