Political Campaigns

A day after launching her campaign for governor, former EBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman on Tuesday unveiled a sharply conservative approach to California's fiscal crisis and offered a fusillade of positions on other issues that are likely to complicate her run for office in 2010.

He's just 26 and making his first election bid in a crowded field of candidates that includes two seasoned, well-financed officeholders -- just the sort of hopeful who usually gets lost in the pack. But Emanuel Pleitez has collected enough money -- much of it in online donations from across the nation -- to put on a substantive mail campaign, bolstered by an energetic staff of young volunteers.

"Hillary: The Movie" had little effect on last year's election campaign, but it could have a profound impact on a century of election laws that restrict corporations from promoting or attacking candidates for public office. The Supreme Court took up a case Tuesday involving the 90-minute documentary that attacked Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was running for president. The dispute focused on whether the government can limit the use of corporate money in political campaigns.

Was it the real estate downturn, or were people misled into a risky investment scheme? That's the question at the center of a lawsuit filed Tuesday that accuses Orange County real estate lender Dan J. Harkey of bilking dozens of investors out of more than $15 million. In an added twist, the investors claim that their money helped fund the election of Harkey's wife, state Assemblywoman Diane L. Harkey (R-Dana Point).

A new campaign mailer from City Councilman Jack Weiss, a city attorney candidate, sparked unusually heated criticism from several of his council colleagues Tuesday with the election just three weeks away. The brochure sent to voters early this month became the source of whispered conversations on the council floor in City Hall as colleagues passed around copies.

On a rain-spitting Sunday in Lake Placid, Republican Jim Tedisco was out fanning the flames of voter outrage. Tedisco is running for an open congressional seat here and has combined the hot-button issues of the day -- executive bonuses, the economic stimulus package, Wall Street bailouts -- into a drum-pounding campaign message against the Democrats. "The last thing we need [in Washington] is a rubber stamp," he said. "It's been kind of a shopping spree, it seems."

The campaign for a new solar energy ballot measure in Los Angeles has raised more than $267,000, nearly two-thirds of it from groups affiliated with the union that represents Department of Water and Power employees, according to a report released Wednesday. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 18 provided $50,000 for the campaign supporting Measure B, a proposal on the March 3 ballot to add 400 megawatts of solar panels throughout Los Angeles by 2014.

In the last days before Thursday's Iowa caucuses, Mike Huckabee, lacking money and staff, is adopting a freewheeling and inexpensive strategy of asymmetrical political warfare -- inviting reporters to a pheasant hunt, a morning jog and a haircut -- to needle his better-funded, better-organized challenger, Mitt Romney.

It's not just Mike Huckabee's top rival in the Republican race who is responsible for attack ads that have damaged his candidacy in the closing days of the Iowa campaign. Huckabee has been the target of a $550,000 campaign waged by the conservative anti-tax Club for Growth. An Arkansas man who is responsible for a separate low-budget hit vowed Monday to take his anti-Huckabee campaign to South Carolina, which holds its GOP primary Jan. 19.

The top three Democratic presidential candidates have begun focusing intensely on becoming the second choice among supporters of less-popular candidates such as Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, in a behind-the-scenes battle that could decide the outcome of Thursday's Iowa caucuses.