GreenerGovernor.org

Source: Sacramento Bee/Jack Chiang

Tom Campbell announced in a news release and video this morning that he was leaving the Republican guernatorial race in California to run for the U.S. Senate again Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.
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Source: California High Speed Rail Blog/Robert Cruickshank

HSR becomes an issue in the gubernatorial race. California will finally get to wave goodbye to the Worst Governor Ever, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and elect his replacement. The Democratic Party will nominate former governor Jerry Brown (exempt from term limits, as are all governors still living who served before 1990), who in 1982 passed the state’s first high speed rail law, a project that was short-lived but included Quentin Kopp and Mehdi Morshed as important figures. Brown has become more centrist and even conservative in some ways over the last 30 years, but he should be a reliable supporter of the project.

It’s less clear where the Republican candidates – Meg Whitman, Steve Poizner, and Tom Campbell stand, but given their shared hostility to government spending, it seems likely that all of them will be HSR skeptics. Poizner, who is closest ideologically to the right-wingers at the Reason Foundation, is the most likely to embrace outright HSR denialism, and Whitman could embrace some of it as well if she felt it served her needs.Read more

Source: Sign-On San Diego Blog/Chris Reed

I heard from an intriguingly well-placed source that there are growing signs Tom Campbell is near a decision to quit the gov's race and instead compete with Assemblyman Chuck DeVore and former H-P exec Carly Fiorina for the Republican nomination to run against the reliably aggravating Sen. Barbara Boxer.

I heard very similar stuff last week from a well-connected journalist covering state politics.

This would appear to be bad news for Fiorina. DeVore is the conservative pin-up in the race, Fiorina the pro-business moderate with skeltons in her closet that may make rank-and-file GOPers reluctant to accept the narrative that holds she would be more electable. Campbell is very much in the latter category.Read more

Source: John Myers/Capitol Notes

There are 321 days left until California voters go to the polls and choose their next governor. That's a long time, but not so long that political junkies won't read tonight's new poll and wonder this: might the all-but-official Democratic heavyweight candidate end up losing?

It's not that crazy a question, given the Public Policy Institute of California survey that shows Jerry Brown leading Meg Whitman in a potential matchup by just six points.Read more