California Insider

Mike Murphy, the governor’s top political adviser, dropped into Sacramento today for a couple of roundtables with Capitol reporters. The one I sat in on was a mad spin session filled with mixed metaphors and bold predictions, with the general theme being “We’ve got 'em right where we want 'em.” Sinking poll numbers? No problem. Special election? Can’t wait. Maria’s meddling? We work great together. You get the idea.

He also took some shots at the Legislature, saying chimps could get elected in the rigged seats they have drawn for themselves.

Anyway, here are some lengthy excerpts of the bravado, false or otherwise, emanating from the Schwarzenegger camp these days:

On the governor’s sinking poll numbers:

“I think we’ve been in a little bit of a silly season on polling…I am not worried about the decline in the favorable numbers for the governor. Most of the numbers went from people who didn’t vote for him who liked him, who (then) didn’t like him as much, and are quite capable of liking him again. I look at our base of 50 percent. That’s what I’m interested in. And they are rock solid for Arnold.”

On the prospects for a special election:

“I think they (Democrats) could wind up running off a cliff in November. Because we will beat them on the special election issues. I think it would be good for Arnold to have a special election because it would be good to beat them. Now he may put me back in my cage and cut a deal, but, we’re ready, willing and able to do the election.”

On the lack of a full debate so far:

“This is a dialogue that’s only begun…This is like a trial where we have only heard the opening arguments from the other side. Of course some people on the jury are thinking, ‘aha!’ We haven’t refuted, we haven’t retorted, we haven’t really done all the things we are going to do to prosecute this public opinion back.”

On fighting back:

“What hurts more, having one piano dropped on your head or three pianos dropped on your head? They (the uninons) are going to have three pianos if they keep taking all their members’ money. We’re going to have one piano. But if we can get the one piano and saturate, which we haven’t yet, we’ve only dropped the equivalent of a shoe box. But if we can get to the piano business I think we’re going to be OK.”

On the message for a special election if there is one:

“It will be ‘reform to rebuild.’ We have to make these reforms to rebuild California and stop the big decline that’s been the history of our state the last five to ten years. Without reform we can’t rebuild. We can’t build roads. We can’t have schools where the money is connected to quality, not just an endless blank check. Nobody is for more education funding than Gov. Schwarzenegger. He just has the audacious idea to have some sort of control on the quality of that money.”

On cutting a deal with legislators:

“He’d rather have a good deal. He’d rather have bipartisan solutions. He’s a lover, not a fighter ultimately. But in a corner, if they force it and the only deal they offer him is to cave on everything he was elected to do, we’re going to have a special, and we’re going to win.”

On the legitimacy of the Democrats’ control of the Legislature:

“(They are) in districts that are drawn so that either party could elect a chimp with the right party designation. You could bring the UN in here and they’d put us on the yellow alert for democracy. We don’t really have very competitive elections here.”

On working with Maria Shriver:

“I talk to Maria all the time. I don’t get ‘called in.’ …The typical Maria call is ‘Hey, hi.’ We gossip a little bit about life or something, then ‘how we doing? This that, and I’m not hearing enough about this thing which is a good thing and we’re not getting any credit for it.’ It’s very, the construct that there is some Maria 'whip-cracking' is unfair to Arnold. And it’s unfair to Maria. It’s just not accurate.”

On illegal immigration:

“Talk to real voters. They are interested in the immigration issue. It’s the wine and cheese crowd that doesn’t like it… 'Illegal' is the word that’s forgotten in the debate by everyone who went to college. Everyone else is kind of clued in on that.”

On raising taxes

“That would get him the editorial award, Man of the Year. Leader of all time. Break everything you stood for in the recall and raise taxes. Then he is, no offense, one of you guys, around here, and that’s the end.”

The LAO has done its usual top-notch job dissecting the governor's revised budget. Notable: they've found what they say is a $600 million accounting error that inflates the projected personal income tax revenue in the current year.

For years, Tom McClintock has been writing and updating his version of the ideal school, a model that starts by multiplying our per-student costs by the number of students in a classroom and then asking where the rest of the money goes. I've always found his pieces entertaining and enlightening. His latest is the best ever, starting with his proposal to pay 30,000 bureaucrats $100,000 each with the proviso that they "stay out of the classroom and pay their own hotel bills at conferences." Then he moves on to renting luxury office space, a gym membership for every student, new textbooks for every kid and teacher salaries on par with university professors. As always, he asks, this is the school we are paying for, why aren't we getting it?

Read the whole thing here.

It's become conventional wisdom around Sacramento that the recent diversions of gas sales tax money from transportation projects have crippled our ability to build roads. Thus Schwarzenegger is expected to get big mileage out of his decision last week to restore $1.3 billion to road and transit construction that he had planned to shift to the general fund to pay for schools, health care and social services.

A little perspective:

Even with the diversions, the Deparmtent of Transportation budget over the past three years has totalled $19 billion, and the road-builders were scheduled to get another $6 billion in the coming year under the governor's January budget.

So if the transportation program is nearly bankrupt, as one prominent pol was quoted saying this morning, it's hard to see how the sales tax diversions had a whole lot to do with that.