Twitter feud erupts between Jerry Brown press shop, columnist

A Twitter feud between Gov. Jerry Brown’s press secretary and writers from the Sacramento and Fresno Bee has found its way into the newspaper’s pages.

Thursday’s paper included an item on the tweeting exploits of Brown press secretary Gil Duran, including his sending a picture of a crying baby to the author of a critical tweet and a personal tete-a-tete with Bee columnist Dan Walters.

Walters started by riffing on a Brown remark that California was “not some tired country of Europe,” tweeting to his 1,540 followers that “California may be a tired American state.”

That earned a sharp response from Duran: “No, it’s just you that’s tired, Dan. Just you.”

This dust-up followed a back-and-forth between the columnist and the Brown press shop earlier in the week that covered topics ranging from hairstyles to Winston Churchill.

Duran has since dismissed the exchange as “a little joshing” between reporter and flack, but has maintained his fast tweeting pace.

“If you can’t stand the tweet,” he wrote, “stay out of the kitchen.”

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-- Anthony York in Sacramento

Photo: A screenshot showing an exchange of tweets between the accounts for Gil Duran and Dan Walters. Credit: Twitter.com

Lawmaker wants to bar bosses from demanding Facebook, Twitter data

A California lawmaker wants to make it harder for employers to snoop around job applicants’ Facebook pages, saying it is an unwarranted invasion of privacy.

State Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) introduced legislation Tuesday to prohibit employers from formally requesting or demanding  that workers or job applicants provide their social media user names and passwords.

Yee said  some businesses and colleges are asking job-seekers, workers, and students for their Facebook and Twitter account information, which can be used in background checks on job applicants.

“It is completely unacceptable for an employer or university to invade someone’s personal social media accounts,” Yee said. “Not only is it entirely unnecessary, it is an invasion of privacy and unrelated to one’s performance or abilities.” His bill would also extend the restrictions to universities.

The proposal is  drawing concern from the business community, which has complained in the past about over-regulation.

"There are just so many restrictions on small business owners that they are at the point where they don't want to add employees,'' said Betty Jo Toccoli, president of the California Small Business Assn. "Anything like this causes them to say they are going to downsize.''

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-- Patrick McGreevy in Sacramento

Photo: Facebook users are among those who would be covered by a proposed ban on employers seeking information on workers' social media accounts. Photographer: Paul Sakuma / Associated Press

Obama assist crashes Jerry Brown's website [Updated]

An appeal by President Obama to his supporters seeking help for Jerry Brown’s candidacy would seem like a godsend for the Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

But within minutes of Obama’s e-mail, so many people clicked the link that Brown’s website crashed. Obama supporters looking to contribute or volunteer found this message: “The site is currently not available due to technical problems. Please try again later. Thank you for your understanding.”

Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford said the website would be fixed shortly, and that the campaign appreciated the president's help.

Obama sent out the appeal for financial and volunteer support Tuesday afternoon. He has been fundraising for Sen. Barbara Boxer for months, but Tuesday’s missive is believed to be the first time he has asked his supporters to help Brown.

“For decades, Jerry Brown has been a champion for the people of California. He has served as governor, as mayor of Oakland, and is currently the attorney general,” Obama wrote in the e-mail, which was distributed by Organizing For America, the Democrats' national get-out-the-vote apparatus. “To each of these jobs, he's brought an unparalleled passion for helping the people of California. Now, he wants to return to Sacramento to bring that passion to the governor's office, and he needs our help to ensure that he wins this race.”

Brown is being outspent by Republican rival Meg Whitman, a billionaire who has put $104 million of her own into her effort to win the governorship.

[Updated at 3:24 p.m.: The Whitman campaign dismissed the move as an act of desperation. “Meg is running neck-and-neck with Jerry Brown, despite Brown’s 14-point party registration edge, because she’s the only credible candidate to create jobs and get California’s economy back on track," said spokesman Tucker Bounds. "Announcing an endorsement like this in the dead of summer means that Jerry Brown is worried, the White House is worried, or both.”]

-- Seema Mehta 

New website makes it easier to follow the money

Following the flow of campaign dollars can be an arduous task. Navigating the official records at the secretary of state's website is often clumsy and imperfect.

Now that the June primaries are upon us, campaigns must report new donations within 24 hours, making the flow of data overwhelming for good old-fashioned Web surfing.

Well, for those of us who like our information delivered directly to us, a new site using state data feeds is making monitoring political cash easier.

ElectionTrack.com has launched a new Twitter feed that automatically updates the latest campaign contributions. You can sign up for the feed here.

-- Anthony York

Dueling tele-town halls and fundraising pleas in Senate race

Call it the battle for the conference-call vote.

On the heels of a key fundraising deadline, Republican Senate candidates Tom Campbell and Carly Fiorina are simultaneously turning to some old-fashioned technology Wednesday evening to reach out to voters in the heated primary race to take on Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. They are dead even in recent polling, with the third GOP candidate, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, trailing.

