The race for controller, normally not what would be called a contentious struggle in California politics, continues to be one of the big campaign cash magnets this year.

Team 2006 (an independent expenditure committee formed by a group of casino-owning Southern California Native American tribes) and tax-preparation software firm Intuit have given over $2 million to Republican Tony Strickland.

The Ventura County Star and the San Francisco Chronicle report that Democratic candidate John Chiang has gotten a lot of late cash, with the Morongo Band of Mission Indians Native American Rights Fund giving almost $337,000 for radio ads in support of Chiang, and $1.9 million coming to his campaign coffers from Working California, a coalition of labor unions and Asian-American business groups.

An article in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times examines the role of so-called 527 committees (named after the section of the Internal Revenue Code that governs their tax-exempt status) in this year’s election. 527 committees are known as “issue advocacy groups” because their ostensible purpose is to advocate on behalf of or in opposition to political issues rather than to advocate the election or defeat of a specific candidate, a distinction which allows 527s to avoid filing campaign disclosure reports with the Federal Election Commission. Probably the two best-known 527 committees are Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth, which spent $22.5 million in 2004 on TV ads and other material opposing John Kerry’s presidential bid; and MoveOn.org, which spent $21.5 million in 2004 on TV ads and other material opposing George W. Bush’s re-election campaign.

According to the Times‘ analysis of federal campaign finance reports, 527 committees have spent upwards of $300 million to influence the outcomes of various races and measures in this election. The main example closest to home is the significant amount of money that’s being spent by 527 committees on behalf of Proposition 90, although unregulated money is also being spent by 527s on behalf (or, more frequently perhaps, in opposition to) of many other ballot measures and statewide and congressional candidates.

Robert Salladay of the Los Angeles Times writes on his blog today about a new poll by Polimetrix, a polling outfit headed by Stanford political science professor Douglas Rivers, which shows some unsurprising results — Schwarzenegger ahead of Angelides by 10 points, for instance — and some surprising ones, including what appears to be an unstoppable juggernaut in the form of Proposition 90, which the Polimetrix survey has at 58-28% support — a 30-point margin.

The governor came out today opposing Proposition 90, although it seems unclear what effect, if any, the late showing of his hand in this particular card game will have on the end result.

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article today about Stephen Bing, the primary backer of Proposition 87. Bing has now given $49.5 million in support of the alternative energy initiative, the largest amount ever donated by a single individual to a campaign in US history.

Total spending on the Yes and No on 87 campaigns has now reached an astronomical $142 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. Most of the No on 87 cash has come from oil companies like Chevron, Aera Energy (a coalition of ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell), and Occidental Oil.

According to the Initiative and Referendum Institute at USC, there are a total of 208 propositions on the ballot in 37 states nationwide this year, which is an increase from the 162 propositions on the ballot nationwide in 2004. California has the third-highest number of propositions on the ballot, with Colorado (14 propositions) and Arizona (19 propositions) coming in second and first. The most pervasive issues on the ballot this year are eminent domain (13 states), tobacco and smoking-related measures (10 states), and same-sex marriage (9 states).

Outside of California, several measures are being watched closely. These include:

• Referred Law 6 in South Dakota, which would repeal the state’s ban on abortion that was signed into law by Governor Mike Rounds in March.

• Four measures on the Arizona ballot are related to illegal immigration. The measures would deny state services to illegal aliens (Ballot Measure 300), deny them bail in felony circumstances (Ballot Measure 100), deny them punitive damages in civil lawsuits (Ballot Measure 102), and establish English as the state’s official language (Ballot Measure 103).

• Proposal 2 on the Michigan ballot would prohibit the University of Michigan and other state universities from “using affirmative action programs that give preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on their race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin for public employment, education or contracting purposes.”

Update: There’s a good article in the October 30 San Francisco Chronicle about Michigan’s Proposal 2, pointing out its similarities (including sponsorship) to California’s Proposition 209, which was passed almost exactly 10 years ago.

The Center for Responsive Politics notes that the 2006 election is on track to be the most expensive in US history. “Candidates, national political parties and outside issue advocacy groups will spend roughly $2.6 billion by the end of 2006 to influence the 472 federal contests around the United States and pad the war chests of incumbents not running this year,” according to the group.

Take a look at the CRP’s list of the top 20 industries contributing dollars to the 2006 election fights.

Many of the major California political blogs seem to have already written Phil Angelides’ political obituary.

Some are still writing about his flubs in campaign appearances, or are observing that Arnold Schwarzenegger is making fewer and fewer campaign appearances these days, the governor’s campaign apparently believing that he’s been all but re-elected.

