[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

Tom McClintock, the career politician who’s run for seemingly every office in the state at one point or another, has long claimed to be a champion for conservatives who "want their Constitution back". McClintock, now running for a congressional seat more than 400 miles away from the state Senate district he currently represents, has been described as a "righteous defender of the Constitution."

That’s why it’s particularly interesting (not to mention hypocritical) that McClintock financed his primary campaign through the campaign finance law known as the "Millionaire’s Amendment" that the Supreme Court last week ruled is unconstitutional.

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

Welcome back to the long-awaited California House races roundup!  These things take up an inordinate amount of time, but I've finally found some, and I'm ready to go with this roundup.  There's a lot of additional information, including Q4 2007 fundraising numbers, the turnout in the February primary offering a decent snapshot of Democratic chances in a particular district, and quite a few new candidates to speak about.  I'm going to rank the top ten challenges to Republican-held seats across the state, as well as take a look at the two intriguing races held by Democrats.  But first, it should be mentioned that the deadline for applying to run for a Congressional seat is fast approaching (March 7, I believe), and 4 of the 19 Republican-held seats in the state still have no challenger: CA-02 (Herger), CA-19 (Radanovich), CA-22 (McCarthy), and CA-25 (McKeon).  This is especially distressing in CA-19 and CA-25, where turnout in the Feb. 5 primary was either even or favored Democrats.  So anyone in these 4 districts: run for Congress!  It's a r?sum? builder!

(By the way, you can follow all of the candidates in all these races at the 2008 Race Tracker.

OK, let's get into it:

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

Former State Senator Jackie Speier will jump into the race for the 12th District Congressional seat on Sunday at noon with an announcement at Leo J. Ryan Park in Foster City.
 
The location for the announcement will serve as an interesting backdrop for Speier's candidacy. Speier was with Congressman Ryan when he was murdered in Guyana by members of the People's Temple, sustaining five bullet wounds herself.
 
State Senator Leland Yee has also expressed interest in the seat.

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Thomas Gangale

He had a quiet, matter-of-fact, Iowa way of speaking, but from the first, I saw something in Charlie Brown. I saw an Air Force Academy graduate, an effective leader, an honorable man. I saw the future congressman.

I figured that as he got more experience on the campaign trail, the stiff awkwardness would fall away, and now that the braces were off his teeth, he would learn to smile all over again. But the stiffness and the self-conscious, Washingtonian "I'm afraid to smile" manner made it all the more plain that Charlie was quietly determined.

A newcomer both to the Democratic Party and to politics itself, he was taking on John Doolittle, the seven-term Republican incumbent who had turned California's 4th congressional district into a fiefdom controlled by his political machine. It was one of the largest and most rural of California's districts, stretched along the northern range of the Sierra Nevada, from Lake Tahoe to the Oregon border, encompassing some counties that didn't even have Democratic central committees. The 4th district was the reddest of the red.