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U.S. Senate's failed water amendment roils California alliances

29.09.09

WASHINGTON – A Central Valley water amendment that failed Tuesday night in the Senate nonetheless succeeded in driving a wedge between Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and some key California farmers.

Not to mention between Feinstein and Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia.

The amendment to a $32 billion Interior Department funding bill would have overturned two federal agency decisions and temporarily restored Valley irrigation deliveries. The Senate rejected the amendment by a largely party-line 61-36 margin.

Realistically, there was little chance the Senate would ever accept the amendment offered by a conservative South Carolina lawmaker with zero experience in California water policy. Politically, though, the ambush amendment could have lasting consequences.

"It was something of a Hail Mary," Andrew House, spokesman for Nunes, acknowledged Wednesday. Nunes did not write the amendment offered by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

In the wake of its defeat, Nunes has been seeking maximum partisan advantage, saying, "California farmers (were) again denied water, this time by Senators Feinstein and (Barbara) Boxer."

In turn, Feinstein's spokesman, Gil Duran, on Wednesday denounced the water amendment as a stunt. He added that Feinstein has asked that the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences undertake an independent review of two biological opinions. Feinstein accompanied her written request with a letter from wealthy Southern California businessman Stewart Resnick, who owns farm operations in the southern San Joaquin Valley.

The immediate dispute revolves around two biological opinions that federal resource agencies are using to guide protections for the Delta and various vulnerable species including salmon and the Delta smelt. Together, state officials estimate the two biological opinions issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service could result in water delivery cuts of about 30 percent.

In the House, Nunes failed in multiple efforts to block funding for the biological opinions. His vehemence eventually turned off Democrats who had previously backed him on the water issue, including Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced.

"This is baloney, to be doing this sort of thing," Cardoza said in July of Nunes' repeated water amendment efforts. "I have had a number of my colleagues tell me they are fed up with it."

Starting last week, House indicated, Nunes quietly helped orchestrate the surprise amendment offered Tuesday by DeMint. Nunes had previously helped persuade Fox News Channel commentator Sean Hannity to do an hour-long special on the Valley's water woes, and House said the television special aired last week "elevated the attention" given to the region.

Feinstein was managing the Interior Department bill on the Senate floor late Tuesday afternoon when DeMint first advised her of the California water amendment.

The unexpected amendment concerning her home state clearly upset Feinstein, who called the effort "a kind of Pearl Harbor on everything we are trying to do" with California water.

DeMint, though, could furnish letters in support of the water amendment signed by Westlands Water District, the California Farm Bureau Federation, the Western Growers Association and the California Grape and Tree Fruit League, among others. Westlands, whose leaders had publicly lauded Feinstein's water efforts during a meeting in August, actively solicited support for the amendment Tuesday.

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Can poor voting record hurt a candidate? Sometimes

29.09.09

Meg Whitman's aversion to ballots could haunt her in the campaign ahead – if her opponents make it an issue and ordinary voters reject her for not voting, experts say.

Campaign attacks aimed at candidates with poor voting records can resonate with voters – but also can backfire.

"Sometimes opponents don't exploit potential land mines properly," said UC Irvine political scientist Mark Petracca.

A weak voting record didn't hurt Arnold Schwarzenegger when he ran for governor.

But voting failures did hinder wealthy Democratic candidate and airline tycoon Al Checchi, whose $40 million campaign sputtered after it emerged that he failed to vote in four of the six previous elections before entering the governor's race. He came second in the Democratic primary in 1998, behind Gray Davis.

In Seattle this summer, incumbent Mayor Greg Nickels went after political neophyte Joe Mallahan, a T-Mobile executive, after Mallahan rose in the polls.

Nickels' campaign produced a video highlighting Mallahan's failure to vote in six of the past 18 elections, including mayoral primaries in 2001 and 2005. "Joe don't know Jack," the video sniped in a bid to sway civic-minded Seattleites.

Nickels came third in the primary, anyway – and conceded.

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Meg Whitman's voting record short, sparse

29.09.09

Meg Whitman, who has announced her candidacy for California governor, admits she hasn't been a consistent voter.

Almost 9 million Californians cast ballots in the 2003 special election that swept movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger into the Governor's Office.

Meg Whitman wasn't among them.

The billionaire businesswoman now running for governor herself in 2010 didn't vote in that special election, even after Business Week listed her among a group of top executives with "worse than spotty voting records" in a 2000 magazine story, public records show.

Whitman apologized for failing to vote "on several occasions" as she introduced herself earlier this year as a candidate to replace Schwarzenegger as governor at a state Republican Party convention in Sacramento. She said her failure to vote was a mistake for which she had no excuses.