Just a few of the recent blog observations out there about Angelides: Karen Hanretty writes on her blog that Angelides is at serious risk of losing as badly to Schwarzenegger as Dan Lungren lost to Gray Davis in 1998 (Lungren lost by a 19-point margin) … Bill Bradley links to an article from the Hayward Daily Review that paints a portrait of Democratic Party activists having a hard time finding volunteers in Alameda County to work for Democratic candidates. Bradley also notes that the massive infusion of public employee union cash that was supposed to arrive to revitalize Angelides’ campaign in the final weeks has not materialized … The San José Mercury News politics blog observes that Angelides has picked up the endorsements of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, La Opinión, the state’s leading Spanish-language newspaper, and — that’s all.

California currently taxes cigarettes at 87 cents per pack, which places the state tax at 22nd-highest among the states. The money from the tax currently goes to (1) the general fund, (2) to obligations incurred by Proposition 99 (the Tobacco Tax and Health Promotion Act of 1988), (3) to childhood development programs authorized by Proposition 10 (the California Children and Families First Initiative of 1998), and (4) to a breast cancer research fund established by the Legislature in 1994. The state raises approximately $1.094 billion in revenue from the tobacco tax each year, according to the California Budget Project.

Proposition 86, if it passed, would make California the state with the highest tobacco tax in the nation, at $3.47 per pack. A recent Orange County Register article points out that smokers could drive to Arizona or Nevada to buy cigarettes (where cigarette taxes are $1.18 and 98 cents per pack respectively) if Proposition 86 becomes law. They could also turn to the black market, as happened in New York when the state raised its cigarette tax to $3 per pack.

The California Budget Project confirms that the tax envisioned by Proposition 86 could be regressive, in that it would have the most significant impact on low-income consumers. Low-income consumers would spend 0.9% of their income on the tax if it passed. Taxpayers in the top 1% would spend 0.01% of their income on the tax.

Proponents counter that low-income consumers would benefit from the health programs that the tax would help fund, and they also contend that low-income consumers would be more likely to stop smoking as a result of the higher cost of buying cigarettes.

The California Budget Project has issued a comprehensive report on the potential economic and other impacts of the ballot measure.

Dan Morain of the Los Angeles Times writes today that the 2006 election is proving to be a boon for independent expenditure committees, especially as the campaign cycle draws to a close. Morain reports that four Southern California Native American tribes recently formed an independent expenditure committee funded with $3.1 million to support candidates who favor expansion of Indian casinos. Morain writes, “Political consultants believe that the tribes are about to spend additional sums on behalf of Tony Strickland, the Republican nominee for state controller, and Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), who is running for lieutenant governor. Both candidates have voted with the tribes in the past.” Another independent expenditure committee is reportedly being formed to assist the struggling campaign of Chuck Poochigian for attorney general.

Our Hot Topics pages list major contributors to all of the 13 qualified measures on the November ballot, including independent expenditure committees.

Here are a few highlights from the past few days of political news:

• Yesterday, Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared at a major conference on solar power in San José. A late contribution report filed yesterday shows that he’s also put another $3.5 million of his own money into his campaign, bringing the total he’s contributed out-of-pocket this year to roughly $30 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. According to an article yesterday in Capitol Weekly, Schwarzenegger has raised over $100 million in contributions in the three years since he first entered the political fray in August 2003. As a point of comparison, it took former Governor Gray Davis six years to raise $107.3 million in contributions.

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A long article by Steven Harmon in this morning’s San José Mercury News revisits the notion that Angelides’ poor showing in polls could drag the rest of the statewide Democratic ticket down with him. The article points out that the races for lieutenant governor, secretary of state and insurance commissioner are far tighter at this point than the seeming national against the GOP would seem to predict.
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An interesting San Francisco Chronicle article today takes note of the phenomenon of the star power behind Proposition 87 (actress Julia Roberts put on some granny glasses and posed in front of a Yes on 87 sign in an appearance yesterday, doing her best “Erin Brockovich” reprise) and goes into a little more depth than usual about the Yes campaign’s primary source of juice, Stephen Bing, the man who, before financing the Yes on 87 campaign, was better known for losing a paternity dispute with “Austin Powers” actress Elizabeth Hurley in 2002.

Here’s another profile of Bing, from the September 22 Sacramento Bee (the link will probably prompt you to register; there’s an authentication-prompted Access World News link here).

Interesting that the questions that reporters posed to Phil Angelides during the candidate forum sponsored by the Chronicle editorial board and CBS5.com were often to the effect of, “Why are you giving Schwarzenegger such a hard time? He gets along with the legislature, doesn’t he? He’s gotten a lot done. Aren’t those positive attributes in a governor?”
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The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board interviewed Phil Angelides this morning, but inexplicably, the SFGate website inexplicably had a link up most of today underneath an article about the meeting with Angelides to what was ostensibly a podcast of the meeting but was instead a link to a podcast of a Chronicle reporter’s interview with Chuck Poochigian.

