We are ten months from the start of casting of ballots for the 2014 elections in California. A lot needs to be done, if you are a serious candidate. The first step is to determine viability. Then you have to determine if the challengers, or incumbent, can be defeated.
While we know that Brown has lied about balancing the budget, the size of the deficit and ignoring the pension crisis, few in the general public have any idea of the fraud in the Governors office. They believe him because he comes across as warm and cuddly—unlike, say, San Fran Nan.
This article is accurate, it be will difficult to beat him, especially since none of the proposed candidates are either known or charismatic. Decent people, some very wrong on the issues, but in California we have no issues. The GOP needs to rethink the field for 2014. Unless we have a strong, uniting candidate for Governor, the Democrats will be able to spend their money on legislative seats—not good for the Republican Party.
GOP Governor’s Race? What GOP Governor’s Race?
By Ben Adler, Capital Public Radio, 7/22/13
It’s less than a year until the first votes will be cast in the 2014 California governor’s race, but you wouldn’t know it from watching the campaign. Why is the Republican field shaping up so slowly to challenge Democratic Governor Jerry Brown?
Here’s how the race looks right now:
- There’s Assemblyman and tea party hero Tim Donnelly: “California needs somebody to stand up and fight – and somebody who believes that we can be the Golden State again,” he told the conservative website Politichicks.TV as he announced his exploratory campaign.
- There’s former Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado, who’s making Jerry Brown’s prison realignment program the lynchpin of his campaign. “The people of California are not safe today,” he told reporters in May as he announced a ballot initiative to overturn realignment. They are letting violent felons on the streets.”
- And there’s Neel Kashkari, a former U.S. Treasury official who led the response to the stock market crash known as TARP. He’s not formally in the race but he’s been quietly laying the groundwork.
Yet there’s hardly any talk about the campaign. Former GOP consultant Marty Wilson says he’s never seen a governor’s race start so slowly. And the biggest reason, he says, is Jerry Brown.
“Brown has proven to be a very effective governor, and so trying to find the issues where you can draw contrast are going to be a challenge,” Wilson says.
Conservative blogger Jon Fleischman doesn’t think any of the three candidates could excite the party’s base and raise enough money to win. “Most credible people don’t believe that Abel Maldonado even has a shot to do that. Kashkari is unknown, and while Tim Donnelly is certainly an admired member of the legislature, there’s metrics that he would need to reach to demonstrate he would have the ability to take on Jerry Brown,” Fleischman says.
Voting by mail begins in less than 10 months.
