Blackjack, image by 18percentgreyIn the annals of California gaming history, there is perhaps no more infamous and consequential figure than Bob Lytle, who directly shaped California’s current gambling landscape right before he retired from the Attorney General’s office to go work for a cardroom – a cardroom where he was later investigated and ultimately lost his gaming license.
John Eastman, photo via Associated PressJohn Eastman has been alternatively described as a brilliant legal scholar, a mild-mannered political animal and co-conspirator in a plot to illegally overturn an election. But just who is John Eastman really? Since he transmogrified from a relatively anonymous, dial-a-quote law professor in Orange County to one of the supposed masterminds of Donald Trump’s Hail Mary ploy to hold onto the presidency, Eastman and his once-sterling reputation have been irrevocably tarnished, putting both his career and freedom in jeopardy.
If you’re one of the hundreds of candidates for the Legislature, Congress, or even the pending US Senate race, one data question is hovering over everything you’re planning for the 2024 primary election: what will turnout look like?
Kamala Harris on a campaign swing in New Hampshire, 2019. (Photo: Maverick Pictures, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Well, here we are, just milliseconds after the 2022 mid-term elections, and the inevitable speculation has already begun about who will run for president two years hence. For Democrats, that conjecturing almost necessarily includes whether Kamala Harris will run if President Joe Biden chooses to stand down. It might be a moot point, because Biden has sworn he is planning to run again in 2024 at the ripe old age of 81 — and has let drop that First Lady Jill Biden has given her assent.
Gov. Gavin Newsom during a visit last fall to San Francisco. (Photo: Jana Asenbrennerova, via Shutterstock)Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared flatly that he is not interested in running for president. “I have sub-zero interest,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board recently. “It’s not even on my radar.” Right.
State Attorney General Rob Bonta in San Francisco at a women's rights demonstration last week. <(Photo: Sheila Fitzgerald, via Shutterstock)OPINION: With the expected blow-out win of Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose re-election was almost assured when he demolished the ill-advised recall attempt last year, pundits and political reporters – always spoiling for a good fight and a close race — now seem to be searching the other seven races for statewide office to find one that might be even marginally competitive.
State Senate Republican Leader Senator Shannon Grove. (Photo: Shannon Grove Facebook page.State Senate Republican Leader Shannon Grove of Bakersfield is under fire for tweeting a conspiracy theory that the rioters who stormed the White House Wednesday were actually members of the far left-wing group Antifa in disguise.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla at a 2019 news conference in the state Capitol. (Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)Alex Padilla, California’s chief elections officer and a former state legislator, was appointed Tuesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the U.S. Senate seat of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. The appointment is historic: Padilla, 47, becomes California’s first Latino U.S. senator, representing a state in which about 38 percent of the population is Latino.
California Latinos celebrate the 3election results at a Nov. 7 rally in downtown Los Angeles. (Photo: Matt Gush)OPINION: The election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris has left Harris’ Senate seat open. In appointing someone to fill this seat, Governor Newsom has the opportunity to secure another historic first by selecting our state’s first Latino or Latina U.S. Senator.
Last week Capitol Weekly and the McGeorge Capital Center for Law & Policy presented a Post-Mortem of the 2020 Election, a half-day online conference in which a score of experts and insiders discussed the results of the election and provided a look-ahead at what they mean for 2021 – and beyond. This event was held on Thursday, November 5. We broadcast audio from each of the presentations as individual episodes of the Capitol Weekly Podcast.