"Every citizen should take time to vote, and on more than one occasion, I didn't," the former eBay chief told the GOP activists. "Voting is a precious gift handed down by generations of Americans. I regret not having delivered my vote on several occasions."

In fact, however, a Bee review found Whitman regularly skipped elections in California and several other states where she lived and worked.

The review covered six states and a dozen counties, including towns and counties in Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, New Jersey, Rhode Island and California where public records indicated that Whitman lived, worked or attended college.

Mark Petracca, a UC Irvine political science professor, said Whitman's voting record is nothing anyone would brag about – unless you're one of her opponents.

The Bee found that the two candidates battling Whitman for the Republican gubernatorial nomination – Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and ex-congressman and state Sen. Tom Campbell – regularly participated in local, state and federal elections for decades.

"It's a dereliction of our first duty as American citizens," Petracca said. "We're talking about someone who has practically not voted her entire adulthood.

"This is embarrassing."

Whitman, now 53, turned 18 and voting age in Suffolk County, N.Y., in 1974. Officials say they have no record of her registering or voting there.

She lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, from 1979 to 1981 after completing a master's degree in business administration at Harvard.

Neither Ohio state elections officials nor Hamilton County Board of Elections officials found a record of Whitman registering or voting there.

For much of the 1980s, she lived in San Francisco as a management consultant at an investment firm, Bain & Co.

The San Francisco County elections office no longer retains records prior to 1992, but said that had she been registered and voting, her registration information would have been transferred to the current system. They have no record of her registration.

Similarly, Los Angeles County has no record that she registered or voted between 1989 and 1992, when she worked for Walt Disney Corp. as a senior executive.

Whitman and her husband, Griffith Harsh, a neurologist, lived in Brookline, Mass., a suburb just outside Boston, for several years in the 1990s. She worked for Stride-Rite, FTD and Hasbro until 1997.

"We had her as a resident for a while, and she was captured by the census, but she was never registered and she never voted," said Patrick Ard, town clerk in Brookline.

Whitman returned to the Bay Area in 1998, when she was hired to be eBay's first chief executive officer and take the company public.

She told delegates at the convention that she had "been a registered 'decline-to-state' voter since 1998." The Bee was unable to find any public record of that registration.

The first registration record The Bee found, in San Mateo County, was dated Sept. 12, 2002.

At that time, she told San Mateo elections officials that she had been registered in San Francisco County, a county official said, after reviewing electronic records.

Yet San Francisco County officials, whose database records active registrations as far back as 1992, said they had no record of voter registration for Whitman at either of her two San Francisco addresses during the period.

Sarah Pompei, a Whitman spokeswoman, did not respond to repeated requests for the campaign to provide a document or say where Whitman was registered in 1998.

In an interview, Whitman said she was registered as a Republican before coming to California, but declined to say where the public record might be found.

"Go find it," she said.

After she registered in San Mateo in 2002, Whitman then missed half the local, state and federal elections held until 2007.

She didn't vote in the recall election that swept Schwarzenegger into office or the special election he called in 2005.

Voters that year defeated measures to roll back teacher tenure and curb state spending and boost the governor's budget-cutting powers, among others.

Whitman has been a far more active voter in recent years, as she prepared to leave eBay, co-chaired Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and embarked on her own political career.

She re-registered as a Republican in 2007 and cast ballots four times in 2008, including presidential and statewide elections. She voted in the state's special election in May this year.

Whitman's campaign now declines to discuss her voting history. Henry Gomez, a spokesman and executive working closely with Whitman for years, told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008 that Whitman's efforts to balance both her career as a chief executive and her family life – she's the mother of two sons – sometimes kept her from voting.

"I know it's no excuse, but for years she was heads down in her business and her family," Gomez told the newspaper. "She didn't vote when sometimes she should have."

Asked about Whitman's decision to register as a decline-to-state voter rather than as a Republican until 2007, Gomez replied: "When she came to the state, she wasn't sure of any of the candidates, so she registered as a decline-to-state."

But when Whitman herself spoke to Republicans five months later about her voting lapses, she offered a different explanation, saying that she wanted to stay politically neutral as head of eBay.

"As the CEO of a public company, with an enormous community of users and employees covering every imaginable political persuasion, I purposely made the decision to register DTS. I felt it was the right thing to do, given my role at eBay," Whitman told delegates. "Once my eBay tenure was coming to an end and I became more involved with Mitt's campaign, I changed my registration back to Republican."

Gomez and Pompei declined to reconcile the statements.

Last week, Whitman announced she is giving the state Republican Party $250,000 to boost its voter registration efforts as the 2010 gubernatorial election approaches.

Her campaign noted that since 1990, Republican registration has declined in California, from 39.25 percent to 31.05 percent.

There's not much confusion when it comes to Poizner's or Campbell's registration and voting record.

