Elections

Gov. Jerry Brown is raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for his tax campaign from California Indian tribes at the same time many tribes are seeking to renegotiate lucrative gambling compacts with him.

Democrats see the chance that President Barack Obama's heated exchange with Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona on the airport tarmac in Phoenix could help him with the Latino voters he came West to court this week.

Mitt Romney took on Newt Gingrich in a fierce war of words Thursday, striving to capitalize on a turn in the polls in the final debate before Florida's presidential primary on Tuesday.

While blue California is almost certain to go for President Barack Obama come November, California Republican Party Chairman Tom Del Beccaro sees opportunity for the GOP to be a major force from the presidential race down.

Mitt Romney's tax returns reveal that the Republican presidential candidate does something fewer Americans do these days: He tithes.

Two candidates announced Wednesday that they will run on "pro-Occupy" platforms as they seek to unseat Sacramento County Supervisors Roberta MacGlashan and Susan Peters.

President Barack Obama used an election-year State of the Union address Tuesday night to frame the national debate not as a referendum on his performance but as a pivotal decision on how to save the American dream.

PRIMARY RESULTS

Newt Gingrich surged to a landslide victory in the South Carolina Republican primary Saturday, a stunning come-from-behind upset that shook the contest for the party's presidential nomination.

South Carolina Republican voters are poised to define the 2012 GOP presidential race today, but the outcome of the South's first primary is hard to predict.

Newt Gingrich lashed out angrily at the news media Thursday night for fresh reporting on his failed second marriage, in an extraordinary opening to a high-stakes debate two days before a pivotal GOP presidential primary in South Carolina.

Gov. Jerry Brown, campaigning for higher taxes and infrastructure spending in the state's more conservative reaches Thursday, claimed widespread business support for his tax plan and suggested dire consequences should it fail.

A moment that Newt Gingrich had long been hoping for and one that he had long been dreading collided Thursday when a new opening for him to rally conservatives around his candidacy was suddenly complicated when the second of his three wives stepped forward to say he had asked for an "open marriage."

Auto insurance companies will get a second shot at asking California voters to allow them to use a motorist's coverage history when setting rates.

With a fortune estimated to be as large as a quarter of a billion dollars, Mitt Romney is among the wealthiest men ever to run for president.

Gov. Jerry Brown can begin collecting signatures on his tax initiative thanks to a timely release by state Attorney General Kamala Harris on Wednesday.

Democratic strategists on Wednesday put more serious muscle behind two Central Valley congressional challengers.

It's that time of year again, California. Clipboard-carrying paid solicitors and volunteers are setting up shop outside grocery stores and on busy street corners in search of petition signatures for proposed initiatives for the November ballot.

With this state's Republican presidential primary a week away, former Sen. Rick Santorum on Saturday received the endorsement of 150 influential Christian conservative leaders who are hoping to prevent former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney from becoming the GOP nominee.

Under the old political rules, Mitt Romney arrived in South Carolina this week the prohibitive Republican front-runner: flush with cash, awash in endorsements from a party establishment starting to coalesce behind him, and buoyed by victories in Iowa and New Hampshire.

The Republican presidential sweepstakes shifted Wednesday to South Carolina, where former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney hopes to keep running the table of contests while his rivals try to halt his momentum toward the GOP nomination.

For months David Axelrod, President Barack Obama's longtime senior strategist, has argued with evident anticipation that Mitt Romney offers a glass jaw when he boasts that his business record sets him apart as a presidential candidate.

Mitt Romney won a decisive victory Tuesday in New Hampshire's Republican primary, scoring a solid triumph that firmly establishes him as the favorite to win the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.

While the Republican presidential campaigns fast-forward to New Hampshire on Tuesday and South Carolina on Jan. 21, hardly anyone in California is off the couch. Republicans here know the race may be over before they vote on June 5.

Mitt Romney coolly defended his solid New Hampshire lead Saturday night in a high-stakes debate, while his rivals took aim at each other as they each struggled to emerge as Romney's main challenger.

The outcome of Tuesday's New Hampshire primary probably depends on this state's historically unpredictable independent voters.

On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney casts himself as the guardian of American opportunity, who would stop President Barack Obama's attempt "to replace our merit-based society with an entitlement society."

Mitt Romney's quest to swiftly lock down the Republican presidential nomination with a commanding finish in the Iowa caucuses was spoiled Tuesday night by the surging candidacy of Rick Santorum, who fought him to a draw on a shoestring budget by winning over conservatives who remain skeptical of Romney.

Tweets from the Republican candidates, media and pundits.

The filing period has begun in Sacramento County for people interested in running for elective office in the June 5 primary.

The attacks began three weeks ago and have not let up since: Television ad after ad slamming Newt Gingrich for having "more baggage than the airlines," for being fined by Congress for ethics violations, for his position on illegal immigration, even for admitting that he has made mistakes on the campaign trail.

