Steve Poizner

Just when it looked as if California had gotten beyond its immigrant-bashing past, we hear Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner vowing to stop illegal immigration and toss all illegal immigrant children out of the public schools. Coming from Poizner, who's skimming the bottom in the polls, the immigration ploy looks more like a desperate last gasp than a serious proposal. Still, Poizner -- not long ago an unabashed moderate -- has plenty of reasons to believe that there's enough potential in the bloody shirt to wave it without embarrassment.

A consumer group Thursday called on California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner to release all documents related to his investigation of proposed double-digit rate increases by Anthem Blue Cross for customers who buy individual policies. Consumer Watchdog also asked Poizner to hold at least four public hearings across the state as part of his inquiry into premium increases by California's largest for-profit insurer. Woodland Hills-based Anthem agreed to delay its rate hikes of as much as 39% until May 1 while an outside actuary, hired by Poizner's office, reviews the company's spending on medical claims.

A day after squaring off with her Republican rival, Meg Whitman focused her front-running campaign for governor on the likely Democratic nominee, Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown. In a campaign stop at the Leisure World retirement community in Seal Beach, Whitman all but ignored Steve Poizner, the state insurance commissioner, whom she debated the night before. Whitman's aides played an edited video of Brown's campaign announcement this month, using it as a prop for her to call him a hypocrite for promising an end to platitudes but failing to unveil specific proposals yet. "We've had nothing but platitudes and no real definition of a plan that he wants to put together for Californians," Whitman said.

Republican candidates for governor Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner met in a generally genteel debate Monday evening that skipped lightly over detailed solutions to California's grievous fiscal mess in favor of the familiar arguments that each has made for months as they drive toward the June 8 primary. Whitman argued that she would bring an outsider's perspective to Sacramento and present the sharpest possible contrast to the presumptive Democratic nominee, former governor and current Atty.

Some of the major Republicans vying to become California's next governor or U.S. senator have more money than others. Some are better known. Some are more in sync with their party's traditional views. But what all five have in common as they look toward the June 8 primary is a determination to tap what they see as public fury over the failures of government. "Our government is out of control and out of touch, and so we will take it back and we will make it work," U.S. Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina told hundreds of delegates at a weekend convention of Republicans in the Silicon Valley.

Republicans running for their party's nomination for California governor and the U.S. Senate brawled over conservative purity Saturday as they vied to inspire the party's wary rank and file. A national climate that portends trouble for Democrats lent a hopeful mood to a weekend convention of nearly 1,000 Republicans at a Silicon Valley hotel. Candidates took turns pummeling Democrats Jerry Brown, who hopes to recapture the governorship that he first won in 1974, and Barbara Boxer, the perennially vulnerable U.S. senator whom Republicans have failed three times to defeat.

Steve Poizner was in his first year as state insurance commissioner in 2007 when his name began to surface as a likely candidate to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor. There was no other Republican on the horizon with Poizner's potentially winning attributes: a personal fortune and a reputation (in the past, at least) as a political moderate. Soon he began scooping up endorsements from local officials across the state. And then Meg Whitman came along. Poizner is now about 30 points behind the former EBay chief in mainstream polls with three months to go until the primary election that will determine which GOP candidate faces off against Democratic Atty.

Their battle for governor joined, front runners Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown raced last week to find the sweet spot that has guaranteed election in all recent California political contests. Although that place has undoubtedly skittered somewhat since the last election, it still resides in the middle ground of California politics, as was evident in the forays of the leading candidates. Democrat Brown entered the race -- finally dropping his "unofficial" pretense -- by promising not to raise taxes without voter consent and positioning himself as a seasoned and reasonable would-be governor.

Republican candidate for governor Steve Poizner, who is running as a conservative, took liberal positions on a range of issues related to abortion when he ran for state Assembly in 2004, according to a document obtained by The Times. A questionnaire that Poizner completed for Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, in San Jose, earned him a 100% rating on abortion rights from the group when he ran, unsuccessfully, against Democrat Ira Ruskin in the 21st Assembly District. On the form, Poizner, who is now California's insurance commissioner, said he supported sex education that includes discussion of contraception.

Saying the antidote to California's problems is "someone with an insider's knowledge but an outsider's mind," Jerry Brown, the Democratic state attorney general, announced his candidacy for governor Tuesday in a video on his website. "Our state is in serious trouble, and the next governor must have the preparation and the knowledge and the know-how to get California working again," Brown, 71, said in the taped message. "That's what I offer." Brown, who was the state's governor from 1975 to 1983, attempted to contrast himself with his Republican opponents, particularly Meg Whitman, the former EBay chief who has never held public office.