Poizner first registered to vote in Texas in 1976, where he was born and attended college.

He's been registered and voting in Santa Clara County for more than three decades, public records show, voting in every election held since 1992, including one for the library district. Poizner also was registered briefly in the District of Columbia, while he served as a White House fellow in 2001.

Though the Poizner campaign has criticized Whitman for registering as a decline-to-state voter in 2002, Poizner – from a Democratic family – did the same thing when he moved to California in 1978, public records show. He registered as a Republican in 1981.

Asked about the apparent double standard, Poizner campaign spokesman Jarrod Agen replied: "Steve has been voting as a Republican for well over 25 years. We are happy to contrast his registration and voting record against any of our opponents."

Campbell, currently registered to vote in Southern California, was previously registered in Santa Clara County since 1984. He voted in Chicago, Ill., as far back as 1972. He voted extensively, though not always, throughout his political career and years of college in Chicago.

Campbell registered and voted as a Democrat in the 1974 primary, but he says he made no secret of it. That issue surfaced when he first ran for Congress in 1988. He's been a Republican since he earned a doctorate degree in economics, he said.

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California Lottery error highlighted at legislative hearing

29.09.09

Josefina Sineriz, center, is shown in March with her winning check for $2.8 million. She was eligible to compete for that amount due to a mistake by the California Lottery in which contestants' names were switched. Lottery spokesman Bill Ainsworth said no attempt would be made to retract Sineriz's prize. "We would never do that," he said.

Oops – Josefina Sineriz may owe her $2.8 million in lottery winnings last winter to a mistake by the California Lottery's staff.

The 61-year-old Bakersfield woman was given the opportunity to win the top prize by an inadvertent transposition of contestants' names.

If not for the mistake, Sineriz apparently would have been eligible only for the TV show's consolation prize of $2,000.

The development came to light Wednesday in a lottery oversight hearing by the Assembly Committee on Accountability and Administrative Review.

"This is significant because it goes to whether the game is run properly," said Assemblyman Hector De La Torre, a South Gate Democrat who chairs the committee.

Sineriz's name was not mentioned in Wednesday's hearing, but a chain of events was described that pointed to her and 16 others who participated in the Feb. 8 taping of "Make Me A Millionaire."

De La Torre referred during the hearing to a lottery "incident report" that suggested procedural errors were made in preparing for the TV show.

Put simply, contestants' names were transposed on forms, resulting in 17 of them being assigned to a different segment of the TV show than they otherwise would have been, the report said.

For contestants, such an error could either be profitable or cost them plenty because each segment spotlights a different game of chance and varying pots to win.

Each weekly TV show is divided into four segments – Lucky Penny, Safe Cracker, California Cool, and the granddaddy of them all, Millionaire, offering a progressive jackpot that can make a contestant rich.

While Sineriz benefited from the mistake, others apparently lost out.

Anita Johnson, for example, received a consolation prize of $2,000 when she should have been given a chance to vie for $2.6 million, according to documents obtained by The Bee.

Lottery chief Joan Borucki told the Assembly committee that she was not familiar with the matter and asked for time to review it.

Hours later, lottery spokesman Bill Ainsworth said that no attempt will be made to retract Sineriz's $2.8 million.

"In no way," Ainsworth said. "We would never do that."

Despite the mistake, he said, random selection ultimately determined which game a contestant played during the Feb. 8 taping.

"There was no violation of fairness or integrity," he said.

Sineriz said Wednesday that she was not aware of any mistake. "I don't know what to think of that," she said simply, declining to comment further.

When she won last winter, Sineriz was so stunned that she clutched her head with her hands, then hugged Mark Walberg, host of the TV show.

"I'm going to build my brother a home in the Philippines because a hundred dollars goes a long way there," Sineriz said in comments released in March by the lottery.

Sineriz said she also planned to help others and pay medical bills from her husband's emphysema.

"Why not share it?" she said at the time.

The lottery has decided to offer a second chance to anyone who might have won more money if the mistake had not occurred, Ainsworth said Wednesday.

The decision to offer a remedy to affected contestants came after hours of deliberation Wednesday by officials and attorneys for the state agency.

Ainsworth described a process in which multiple games are taped on the same day for airing in one of the weekly "Make Me A Millionaire" TV shows.

Contestants are promised at least $2,000 and the opportunity to be assigned, through random draw, to a contest providing a chance to win more than that – perhaps millions.

The error resulted in some people being assigned to a different segment of the TV show than they otherwise would have been, but nonetheless, a random draw ultimately determined which contest they competed in, Ainsworth said.

Ainsworth's contention, basically, is that no harm was done.

De La Torre interprets the bottom line differently: If no mistake had occurred, 17 contestants would have played a different game – with varying stakes – than the one they ultimately did.

