CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
April 16, 2012 | George Skelton, Capitol Journal
A wise man learns from his foe. Democrats have carefully studied Republicans, and now Gov. Jerry Brown may be benefiting. Or maybe not. "Talk to me in a month," says Democratic guru Gale Kaufman, who recommended that Brown emulate the longtime GOP strategy of mailing ballot-measure petitions directly to voters for their signatures. More than 1 million California voters — mainly reliable Democrats — received a Brown blurb at home last week, preceded by a robocall from the governor announcing it was in the mail.
NEWS
April 11, 2012 | By Morgan Little
If you believe Rep. Alan West (R-Fla.), there are upwards of 78 to 81 members of the Communist Party sitting in Congress within the Democratic Party, an accusation that riled his colleagues and has drawn criticism from the accused. During a town hall event in Jensen Beach, Fla., on Tuesday night, West addressed a member of the audience who asked about how many members of the Democratic Party are “card-carrying Marxist Socialists,” and made a bold claim about his coworkers in the Capitol.
NATIONAL
April 9, 2012 | By Michael A. Memoli, Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - President Obama, who has fended off questions about his position on same-sex marriage for nearly a year and a half by saying his views are "evolving," faces increasing pressure within his party as momentum builds to declare support for marriage equality in the party's official platform. Often derided as windy (frequently) and nonbinding (always), platforms nonetheless can play a crucial role in shaping a political party. Republican and Democratic platform debates in the 1980s crystallized the partisan divide over abortion.
OPINION
March 20, 2012 | By Harold Meyerson
Are political centrists in America without a political home? Do we need a third-party presidential candidate to represent those socially progressive, fiscally austere voters who find our two parties too extreme? There's no disputing that the Republican Party continues to move rightward at warp speed. Virtually every GOP elected official who's been in office for more than a couple of years has had to repudiate previously mainstream Republican positions (such as creating a health insurance system with an individual mandate, an idea cooked up by a right-wing think tank)
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
March 16, 2012 | By Phil Willon, Los Angeles Times
For the first time in 20 years, a Republican running for Congress in Riverside needs help. John Tavaglione huddled with supporters in the mirrored back room of a local Coco's on a recent rainy evening, laying out a ground game for his first crack at federal office. As a Republican and political heir of a powerful Riverside family, the longtime county supervisor would have breezed into Washington, D.C., in past elections. The Inland Empire was heralded as California's new conservative frontier — the "new Orange County" — just 10 years ago. But political districts have been remade.
NATIONAL
March 10, 2012 | By Matea Gold and Melanie Mason, Washington Bureau
As top union leaders gather in Florida on Tuesday to determine labor's political strategy this year, the influential AFL-CIO appears poised to endorse President Obama's reelection - despite some lingering dissatisfaction with his record. But the way in which unions back him and other Democrats this year is likely to take a very different form than in past campaigns. Concluding they need to be more independent of the Democratic Party, many unions are increasingly financing their own efforts instead of writing large checks to candidates and the party.