Since we're getting a celebrity fix today, W magazine takes a look at the heavy hitting political consultants in Hollywood. Celebrities aren't making up their own minds about politics, folks - they have people for that. LA Observed has the rundown, but here is a snippet from W:
"Barbra Streisand has long been advised by Marge Tabankin, who came to
L.A. after having once worked in the Carter administration. For years,
Steven Spielberg has called upon Andy Spahn, who once worked for the
Democratic congressional and senatorial campaign committees, while Rob
Reiner (pictured) works with Chad Griffin, a former press aide in the Clinton
White House who first met the director while showing him around the
West Wing during a research trip for American President. 'You have a lot of people who are very wealthy and very concerned
about different aspects of society, and they want to use their money
and influence in the best possible way,' Reiner says." (Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)
The city council in the turkey-and-cow town of Livingston, which is near Winton and Delhi, votes tonight on whether to hire former Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante as its $10,000-a-month lobbyist.
Officials in the Merced County town say they need Bustamante's political muscle to secure funding for improvements on a couple of Highway 99 on-ramps, because the projects are "not on the state's project priority list." From the Merced Sun-Star: "Councilmen Rodrigo Espinoza and Bill Ingram met Bustamante during a League of Cities meeting last month in Sacramento. The councilmen told the former lieutenant governor about the challenges
the city faces while it grows, and Bustamante suggested they hire a
lobbyist to represent them, Ingram said. "He knows everybody in Sacramento," Ingram said. "It's pretty exciting for the city if we can get him."
Pretty exciting indeed.
(Photo: Rich Pedroncelli / AP)
When the Schwarzenegger administration this week announced the 14 members of the Market Advisory Committee, a new panel created to help the California Air Resources Board enact this year's Global Warming Solutions Act, there were a slew of details about the chairman: Winston Hickox is former Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency. As Secretary of Cal/EPA, Hickox was instrumental in the enactment of legislation requiring new greenhouse gas emission standards for cars. He also established the Environmental Protection Indicators for California, and led the implementation of Environmental Justice legislation in California. Since July of 2004, Hickox has been employed by CalPERS, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, as a Senior Portfolio Manager. He has assisted with the design and implementation of a series of Environmental Investment Initiatives, including investments in clean technology, and other investment initiatives focused on the impacts of climate change. Hickox currently serves on the Sacramento County Employees’ Retirement System Board, as well as the Boards of the following NGOs: the California League of Conservation Voters, Audubon California, and the Sustainable Conservation Boards. Hickox has a BS in Business Administration from Cal State University Sacramento, and an MBA from Golden Gate University.
One pertinent biographical detail, however, was left out: Hickox is a partner at California Strategies, the uber-influential government consulting, PR and lobbying firm founded by Bob White, the former chief of staff to Pete Wilson.
BreAnda Northcutt, a spokeswoman for Cal EPA, said Hickox's current employment "certainly wasn't omitted with maliciousness," but that the lengthly bios of all the members had to be edited down so that only the most directly relevant experiences were included. Hickox said he was "not at all hesitant" to have California Strategies mentioned. He says he will be working on the firm's "existing book of business" and otherwise will concentrate on helping institutional investors learn from and replicate what California's public pension funds have done in terms of using their capital to address climate change issues.
Interestingly, California Strategies is in merger talks with another player in a major government endeavor: Smith, Watts & Co., whose partners D.J. Smith and Mark Watts are two of the biggest consultants and lobbyists on transportation issues in Sacramento. (The firm's former partner, Will Kempton, is director of Caltrans.) They helped design and get approved by voters this year's $20 billion transportation bond package. Now that it has passed, the state is going to have a huge influx of new money to be divvied up for roads, bridges, public transit systems and ports.
So with these two moves, California Strategies soon will include people with great connections and expertise concerning two of the biggest ventures the state of California is undertaking. We can already hear the clients queuing up at the door.
-- Jordan Rau
This election is soooooo over (except for Joe Dunn's Orange County state Senate seat), but the autopsies will continue Wednesday evening in L.A.
The USC Unruh Institute of Politics is hosting its own coroners' convention. Reception starts at 6:30 p.m. and talking starts at 7 p.m. at Taper Hall Auditorium, Room 101, on the USC campus. If you are an Angelides supporter, heavy drinking begins at 7:01 p.m.