Of the 17 affected contestants, the mistake resulted in eight playing for less money, and nine for more money, than they otherwise would have been able to compete for, records show.

"It goes to the integrity of the game," De La Torre said. "The whole point of the lottery is that everybody believes that it's a game of chance that has a set of rules that are followed."

Borucki said she worries that publicity surrounding the mistake could unfairly hurt sales at a time when schools badly need funds.

"What happened had nothing to do with the integrity of the game," she said.

Borucki said that both the TV show and the procedures surrounding it were relatively new when the mistake occurred.

"I can't fault them for what happened here," she said of her staff.

The lottery, since the error, has instituted new policies requiring the TV show's procedures to be overseen by a veteran auditor and allowing more time for random drawings that determine contestant assignments, Borucki said.

"I don't see this ever happening again," she said.

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Group files for 2010 California gay marriage initiative

29.09.09

A coalition that wants to put gay marriage before voters again in 2010 filed language for a ballot initiative with Attorney General Jerry Brown's office Thursday.

If the language is cleared, supporters have until April 16 to gather nearly 700,000 valid signatures to get an initiative on the Nov. 2010 ballot.

"We need to get our rights back. It's really just that simple," said John Henning, executive director of Love Honor Cherish, a pro-same-sex marriage organization.

The effort is backed by the Los Angeles Chapter of Stonewall Democrats and the Mexican American Bar Association, among others.

Henning said the coalition is raising money to finance signature-gathering, and will rely heavily on volunteers in target regions.

The new initiative would repeal Proposition 8, which declared marriage as only between a man and woman.

Randy Thomasson, president of SaveCalifornia.com, a pro-Proposition 8 group, said in a statement he thought that Love Honor Cherish's effort would fail.

"Fortunately," he said, "it takes big money and lots of it to qualify this scheme to tear apart the special, constitutional institution of marriage between a man and a woman."

Fifty-two percent of voters approved Proposition 8 – a narrow enough margin, Henning said, to try to change "a small number of hearts and minds."

Before the passage of Proposition 8, thousands of gay couples married following a California Supreme Court decision in May 2008 declaring that they had that constitutional right.

A year later, the high court upheld voters' right to amend the constitution with Proposition 8.

One of California's prominent gay rights organizations, Equality California, said last August it preferred to wait until the November 2012 election to challenge Proposition 8.

But spokeswoman Vaishalee Raja said in a statement Thursday: "If a measure qualifies in 2010, we will support its passage and encourage Californians to vote 'yes.'"

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California blaze raises call for tracking convicted arsonists

29.09.09

A U.S. Forest Service tanker drops retardant on the Station Fire on Aug. 30. The fire, which killed two firefighters, has reignited the passion of California lawmakers over how to track and arrest arsonists.

The hunt is on again for a California firebug, whose handiwork ripped through Los Angeles County over the past 30 days.

Killed: two firefighters. Destroyed: 89 homes, 26 businesses. Burned: 160,577 acres, the 10th largest wildland fire in California history and the largest ever blamed on arson.

The so-called Station fire was 98 percent contained as of Thursday night, but the flames have reignited the passion of California lawmakers over how to track and nail these deadly fire-starters.

Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, and fellow Southern Californian Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Palm Springs, have renewed their call for a national registry of convicted arsonists – much like that for sex offenders.

California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer filed similar legislation last week on the Senate side.

"I'm determined to stay at this as long as it takes," said Schiff, a former federal prosecutor who, along with Bono Mack, first pushed for the measure in 2007.

California is one of only three states with its own arson registry, but lawmakers and fire investigators say that's not adequate. Serial arsonists have been known to move around, they say – including one arrested in a fire-starting spree last year in Lake County after committing similar crimes in Nevada.

The Californians' earlier attempt to establish a national database of arsonists was passed by the House in December 2007 but stalled in the Senate. That proposed legislation followed the devastating Esperanza fire in Southern California – also caused by arson – in which five firefighters died.

Schiff told The Bee he believes the registry would give law enforcement a vital tool in pursuing an elusive enemy. But the proposal also has its skeptics, who wonder how fair – or effective – these registries really are.

"Are we going to turn into a place where we track everybody all the time?" asked Christopher Calabrese, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C.

Nationally, an estimated 32,500 structure fires were intentionally set last year, killing 315 people, according to the U.S. Fire Administration. In the last decade, the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as Cal Fire, battled 3,436 fires that were deliberately set, burning about 280 square miles of the Golden State.

Only about 17 percent of arson cases nationally are cleared by arrests, according to 2008 FBI crime statistics.

"Arson's complex, and it takes a lot of work by investigators to prove a case," said Melodie Durham, deputy chief of Cal Fire's law enforcement program.

