If there’s one surprise so far in the budding campaign for governor of California, it’s the fact that the candidate with the least cash on hand is somehow staying extremely competitive. So much so that the leading fear of his super-rich intra-party rivals is that he will somehow, somewhere come up with significant funds – and blow them out.

There's an old saying in politics: “If you don't vote, you don't count.”

In short, areas where voting turnout is low lose influence in government and the money and services that come with it.

Did Meg Whitman abet and encourage tax evasion during the decade she headed the Internet auction house eBay?

That emerged this week as a key question because Whitman, who has virtually no record in public life and little history of even casting votes, repeatedly cites her eBay tenure as a principal qualification to become governor of California. Essentially, she wants to become the state's chief tax policy maker, among many other functions.

Just a little over one year from today, Californians will elect a successor to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. How will they remember him after that successor takes over?

For most of the last 20 years, anti-illegal immigration activists have steadfastly maintained that many of the undocumented come to America mostly for public benefits ranging from schools to welfare to the automatic citizenship bestowed on every child born in this country.

The most extreme among them call the illegals’ presence an invasion, often claiming it’s a government-backed movement by Mexicans to take back the vast American Southwest, lost to Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War in February 1848.

Few state lawmakers felt they had accomplished more in the Legislature’s last regular session than the Republicans who make up just over one-third of both the Senate and Assembly.

They went home proud of the fact they had kept their pledge and assessed no new taxes, as Democrats and a very few of their GOP cohorts did last winter.

They felt happy that no more of them would be subjected to the perils of possible recall campaigns and serious 2010 primary election challenges like those that either now afflict or soon will hit most of the dissidents among them who voted for February’s budget compromise, with its temporary increases in income, sales and vehicle taxes.

HANALEI, Kauai, HI – They call this greenest of all islands, The Garden Island, for good reason. But today, the island of resilience would be just as accurate a tag.

Trouble has found this paradise-like land several times over the last two decades – and each time Kauai emerged in many ways even better than before.

Gerrymandering makes the election of Lt. Gov. John Garamendi to a seat in Congress from the East Bay suburbs of San Francisco and Oakland almost a certainty when runoff day arrives on Nov. 3.

Almost everyone in and around California's state government knows something realized by only a few who are not directly involved:

It's not the two-thirds vote requirement that's been behind the budget delays and IOUs that have plagued this state. It's not even the huge ideological divide that sees Democrats defend labor union interests at every turn while Republicans fight firmly against the tax increases craved by public employee union leaders driven to produce both job security and constant raises for their members

Former Gov. Gray Davis calls this “a possible Prop. 13 moment,” adding that “I think something big is about to happen.” What he means is that Californians are so disgusted with state government they might be ready to make wholesale changes. He’s an expert on such moments: the last time one arose, he became the first California governor ever thrown out of office.