Should the California GOP focus more on the Lieutenant Gov race than Gov race?

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Kashkari could open the door for better performance among Californian Asians, as well as more moderate gays, libertarian-esque voters, and other groups. Obviously he's not going to win this year, but his positions are well suited for California and can be the beginning of better performances for the GOP in the future.

Neel Kashkari is a banker who used his position at Goldman Sachs to secure a job at the Treasury Department, where he was in charge of disbursing bailout funds until he left to use his Goldman Sachs money to fund his run for governor. He is not a candidate with any appeal to any group, which is why he'll be demolished in November. I would be shocked if he improved on or even held relatively steady compared to Whitman's 2010 vote in any state in the country.

Yes, an inside banker behind TARP is not exactly going to appeal as a "man of the people", but he's still a better candidate for the California GOP than Donnelly. The California GOP is of course a joke. In 2010, they decided that they really needed to have the past and future female CEOs of HP nailed down with their Senate and governor nominees.

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Speaking of the elections in California, has anyone done district by district ratings of the state assembly and state senate elections this year?

The Senate would be interesting since there could be a bias towards one party or the other for the last two years, since some areas had 2 Senate representatives and some had 0 because of redistricting. For the remaining 8 years of the redistricting decade, everywhere will have exactly 1.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Kashkari could open the door for better performance among Californian Asians, as well as more moderate gays, libertarian-esque voters, and other groups. Obviously he's not going to win this year, but his positions are well suited for California and can be the beginning of better performances for the GOP in the future.

Neel Kashkari is a banker who used his position at Goldman Sachs to secure a job at the Treasury Department, where he was in charge of disbursing bailout funds until he left to use his Goldman Sachs money to fund his run for governor. He is not a candidate with any appeal to any group, which is why he'll be demolished in November. I would be shocked if he improved on or even held relatively steady compared to Whitman's 2010 vote in any state in the country.

Yes, an inside banker behind TARP is not exactly going to appeal as a "man of the people", but he's still a better candidate for the California GOP than Donnelly. The California GOP is of course a joke. In 2010, they decided that they really needed to have the past and future female CEOs of HP nailed down with their Senate and governor nominees.

Kashkari might do better than Donnelly would have, but at very least Donnelly would have inspired the Republican base. Kashkari is pro-SSM; I know things have changed quite a bit, but this is still a state where a majority of voters just six years ago voted for Prop 8, and it's unbelievable that a majority of Republicans wouldn't still feel that way. Probably more damningly, he's pro-choice, and that's an issue on which Republicans haven't budged in decades and won't change opinion on anytime soon. When Republicans aren't going to win either way, why are they nominating a candidate so unrepresentative of their views?

Well, Kashkari is more electable in that if in a bad year for Democrats, he'd have a higher ceiling. Donnely's anti-immigrant views would ensure massive defeat in California no matter what. California now has more Hispanics than non-Hispanic whites.