This week, for instance, a 24-year-old Martinez man was arrested after Cal Fire spent more than a year investigating suspicious fires in Contra Costa and Solano counties.

In one of the state's most notorious cases, a 38-year-old former auto mechanic from Beaumont was sentenced to death in June for intentionally starting the 2006 Esperanza fire. The jury found Raymond Lee Oyler guilty of 42 felony counts in connection with a series of fires in the summer of 2006, culminating with the deadly blaze east of Riverside.

Investigators also spent years chasing a serial arsonist around Yolo County, using satellite tracking and hidden cameras. In 2006, the law finally caught up with Robert Eric Eason in connection with a string of fires in the Capay Valley.

Eason, 39, was found guilty last year of setting a dozen wildfires in 2006 and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

But Eric Hoffmann, a Cal Fire deputy chief who worked the case, said evidence suggested fires set by Eason – a volunteer firefighter from Guinda, northwest of Woodland – may have dated back to the 1980s.

"We think it just became a game of his to prove he was smarter than the investigators – and for a long time, he was," Hoffmann said.

The fire investigator said a national registry of convicted arsonists would give investigators "a starting point."

Under the proposed legislation, called The Managing Arson Through Criminal History (MATCH) Act, convicted arsonists and bombers would have to provide current personal information. It would require a first-time offender to register for five years after being released, or placed on probation or parole. A second conviction would require 10 years of registration. Those with three or more convictions would be tracked for life.

This is not a new concept for the Golden State. Along with Illinois and Montana, California has an arsonists' database, established in 1985 and managed by the California Department of Justice.

DOJ spokesman Scott Gerber said there is no way to determine whether it has been used successfully to crack a case. But one Southern California fire chief told a House subcommittee in 2007 that California's data collection is flimsy and limited, and "there's no teeth" in the requirements.

The registry has 3,700 names – far fewer than the 67,052 sex offenders registered under Megan's Law.

Unlike Megan's list, the California registry for arsonists is not available for public viewing. The proposed federal registry also would be reserved for law enforcement officials.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated setting up the registry would cost $17 million over five years.

Schiff said there has been little, if any, formal opposition to the measure, although the ACLU raised objections in 2007 on several constitutional and policy grounds.

Calabrese said that the ACLU had not yet decided what to do about the revived proposal. But, he said, the organization approves of a modification since 2007 that allows some juvenile offenders to have their names expunged.

Even so, Calabrese said that a registry undercuts the notion that people who serve their time have paid their debt to society. "Don't they (convicted arsonists) deserve a second chance, like everyone else?" he asked.

Proponents maintain the registry could be instrumental in tracking serial arsonists who leave distinctive trails.

Eason in Yolo County, for instance, favored an unusual incendiary device involving a mosquito coil. Another serial arson suspect, James Kenneth Hough of Live Oak, allegedly used "ground bloom" fireworks to start most of his blazes, which he allegedly set in four Northern California counties. Hough committed suicide in jail in 2007 before he faced the first set of charges in Butte County.

"If we had a reporting system nationwide, we'd probably pick up a lot more interstate arsonists," said retired state fire investigator Chris Vallerga, who investigated the Lake County fires that tied back to Nevada. "People are highly mobile now."

Earlier this year, Norman Ralph Henderson of Clearlake was sentenced to 24 years in prison for setting Lake County fires in 2007 and 2008. Vallerga said Henderson had a history of using a wooden match and kindling.

"Here you've got some guy crossing state lines, doing the same fires," he said.

Schiff, whose district includes portions of the Station fire, isn't sure why the national registry proposal withered in the Senate two years ago. His Republican colleague, Bono Mack, represents much of the area that burned in the deadly Esperanza fire.

"Hopefully," Schiff said, "we can get this to the front of the line this year."

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California GOP seeks momentum at Indian Wells convention

29.09.09

After last year's electoral defeats, re-energized California Republicans will meet at their biannual convention this weekend to try to turn what they say is their newfound momentum into ballot box victory next year.

The convention, to be held today through Sunday at an Indian Wells resort, will seek to capitalize on a summer full of conservative anti-tax protests and health care shouting matches that Republicans say have put Democrats on the defensive.

Also on the Republicans' plate at the convention will be dealing with internal tensions, especially as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks tonight to party activists unhappy with the governor's position on taxes and other issues.

"What's unique and exciting about this convention is the party now has a lot of momentum going into next year," said Brent Lowder, the California Republican Party's chief operating officer. "This convention is going to be a nice focal point to take that momentum out there as seen in town halls on health care and channel it into 2010 in victories for the Republican Party."

Winning elections in California, however, will require more than just stirring up the party faithful, said Mark Baldassare, president of the nonprofit research group the Public Policy Institute of California.