With Iowa Republicans starting to make up their minds – and shuffling the deck of candidates – the 2012 presidential contest turned emotional Friday, just days before the state's caucuses kick off the voting for a GOP nominee.

Jonathan Gabhart, a 21-year-old college student from Spencer, Iowa, is leaning toward voting for Ron Paul because of the Texas lawmaker's unpolished speaking style – a "high-pitched, squirrelly voice," as he put it. "He seems like a real person because of his eccentricities."

He could easily win the Iowa precinct caucuses Tuesday, which kick off the voting for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Mitt Romney and his allies are making an assertive final push this week to increase his chances of a strong finish in the Iowa caucuses, the outcome of which could help determine the length of the Republican presidential nominating battle.

One month from today, South Carolina voters will pick their Republican presidential choice out of a crowded field. And, if history holds, they will also pick the Republican presidential candidate. Since 1980, the state's GOP voters have successfully chosen the eventual nominee.Here are five factors that will determine who wins in the Palmetto State Jan. 21.

Newt Gingrich found his record challenged repeatedly in a high-stakes debate Thursday, the last chance for him and his rivals to appear together in a televised debate before voting for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination starts in less than three weeks.

With just six months until the June primary election, campaign cash is starting to flow to candidate and ballot measure committees.

Michele Bachmann was an "accidental politician," and it all began on April Fool's Day. On April 1, 2000, the 2012 Republican White House hopeful — then a "middle American mom," as she wrote in her recent memoir — made a fateful, spur-of-the moment decision that changed her life.

People in Iowa are getting to see a side of the Republican presidential campaign not nearly as visible to the rest of the country. Candidates and their allies are starting to air TV ads in Iowa as the state enters the final weeks before precinct caucuses on Jan. 3, which will kick off the voting for a 2012 Republican presidential nominee. Some ads match what the rest of the country sees in nationally televised debates; some are more blunt and critical.

Newt Gingrich offered a robust defense of his views on the Middle East, his lucrative work after leaving Congress and his conservative credentials during a spirited debate here Saturday as his Republican presidential rivals urged voters to take a hard look at his candidacy.

Soon after Mitt Romney handed out eye-popping bonuses to top performers at his private equity firm in the early 1990s, a young employee invited him to ride in his brand-new toy – a $90,000 Porsche 911 Carrera.

With Newt Gingrich virtually wearing a big target on his back, he and his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination square off tonight in the first of two debates in Iowa that could prove pivotal to the contest.

Even as he widens his lead in the 2012 presidential polls, Newt Gingrich spends substantial time on an activity that earlier, as a back-of-the-pack candidate, raised questions about his ultimate motive – selling and signing $25 copies of his books.

This is another in a series of profiles on the Republican presidential candidates.

The fight over unions using members' dues to fund political spending is headed back to the ballot next year.

His popularity sinking and his credibility under attack, Herman Cain suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination on Saturday in a defiant, unapologetic blaze of glory.

Californians remain poisonously skeptical about Congress, and many blame both parties for the latest budget-cutting failure on Capitol Hill, a statewide poll shows.

Mitt Romney ramped up his campaign Thursday in Iowa – the first state to vote, on Jan. 3, in the 2012 Republican presidential campaign – a strategy that may be necessary now that Newt Gingrich poses a serious threat to Romney's White House bid.

Voters in deep blue California aren't so sure they want to send President Barack Obama back to the White House in 2012, but they still prefer the Democratic incumbent over the GOP alternatives by double-digit margins.

California Republicans still favor former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the GOP's presidential primary sweepstakes, but they have a new No. 2: Newt Gingrich.

Voters routinely ask about it on the campaign trail. Pundits chronicle the slightest changes in its presentation. There is a Facebook page devoted it – not to mention an entire blog. "Has it always been this good?" read a recent online entry.

Why don't Washington lawmakers understand that the public hates Congress? Don't they worry that debacles like this week's supercommittee failure are likely to mean political peril for incumbents? No.

Republican presidential candidates grappled Tuesday over how to balance civil liberties and security, as they engaged in a lively and substantive debate over how best to protect Americans from threats around the world.

In a sudden race to place tax initiatives on the ballot, hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer has filed a proposal to raise $1.1 billion from out-of-state companies for schools and green building projects.

The answer to one of the great lingering questions about the Republican presidential race has suddenly turned up here along Ingersoll Avenue, where Mitt Romney's Iowa campaign headquarters is opening for business.

For roughly six years, Newt Gingrich worked closely with high-level officials at the government-sponsored mortgage company Freddie Mac. As a highly paid consultant, he coached them on how to win over the conservatives who consider their company an anathema, spoke to their political action committee and offered general advice as they worked to stave off various threats to Freddie Mac's survival, several people familiar with his role there said Wednesday.