Update: Apparently there’s some sort of an arrangement between the Chronicle and CBS5.com (the website for Bay Area CBS affiliate KPIX-TV) to webcast Chronicle editorial board “forums” live, at least for major candidates, which would (partly) explain the absence of a podcast on the Chronicle’s website. (Around 5:00pm, the SFGate website folks finally got around to labeling the Poochigian link “AG race podcast.”)

Here’s the webcast link to the Angelides forum, although you have to sit through a ten-second ad before you can watch it — and the CBS5.com video interface makes it incredibly difficult to pause, rewind, or fast forward as you watch.

According to an October 6 Los Angeles Times article, spending on the ballot measure and candidate campaigns is “hurtling toward the $400-million mark for the year.” Some data points from the article:

• Jerry Brown, the former governor, current mayor of Oakland, and Democratic candidate for attorney general, has outfundraised his Republican opponent, Fresno state senator Chuck Poochigian, by a nearly 2-1 margin ($4.2 million to $2.4 million).

• Schwarzenegger’s campaign spent $9 million on TV ads in the campaign reporting period between July 1 and September 30.

• Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who is running for treasurer, the job currently held by Phil Angelides, has spent $1 million this year, although virtually nobody but political junkies knows who his Republican opponent, Claude Parrish, is.

For good, succinct summaries of the 13 measures on the ballot this year, see our Hot Topics pages.

Another good bet is the Los Angeles Times website, which has a good section on the propositions, with short blurbs on the pros and cons of each initiative and who’s financing the campaigns.

One design note: you have to click on the link for each proposition to expand the text block to display each measure’s summaries. Perhaps a minor flaw, but if you’ve not been to the page before, a confusing one.

The bad news just keeps growing for the Phil Angelides campaign.

According to the Sacramento Bee, on Thursday, several prominent state public employee unions announced shifts in expenditures that will effectively mean that the gubernatorial candidate is losing those unions as a major money source. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association withdrew about $1.3 million of $5 million in ad-buy time that it had committed for the final two weeks of the race. Eight other public employee unions have moved about $1 million to support John Garamendi’s faltering run against Tom McClintock for lieutenant governor. In a telling quote, Lance Corcoran, the spokesman for the prison guards’ union, said, “We never said we were on a suicide mission.”

On another front, former Assembly Speaker and San Francisco mayor Willie Brown savaged Angelides in an interview after Angelides failed to show up at a fundraiser yesterday morning in San Francisco for Brown’s think tank. (Schwarzenegger and a bunch of Democratic luminaries did show up.) Brown told a Sacramento Bee reporter, “I think Arnold Schwarzenegger will be re-elected governor. And that’s no matter what, I think he’ll be re-elected governor.” Brown and Angelides have a history of bad blood; Brown made an even cattier comment about Angelides when he was running against Steve Westly in the June primary, saying, “Angelides doesn’t look good on TV and doesn’t sound good on radio. They need to keep him in places like Dinuba and Chico, where they don’t have modern communications with the rest of the state and no one can see or hear him.”

Here’s another opinion to add to the meme that California is going to buck the anti-incumbent, anti-GOP national trend. (Note, though, that the “national anti-GOP wave” meme is itself not necessarily on solid ground, given the GOP’s significant advantages in cash, GOTV ground game, and congressional district boundaries — all three of those items are virtually ignored in mainstream media coverage in favor of the scandal du jour, but all three are structural bulwarks that undoubtedly favor the Republicans.)

Dan Walters, the veteran Sacramento Bee columnist, writes in yesterday’s paper:

Why, one might ask, isn’t the national Democratic tide washing over California? Partially, it’s because with the state’s incumbent-friendly, gerrymandered congressional districts, Iraq and other national issues are not generating political heat. Angelides has gamely attempted to link Schwarzenegger to President Bush, but the governor has carefully distanced himself from the White House, and the Angelides strategy doesn’t appear to be working.

Another factor is simply that Angelides is a poor candidate, with little ideological or personal appeal to swing voters, and several other Democratic candidates suffer from the same malady. Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, for example, is a very weak campaigner with a less-than-stellar résumé — which explains why even liberal consumer advocates are opting for Republican Poizner as the two vie for insurance commissioner.

There was an intriguing report on tonight’s KTVU (the Bay Area Fox affiliate) “News at Ten” by political reporter Randy Shandobil. The gist was that while Democrats may be salivating at the prospect of retaking the House of Representatives for the first time since 1994, due to a series of scandals and other setbacks that have befallen the Republican Party, in California just the opposite trend may occur, due to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s double-digit poll lead. Shandobil outlined four statewide downticket races that some political pundits are predicting could go Republican in four weeks: lieutenant governor, controller, insurance commissioner, and secretary of state. Dan Schnur, visiting lecturer at the Center on Politics, said that he thought some Democrats might sit this election out if Angelides’ fortunes don’t improve:

In all likelihood, if you’re a Democrat in the first week of November and you know that Angelides is going to lose, and that he’s probably going to lose badly, it’s awfully tough to motivate yourself off the couch and down to the polls.