Tele-town halls allow candidates to get their message across to thousands of likely voters in an hour or two, a reach difficult to replicate at traditional campaign rally events. Campbell has been a long-time user of the format, where likely voters are called and patched onto a conference call with a candidate. Fiorina is hosting her third tele-town hall.

Fiorina will take questions from voters starting at 7:30 p.m. Campbell will discuss his proposal to halve the federal budget deficit and take questions starting 15 minutes later.

Earlier Wednesday, the candidates raced to raise money before the fundraising deadline. Money raised between Jan. 1 and Wednesday will be disclosed in mid-April, and serve as a gauge of a campaign’s success and fundraising prowess for pundits and prognosticators. All four main candidates sent out pleas to supporters asking for donations.

Tom Campbell talks budgets, taxes and demon sheep

Former Rep. Tom Campbell took issue this afternoon with one of the few things that his GOP Senate competitors actually agree on -- their charge that he is not a true fiscal conservative because of past support for temporary state tax increases.

Campbell said he supported last May’s Proposition 1A, despite temporary income, car and sales tax increases, because it would have created permanent spending limits and a rainy-day fund.

“The overall good is worth the short-term harm,” he said.

Additionally, he noted that the state had financial commitments that had to be met, and unlike the federal government, the state cannot borrow money to balance its budget without legislative approval or print currency.

“The state has an obligation to keep schools open and to keep roads open,” he said.

Campbell’s competitors in the Republican primary, businesswoman Carly Fiorina and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, have been hammering Campbell about his support for such measures, notably in Fiorina’s widely viewed and widely panned “demon sheep” video. The online ad features a man wearing a sheep suit with red laser eyes who is supposed to represent Campbell as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and Fiorina’s campaign derides him as “Taxin’ Tom” and a “Fiscal Conservative in Name Only.”

Campbell largely avoided jumping into the fray over the video last week, aside from sending out a fundraising appeal about it.

On Thursday, when asked for a response, he said, “The best answer is this news conference and the substantive work that I’ve done on the budget, which hopefully returns the campaign discourse to the serious issues, to focus on the fundamental problems of our economy, our budget and our deficit and how that causes people to be unemployed. That’s what I care about deeply, that’s what I’m spending my time on, and that’s perhaps why you didn’t hear anything else from me.”

Campbell made these comments while speaking to reporters about his proposals to decrease the deficit in President Obama’s proposed budget by 56%, to $562 billion. He would achieve this reduction through a combination of creating non-defense spending caps, eliminating stimulus spending planned for the next two years as well as the proposed jobs bill, using returned bank bailout money to cut the deficit, and capping future Medicaid spending. Some of these savings would be used to eliminate proposed tax increases on banks and families earning more than $250,000, and to forgive payroll taxes for new hires.

-- Seema Mehta

Carly Fiorina defends 'demon sheep' video [Updated]

Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina stood by her now infamous “demon sheep” ad on Thursday morning, arguing that the online video, widely panned by pundits but also widely viewed, did what it was intended to do – challenge the underpinnings of primary opponent Tom Campbell’s candidacy.

“Look, what I like about the ad is first, it’s funny, but it’s also factually correct. Despite all the commentary about this ad, no one, including Tom Campbell, has even attempted to dispute the facts because the facts are true,” Fiorina said while speaking to reporters after hosting a small-business round-table in Vernon. “The facts are Tom Campbell calls himself a fiscal conservative, and he is anything but. Someone who believes we ought to close California’s budget deficit by raising the gasoline tax by 32 cents a gallon is not a fiscal conservative.”

Fiorina’s campaign caused an uproar on Wednesday when it released a three-minute, 21-second attack ad that features a pastoral field of grazing sheep, which are apparently supposed to represent fiscal conservatives, and one demonic-looking interloper, a man in a sheep suit with blazing red eyes who is supposed to represent Campbell as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The video has been seen more than 100,000 times on YouTube.

Both Campbell, a former congressman and Chuck DeVore, the Orange County assemblyman who is the third GOP primary candidate, seized upon the hoopla, trying to use the ad to raise money and mock Fiorina’s judgment.

[Updated at 3:46 p.m.: Campbell's camp deemed the affair a "full Mutton Meltdown." Campbell spokesman Jamie Fisfis said that "contrary to Carly Fiorina's insulting portrayal of fiscal conservatives as sheep, these are in fact involved people who engage the issues and ask tough questions.  And unlike Carly Fiorina, they have fought alongside Tom Campbell on the front lines of spending reform and supported these reforms with their votes."]

Fiorina said she saw the ad before it was unveiled publicly, and acknowledged that the reaction in some quarters has been less than kind.

“The reaction is all over the map: It’s the best ad ever, it’s the worst ad ever,” she said.

-- Seema Mehta