SPARTANBURG, S.C. – Republican presidential hopefuls lambasted President Barack Obama on Saturday as weak and misguided on the world stage but differed in a debate over how they would rein in Iran's reported effort to develop nuclear weapons.

Voters in the El Dorado Irrigation District swept out an incumbent in Tuesday's board election amid charges that the district had overspent and was raising rates too quickly.

Republican presidential candidates drew a bright line against government help for the private economy Wednesday night, whether it's to bail out the U.S. auto industry at home or ease a debt crisis in Italy that could threaten the world economy.

After stewing an awfully long time, B.C. Keith came up with what she saw as a simple solution to the lack of gender equality at the state Capitol.

Mitt Romney on Friday told a convention of staunch conservatives – the skeptics he badly needs to win the Republican presidential nomination – how, as president, he'd push deep domestic spending cuts.

The lawyer for one of the women who accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment said Friday that Cain engaged in a "series of inappropriate behaviors and unwanted advances" toward his client over two months in the 1990s,and he directly accused Cain, a Republican presidential candidate, of not telling the truth about his behavior.

A leading California think tank on Thursday rolled out its latest ballot proposal to tackle the Golden State's fiscal and governance woes.

They say in Iowa that a voter has to meet a candidate for president face to face a few times before deciding whom to support.

New district boundaries for Sacramento County Supervisors - recently redrawn to reflect population changes in the last decade - go into effect today.

State and local workers would pay more for their pensions under two ballot initiative proposals made public Wednesday.

Counties and local law enforcement groups filed an initiative Tuesday that would require the state to continue paying them billions of dollars each year for new duties such as housing inmates and overseeing parolees.

About once a month, a dozen or so of the country's most influential Republicans meet in a bare-walled conference room in Washington to discuss how to make further gains in the congressional elections next year and defeat President Barack Obama.

Opponents have launched a referendum drive aimed at killing California's newly drawn congressional districts.

The consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog wants to take regulation of health insurance rates to Calfornia voters with a ballot initiative set for 2012.

California's Legislature is on the brink of unprecedented turnover next year, prompting interest groups to intensify their efforts to raise money and recruit candidates.

Medical marijuana advocates, decrying a federal government crackdown on dispensaries and a failure of state lawmakers to act, said Tuesday that they are drafting a 2012 ballot initiative to impose statewide oversight of California's burgeoning medicinal cannabis trade.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas unveiled a plan Tuesday to scrap the graduated income tax and replace it with a 20 percent flat rate while granting a major tax cut for the wealthy by throwing out rates as high as 35 percent and eliminating estate and investment taxes.

Minority voters have long had problems exercising their right to vote in certain parts of the country – and minority lawmakers fear the situation will become worse in 2012.

Herman Cain, the Republican presidential candidate with the sharp wit and easy-to-remember tax plan, is a cancer survivor, radio host and former chief executive of Godfather's Pizza. On the campaign trail, he talks up his business experience, casting himself as a "problem solver" and Washington outsider.

California residents have given almost $18 million to 2012 presidential candidates.

President Barack Obama wrapped up a three-day bus tour through two politically potent Southern states Wednesday, delivering a potential preview of a 2012 campaign theme: insisting he's trying to deliver a jolt to the moribund economy but is being thwarted by Republicans who want only to roll back financial and environmental regulations.

The hostilities flaring between Mitt Romney and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas have been steadily rising inside both camps and may signal a new, more combative phase in the Republican presidential campaign.

Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan would give every American making more than $1 million an average tax cut of $455,000, according to a new independent analysis.

Former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado looks like he is playing yo-yo with his own money while he pumps up a campaign war chest intended for a high-profile House race on the California coast.

A referendum to overturn Senate Bill 202, one of the most controversial measures to emerge from the 2011 legislative session, was given the green light this week to collect signatures.

Republican presidential candidates brawled Tuesday over Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan and Mitt Romney's record on illegal immigration and health care as rivals hammered the two top-tier contenders in the liveliest GOP clash of the 2012 campaign.

In another marker of the region's shifting demographics, the federal government said Wednesday that Sacramento County must print ballots and other voting materials in Chinese by the next election.

California's new district lines have shaken up the political landscape for next year's election. As a result, candidates and incumbents across the state are "diving and dodging" into districts that will give them the best shot at victory.

Chris Christie's political advisers are working to determine whether they could move fast enough to set up effective political operations in Iowa and New Hampshire in the wake of a relentless courtship aimed at persuading Christie, the governor of New Jersey, to plunge into the race for the Republican presidential nomination, according to operatives briefed on the preparations.

Long-shot Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain calls his surprise victory in a Florida straw poll over the weekend a victory of message over media, and he may well be right.

They were once among President Barack Obama's most loyal supporters and a potent symbol of his political brand: voters of moderate means who dug deep for the candidate and his message of hope and change, sending him $10 or $25 or $50 every few weeks or months.