Here's the list of participants on the state and national panels:
—Jordan Rau
The Sacramento Bee has a detailed transcript of a roundtable it held with consultants involved in the gubernatorial election. The participants included Steve Schmidt, who directed the Schwarzenegger campaign and Bill Carrick, who advised Angelides. Carrick does a nice job explaining the tough box Angelides was in, and Schmidt gives a lot of credit to Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy, who's been overlooked in a lot of the public kudos about Schwarzenegger's reversal of fortune. Schmidt also offers this great anecdote as a lesson in why you can never take for granted what candidate you are going to run against: "There was a very instructive lesson in my political career, sitting on my couch in Alexandria, Va., with my dog sitting next to me, surrounded by piles of Howard Dean research information, and I remember when Dean did his scream, I tossed one of my 4,000-page books on the ground, the dog woke up barking, jumped up on the couch, and in the morning I said what do we have on John Kerry? You get who you get. You don't spend a lot of time thinking about it."
Or, as Donald Rumsfield might have said, you go to the polling booth with the candidates you have, not the candidates you want.
—Jordan Rau
Update: Here's another, older Angelides postmortem from campaign strategist Katie Merrill.
 Matthew Dowd — the former Bush-Cheney 2004 chief political strategist who is now working for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — is launching a new website Thursday called Hotsoup.com. For the unveiling, the website is promoting a survey of 5,600 people which reveals: Voters have little faith in elected officials.
"Frustrated with the nation's leadership, an overwhelming number of Hotsoup.com community Members say they turn to their peers for answers to big problems rather than political, business, or religious institutions," the Hotsoup.com apparatchik announced in a press release.
Presumably that leadership does not include his client, Schwarzenegger.
The survey was conducted on the "coming soon" page of the website even before the formal launch Thursday. Hotsoup.com was co-founded by veterans of the political establishment: Dowd; Ron Fournier, the former chief political writer for the Associated Press; Mark McKinnon, Bush's pollster; Joe Lockhart, former President Bill Clinton's press secretary; and various other Democratic, Republican and media consultants.
Although run by the establishment, the site claims that it "will turn the pathways of influence in this nation upside-down as community Members help rewrite the national agenda and leaders engage with their constituencies in new ways." In other words, this is more marketing research for politicians.
Good luck. Perhaps it will work. But they might stop capitalizing community "Members." Seems like something a political strategist from the "pathways of influence" would dream up.
(Photo: Freddie Lee / AP)
Another political blog is up and running, and this time it's a decidedly partisan affair. Longtime Republican commentator Karen Hanretty and her Democratic counterpart, Robin Swanson, serve up the 2006 election in Behind the Ballot.
Angelides undoubtedly will get the majority of the ethnic vote in California. But that hasn't stopped Schwarzenegger from an aggressive, behind-the-scenes effort to court minority groups. And it's not just Latinos.
If he can improve his margin among African American voters from around 15% to perhaps 20%, his campaign will be happy. Some of the same campaign strategists who helped orchestrate a similar effort for President Bush now are advising Schwarzenegger.
Significantly, the governor's education adviser Margaret Fortune, who is African American, has been quietly working for months with black churches. Fourteen Bay Area black churches will form an alliance to receive some of the $500 million in Proposition 49 money for after-school programs, she said, and the First AME Church in L.A. is working to start a similar group effort.
Much of Schwarzenegger's work with minority groups has bypassed the Capitol press corps. After Maria Shriver returned from visiting the Dalai Lama, Schwarzenegger announced he would lead a trade delegation to India if re-elected -- telling Indian reporters based in California first during a private session. The governor has courted the Asian American press and held little-noticed events in the Capitol with Filipino Americans. He has received glowing stories in their press for just showing up.
Schwarzenegger visited the Lula Washington Dance Studio in L.A. The MSM virtually ignored it, but the event received heavy coverage in the African American newspapers. He met with California Black Media, a group of African American newspaper publishers, and again got good reviews.
"It was history because it's the first time that the Republican leadership on that level had met with us," said Hardy L. Brown, chairman of the Black Voice News in Riverside.
The Republican governor beat Angelides to the First AME Church in Los Angeles, after more than a month of planning. And he has reached out to influential pastors in ways that go beyond attending Sunday services. He called J. Alfred Smith Sr., pastor at the Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, after his wife died. Angelides, who has visited the church as well, sent a condolence letter but did not call.
"I don't forget about people who are nice to me," Smith told his congregation on Sunday, during a second visit by the Republican governor.
(Photo: Damian Dovarganes / AP)
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Since we're getting a celebrity fix today, W magazine takes a look at the heavy hitting political consultants in Hollywood. Celebrities aren't making up their own minds about politics, folks - they have people for that. LA Observed has the rundown, but here is a snippet from W:
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