With Republicans making up 31 percent of the electorate, the party must also persuade growing numbers of decline-to-state voters to support their candidates, he said, and such voters tend to be moderates. Democratic voters are 45 percent of the state's electorate, and decline-to-state voters make up 20 percent of voters.

"The question is, is there a movement among the Republicans that can also encompass the large number of moderate, independent, middle-class voters in California," Baldassare said. "I'm not sure that any of the public displays of anger or resentment or frustration are really tapping into that middle-class anxiety."

Republican leaders responded that they'll score electoral gains because the opposition party historically comes out ahead in midterm elections. They also argued that President Barack Obama could receive much of the blame if employment numbers don't improve by next year and that public disgust with the Democratic-controlled state Legislature could play in Republicans' favor.

Even with anti-Obama sentiment solidifying among Republicans, however, the party's gains would still be limited statewide, because legislative districts were drawn to heavily favor incumbents, said Jon Fleischman, vice-chairman of the southern branch of the state party and the publisher of the conservative FlashReport blog.

"Are we going to elect a majority of Republicans to the Assembly?" Fleischman asked. "No, I don't think so. I don't think there's anything Obama could do that will overcome the gerrymandering in the state."

Nonetheless, the convention will feature plenty of workshops designed to teach party faithful the tools they'll need to win elections next year, including new technology and strategies for reaching minority communities that have historically voted Democratic.

Fleischman had originally stirred controversy by proposing a rule change that would have prevented decline-to-state voters from taking part in the party's primaries. Fleischman dropped the proposal last week.

Then, Schwarzenegger added some drama to the confab by joining the agenda with just a week's warning.

Many conservative activists are still smarting from a speech the governor gave at the party's 2007 convention, in which he warned Republicans that they were isolating themselves ideologically from the state electorate.

Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Julie Soderlund said that this time around, the governor would "give the (party) members an update on what he's accomplished this year and what's left to address for the state of California." Conservative activists, however, said the governor has some explaining to do, especially after breaking a party taboo by raising taxes earlier this year.

"We would like Arnold to be more conservative," said Ken Mettler, president of the conservative California Republican Assembly. "We're thankful he's in office, but we'd wish he would champion our causes in his bully pulpit."

It's probable Mettler and other Republicans wish the governor also would refrain from statements such as the one he made Thursday about GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman.

Schwarzenegger dismissed Whitman's pledge to suspend the state's greenhouse gas-reduction law as "just rhetoric." Whitman said the law, regarded by Schwarzenegger as as a key accomplishment of his tenure in office, was costing jobs and putting California at a competitive disadvantage with other states.

"I'm sure she does not want to be counted as one of those Republicans that will want to move us back to the Stone Age or something like that," the governor told an audience in San Francisco. "So I would pay no attention to this kind of rhetoric."

Other convention highlights include speeches by the three GOP gubernatorial candidates – former eBay CEO Whitman, former Rep. Tom Campbell and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner – as well as by U.S. Senate candidate Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. Another likely Senate hopeful, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, is not attending.

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Whitman acknowledges frequently failing to vote

29.09.09

GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman acknowledged Thursday she had "failed to register and vote on numerous occasions throughout my life."

Whitman issued the statement after The Bee published new details about her registration and voting lapses, finding no evidence that she participated in elections for most of her adult life. The Bee found that she registered to vote as a decline-to-state voter in 2002 in San Mateo County and re-registered as a Republican in 2007.

State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, also competing for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, called for Whitman to "step aside" and drop out of the race.

"It's understandable that Meg Whitman is ashamed of this record. But it's unacceptable that she continues to run from the record and deceive voters. Though there is no shred of evidence she ever registered as a Republican before 2007, she insists she did, yet she refuses to provide any evidence. Her arrogant answer: 'Go find it,' " Jarrod Agen, Poizner's communications director, said in a statement.

"In the history of America, no one has been elected governor of a state with Meg Whitman's 25-year history of no-show voting," Agen added. "She is unelectable and has tried to cover her lack of honesty with millions of dollars."

Whitman, a wealthy 53-year-old former eBay executive who has already spent millions of her own money seeking the GOP gubernatorial nomination, issued her own statement noting that she has said before that "my voting record is inexcusable."

She went further in describing her past record than she did at a state Republican Party convention earlier this year, when she told activists that she regretted "not having delivered my vote on several occasions."

"I failed to register and vote on numerous occasions throughout my life," Thursday's statement said. "That is simply wrong, and I have taken responsibility for my mistake. California needs leaders who are accountable for their actions."

Her campaign also noted that Poizner's voting record isn't perfect. His campaign acknowledged Thursday that he failed to vote in statewide primary elections in 1994 and 1998.

Poizner first registered to vote in 1976 in Texas, where he was born and attended college. The Bee found he has been registered and a regular voter in Santa Clara County for more than three decades.