Florida Republicans threatened to shake up the GOP presidential race Saturday, giving business executive Herman Cain a solid win in a straw poll and delivering a sharp rebuke to front-runner Rick Perry.

Gov. Rick Perry and his aides in Texas have spent hours studying old footage and records of Mitt Romney, stretching back nearly two decades, building a list of issues on which they believe Romney has waffled or wavered, seeking to brand him as inauthentic.

Yes, Rick Perry says in his book that "by any measure, Social Security is a failure."

Failing to appeal to Latino voters and suffering mightily because of it, the California Republican Party on Saturday invited Latinos to a town-hall style event to talk it over.

Michele Bachmann, laboring to regain standing in the Republican presidential field, told California's Republican Party on Friday to keep its head up despite its dwindling numbers.

Charles T. Munger Jr. is gaining prominence in a state Republican Party now regularly in search of money needed to win in blue California. But Munger's involvement in the state GOP goes beyond writing checks.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is maintaining his edge over a surging Texas Gov. Rick Perry among Republicans looking to California's June 2012 presidential primary, according to a new Field Poll.

As Congress opens a politically charged exploration of ways to pare the deficit, President Barack Obama is expected to seek hundreds of billions of dollars in savings in Medicare and Medicaid, delighting Republicans and dismaying many Democrats who fear his proposals will become a starting point for bigger cuts in the popular health programs.

Democrats are expressing growing alarm about President Barack Obama's re-election prospects and, in interviews, are openly acknowledging anxiety about the White House's ability to strengthen the president's standing over the next 14 months.

A last-minute proposal to limit initiatives and referendums to the November general election ballot is in the hands of Gov. Jerry Brown.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the surging presidential candidate joining the Republican field Wednesday for the first time on a national stage, touted his record on job creation and defended his view that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" for future generations.

As the Republican candidates for president arrive today in Simi Valley to debate at the Reagan Presidential Library, they will find the Republican Party in California in decline, its registration falling and its remaining members older and more conservative than in Reagan's time.

Gov. Rick Perry is privately being coached to come across as more presidential – cautious in his comments, deliberate in defending his Texas record – while building on his fast start in the race for the nomination by trying to consolidate support across the Republican spectrum, from the tea party and evangelicals to the party establishment.

Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, says climate change is a "contrived, phony mess." The federal income tax was the "great milestone on the road to serfdom." And the Boy Scouts of America are under attack by "a radical homosexual movement."

Californians could be able to register online to vote in time for the 2012 elections if legislation headed to Gov. Jerry Brown's desk is signed into law.

For the first time, Texas Gov. Rick Perry leads President Barack Obama in a national poll, by 44 to 41 percent, while his GOP rivals trail in head-to-head matchups against the president.

One night last month, Mitt Romney strode into a dining room above Central Park that was packed with dozens of his wealthiest supporters, gathered there by a group of former campaign aides, to talk about his bid for the White House.

Petition circulators hitting the streets and storefronts in search of voter support would have to wear identifying badges if they are being paid to gather signatures under legislation sent Thursday to Gov. Jerry Brown.

cl/rfWASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency is emerging as a favorite target of the Republican presidential candidates, who portray it as the very symbol of a heavy-handed regulatory agenda imposed by the Obama administration that they say is strangling the economy.

A GOP-backed group has formally started the process of seeking to overturn the new state Senate districts drawn by an independent redistricting panel.

Gov. Rick Perry did not back down Tuesday, but he did not repeat his suggestion that the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve were potentially "treasonous" and could warrant "ugly" treatment should the chairman, Ben Bernanke, ever visit Texas.

2012 Election Calendar

Mitt Romney: flexible pragmatist, or a politically soulless flip-flopper too eager to please? Add this shifting nuance on health to position changes or tweaks on abortion, the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays, and a host of other issues, and Romney has a reputation as someone without a strong political core, an opportunistic flip-flopper who adjusts his stands as majority opinion shifts.

Rep. Ron Paul remembers the day he was transformed from a mild-mannered physician into the feisty political Nostradamus of the Republican Party. It was the evening of Aug.15, 1971. Then-President Richard Nixon announced that he was taking the United States off the gold standard, which had anchored the dollar based on a fixed amount of the precious metal.

At 19, Jon Huntsman arrived in Taiwan for a two-year gig as a missionary for the Mormon church. He didn't receive a warm reception. The Taiwanese government was furious at the United States for re-establishing diplomatic ties with China, and the people whom Huntsman was there to recruit to his faith weren't much happier.

For former Sen. Rick Santorum, it's always been about faith. Deep religious faith fuels Santorum's conservative politics. It's what propelled him into becoming one of Congress' leading opponents of abortion, same-sex marriage and wrongdoing by fellow lawmakers, regardless of party affiliation.