We’re happy to announce that our voter guide for this year, including statewide candidates and the propositions, is now up…
Speak Out California’s 2006 General Election Progressive Voter Guide
Please do start linking to this and sending it around. We’ll have more details on the props and the printable versions up soon. There have been some interesting developments in the election this week…

This morning, Bush/Schwarzenegger strategist Matthew Dowd sent a memo to the Arnold campaign list about how they readily admit that the Governor has a hard ceiling of 55%. In other words, just under half of the likely voters in California have realized what a complete phony he is, and he’s never going to be able to punch through that barrier, short of renouncing conservativism forever. (and even then, why would we trust him? It’s obvious he’ll do or say anything to get elected at this point) But he’s not even anywhere near that 55%. Despite numerous bill signings with Democratic leaders and trazillions of dollars in advertising and name-calling, he hasn’t even been able to break 45% with any consistency.
The news for the Governor gets worse: Also this morning, PowerPAC and the Washington D.C. based New Democratic Network release a poll showing that Mr Angelides’ opponent is in big trouble with Latinos.
Some reactions to this have underestimated the importance of this demographic. There’s a terribly frustrating vicious circle around engaging people of color in this state right now: campaigns don’t talk to these communities, which in turn leads to low turnout, which causes subsequenct campaigns to continue to not spend resources trying to reach them, and so on. Groups like PowerPAC and NDN are doing great work driving a wedge into this.
There are a lot of undecided voters out there and the ground campaigns are about to start. The second half of this campaign starts now, and as Lou Holtz put it, “How you respond to the challenge in the second half will determine what you become after the game, whether you are a winner or a loser.” Winning is nice, but what really matters is how you respond to the challenge.
Practically anywhere you live in this state, there is going to be a campaign that is out there talking to people with a progressive story. Maybe it’s a Democratic club or a local race, and the Angelides campaign will certainly have big turnout operations going in the cities. Absentee ballots go out in a little over a week so. It’s time to get started.
Another Lou Holtz quote to keep in mind over the next five weeks: “No one has ever drowned in sweat.” There’s 16 million voters in this state. Let’s get out there and talk to them.