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California immigrants facing deportation find a friend in Dianne Feinstein

29.09.09

Sen. Diane Feinstein is credited with helping legal immigrants cut through daunting red tape.

WASHINGTON – On the morning of Jan. 28, federal agents knocked on Shirley Tan's door, showed her a deportation letter and put her in handcuffs.

"I was put into a van with two men in yellow jumpsuits and chains and searched like a criminal in a way I have only seen on television and in the movies," said Tan, 44, a housewife and mother from Pacifica.

But Tan is still in the United States today, and she says there's only one reason why: "the great compassion" of California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

People seeking to get around U.S. immigration laws have found a good friend in the state's senior senator, who is going to unusual lengths to help her constituents avoid deportation.

Feinstein, a member of the Judiciary Committee, is the Senate's leader in using "private bills" as a way to keep people in the country who otherwise would be forced to leave.

Private bills – narrowly drawn to affect only one person or a few people – are relatively rare. Only 35 are pending in the Senate this year; 14 of them – or 40 percent – bear Feinstein's name. Thirteen of Feinstein's bills date back to previous sessions of Congress but were reintroduced this year.

The bills usually fail because of their narrow appeal, but deportation procedures are oftentimes put on hold when a member of Congress introduces a private bill.

When Feinstein offered a bill on behalf of Tan, her deportation was delayed until 2011.

Feinstein said her private bills are aimed at helping families or individuals who face exceptional circumstances.

"These are people who, if sent back to their home countries, would face enormous hardship," she said. "These individuals have no criminal backgrounds, they're financially secure, they pay their taxes, their children excel in school. They've truly embraced the American dream."

She acknowledged that private relief bills seldom pass, "and many of my colleagues in the Senate have a policy never to introduce them."

But she added: "My staff and I have thoroughly reviewed these cases and believe they merit such extraordinary relief as a private bill."

California's senators take drastically different approaches to private legislation. While Feinstein leads the Senate in private bills, Democrat Barbara Boxer has not introduced a single private bill since joining the Senate in 1993.

"Senator Boxer believes the most effective way to help her constituents is through great casework," said her spokesman, Zachary Coile. "Our caseworkers in California do an exceptional job of helping constituents resolve their problems."

The practice of introducing private bills has always raised questions of special treatment, said Jan Ting, who teaches immigration law at Temple University Law School in Philadelphia and served as assistant commissioner at the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the early 1990s. But whenever a member of Congress took an interest in a case, he said, it prompted an immediate internal review.

"That was enough to put a sticker on the file. Our sense was that, well gosh, we owe it to Congress, who controls our funding, to at least see how the private bill plays out," Ting said.

But he said congressional leaders look disapprovingly at private bills, "as kind of clogging up the works."

"They don't feel that that's how immigration matters should be handled," Ting said. "And if you let too many private bills actually pass, you will then be deluged with private bills."

Only 36 private laws were approved and signed into law from 1995 until 2007, according to the Congressional Research Service In a report to Congress, the research service said private bills "warrant careful consideration" because they're "a special form of relief allowing the circumvention of the public laws" governing immigration.

For many members of Congress, private bills fell out of favor in the 1970s, after Abscam and a series of other corruption scandals involving payoffs for the sponsorship of private bills.

Ting said that private bills then "were thought to be one more manifestation of the fruits of corruption."

Tan said she believes Feinstein lent her a sympathetic ear because her deportation would have resulted in the breakup of her family.

"The main reason is she doesn't want families to be torn apart, and a mom shouldn't be taken away from her American-born children," Tan said.

Feinstein has defended her private bills in speeches on the Senate floor.

She asked her colleagues to provide permanent resident status to Joseph Gabra and his wife, Sharon Kamel, Egyptian nationals living with their four children in Camarillo. Feinstein said they entered the United States in 1998 on tourist visas and immediately filed for political asylum based on religious persecution. She said the couple would "endure immense and unfair hardship" if forced to leave the country.

Feinstein asked the Senate to approve a private bill for Esidronio Arreola-Saucedo, Maria Elna Cobian Arreola and their children, Nayely and Cindy, all living in the Fresno area. She said the family has lived in the United States more than 20 years and faced deportation because of "grievous errors committed by their previous counsel," who since has been disbarred.

And the senator introduced legislation to help Robert Liang and his wife, Alice Liang, of San Bruno, who entered the United States more than 25 years ago as tourists and overstayed the terms of their temporary visas. Robert Liang is a foreign national and refugee from Laos; his wife is a citizen of Taiwan.

They sought to change their immigration status in 1993, but the INS did not act on their application until five years later. An immigration judge said their request likely would have been approved if it had been acted on in a timely manner, before immigration laws changed in 1996.

