California Insider

Schwarzenegger gets a perfect score on bills sponsored by Equality California, the state's most active public policy group focused on gay and lesbian rights. Read their scorecard here.

Wal-Mart says it will contribute $500,000 to the No on 72 campaign, after the pro-72 campaign made the retail giant a target of its message favoring a government mandate for employer-provided health insurance. This contribution strikes me as just enough to move Wal-Mart further into the focus of the campaign while falling well short of being enough to actually sway public opinion against the measure.

This one caught my eye:

A Valley radio mogul is donating more than $300,000 of air time to Republican candidates, a move unprecedented in California politics, according to this story from the Sacramento Bee.

Campaigning today for Gary Podesto (for state Senate) in Vacaville.

Still nothing official, but it appears that Schwarzenegger will jet to Columbus, Ohio on Friday to campaign for Bush, then fly back Friday night in time to campaign Saturday for California candidates and on ballot measures he favors and opposes. Schwarzenegger has one of his famous bus trips scheduled to begin in San Diego Saturday morning and conclude that evening at a Republican Party rally in Bakersfield.

It's interesting to watch the heat Schwarzenegger is taking as a Republican governor campaigning (barely) for a Republican president. Some people seem to think that being a moderate or centrist Republican means you are actually a Democrat or non-partisan. Schwarzenegger apparently thinks otherwise. He has always been a Republican. He ran for office as a Republican. He has governed as a (centrist) Republican. He spoke in prime time at the Republican National Convention about what it means to be a Republican.

Get it? He's a Republican. He's a Republican who is trying to move his party to the left on social issues (abortion, gays) and to the center on the environment. But as far as I can tell, he is still very much a Republican on foreign policy and economic issues. Democrats who think he is secretly one of them are fooling themselves.