In Tan's case, Feinstein intervened after federal courts denied her bid for asylum.

After living in the United States more than 20 years, Tan faced deportation back to her native Philippines. She said the law discriminates against her because she is a lesbian and cannot be sponsored for citizenship by her longtime partner, Jaylynn Mercado.

Tan pressed her case before the Senate Judiciary Committee in June, telling members of Congress that she merely wants to keep together her family, which includes a pair of 12-year-old twins.

"We have a home together," she said. "Jay has a great job. We have a mortgage, a pension, friends and a community. We have everything together, and it would be impossible to re-establish elsewhere."

In an interview, Tan said she is happy to be one of Feinstein's constituents.

"I'm just thankful and I feel so lucky that I was given a private bill by my senator," Tan said. "Because if not for her, I would have been deported. It's only a senator that can do that."

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Officials quickly saw California Lottery flub, took no action, documents show

29.09.09

Within days of Josefina Sineriz winning $2.8 million, California Lottery officials were aware that a procedural mistake enabled her to vie for the top prize instead of another woman – yet the agency took no action.

Documents from the state agency list Hazel Culpepper, not Sineriz, as the contestant who would have had the chance to get rich if not for a transposition of names in preparing for a February taping of a "Make Me a Millionaire" TV episode.

Besides Sineriz and Culpepper, 16 others ended up playing a different game than they would have if the mix-up had not occurred, causing some to benefit and some to miss out on playing for higher stakes, documents show.

The paper trail is likely to be key in an Assembly oversight committee's push to examine circumstances surrounding the mix-up, including what lottery officials did after discovering it and why no remedy was offered until lawmakers stumbled upon it and held a public hearing Wednesday.

"I want assurance that everything they do is being done absolutely properly, so the integrity of the game can be assured," said Assemblyman Hector De La Torre, who chairs the committee.

The South Gate Democrat has asked the lottery for answers by Monday.

Lottery Director Joan Borucki, testifying before the committee Wednesday, said she was not very familiar with details of the incident but was confident the lottery's randomness, fairness and integrity had not been compromised.

Nonetheless, hours after the hearing, Borucki decided to give contestants adversely affected by the procedural error a second chance at winning money.

Bill Ainsworth, lottery spokesman, said Thursday that the agency still does not believe that contestants were treated unfairly but wants to assuage any concerns.

"If we don't have happy players, we don't do as much business and we don't earn as much money for education," Ainsworth said.

The mistake occurred Feb. 8, when several episodes of "Make Me A Millionaire" were being taped for airing in one of the show's weekly time slots.

Two random draws affecting contestants are held in connection with the show. One determines the episode on which they will appear, and the other determines which game they will play and, thus, how big a pot of money they could win.

Shortly after the Feb. 8 taping at which several episodes were shot, it was discovered that names were transposed in such a way that nine contestants played for more money, and nine for less, than they would have without the error.

Lottery documents provide a clear record of what was known – and when.

Within days of the taping, a call from Brandy Hudson of the KPMG auditing firm prompted lottery staff to learn of the mix-up, sparking filing of an "incident/anomaly report."

Within a week, the lottery had created a list of contestants affected, how much each had won, and potential monetary impacts.

Each episode of "Make Me a Millionaire" consists of four segments, with differing stakes ranging from a $2,000 consolation prize to a progressive jackpot, in one game only, that begins at $1 million.

Culpepper won $30,000 but lost the chance to compete for Sineriz's $2.8 million. Other contestants negatively affected by the mix-up were Terry Gage, Anita Johnson, Patricia Gonzalez, Kai Lei Wu, Rosie Mark, Barbara Goodwin, Juan Lopez and Kimberly Bracamonte.

Maximum liability to the lottery, from the error, was estimated at $6 million.

A KPMG audit report about the Feb. 8 taping noted the transposition of names but did not express any opinion about its impact.

Ainsworth said a group of lottery officials – not including Borucki – met to discuss the incident shortly after it happened. They decided that since the audit report did not suggest the integrity of games had been compromised, no corrective action was necessary, he said.

The mix-up did not become public for seven months, until an unnamed source notified the Assembly oversight committee and Borucki was questioned at Wednesday's public hearing.

Borucki said details of the incident would have been brought to her attention if the integrity of games had been breached. KPMG declined to comment Thursday.

Contestants for the lottery's TV show are promised at least $2,000 and the chance to be selected in random draws for games offering much larger stakes, Ainsworth said.

Despite the error, both promises were kept – random draws ultimately determined which games the contestants played, he said.

De La Torre sees it differently, likening the mistake to switching numbers in a Lotto game – both draws might be random, but the result can cause harm.

De La Torre plans to ask his committee to push for a state audit on whether anomalies have affected the outcome of other lottery TV episodes and what action should be taken.

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