Photograph by Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney greets Asian American supporters as he campaigns at Van Dyck park in Fairfax, Va., on Sept. 13, 2012.

Jeb Bush has called Asian-Americans the canary in the Republican Party’s coal mine.

Look past the 71 percent of Hispanic voters who sided with President Barack Obama in November, the Florida Republican has suggested, and one will find the 74 percent of Asian-Americans supporting the Democrat.

Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman who has commissioned an autopsy of his party’s poor performance last year — not only in the national race, but also in Senate contests in which it could have challenged the Democrats for control of the Senate — is putting some of its findings into play.

As he and the rest of the Republican National Committee head to Los Angeles for their spring meeting  later this week — what the Los Angeles Times calls “a visit meant to illustrate the party’s commitment to broadening its reach even in the bluest of states” — Priebus has announced two new party hires to step up the RNC’s engagement with voters in Asian and Pacific Islander communities.

 The L.A. Times notes: Stephen Fong as national field director and Jason Chung as a national communications director — “the first in a series of changes that will be announced this week as the party’s members debate actions intended to reverse their losses in the 2012 presidential race.”

Fong, a California native, will lead party activists “rooted in the communities they serve to engage people where they live, work, and worship.” Chung, who has worked with Republican candidates in Connecticut, Maryland and Virginia, will oversee outreach to Asian and Pacific Islander media, the Times’ Maeve Reston reports.

“We’ve made a commitment to being a party for every state, every community, and every neighborhood,” Priebus told the Times. “This is one of many steps toward keeping that commitment.”

Original post is RNC’s Asian-American Outreach: Hires by Political Capital.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a 60-year-old Democrat and one of the most prominent Latino politicians, gets asked a lot about his future these days. After eight years of leading the second-largest city, Villaraigosa must leave office at the end of June due to term limits.

So what’s next for Villaraigosa, who was the chairman of the Democratic National Convention last year?

In an interview on Bloomberg Television, Villaraigosa offered no hint of his political ambitions, saying instead that he’s interested in joining a university or a think tank or taking an (unspecified) job in the private sector. He didn’t mention the possibility of running for California governor or U.S. senator.

In any case, Villaraigosa’s options would be limited if Gov. Jerry Brown, a 74-year-old Democrat, opts to run for another term next year, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, a 72-year-old Democrat, runs again in 2016.

After President Barack Obama’s reelection last year, Villaraigosa’s name emerged in news reports as a contender for a Cabinet seat. He quashed the speculation with a Feb. 1 statement saying he was “firmly committed” to staying in Los Angeles and finishing his term.

Original post is Villaraigosa Mum as L.A. Term Closes by Political Capital.

Photograph by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Voters at a polling station in the garage of the Los Angeles County lifeguard headquarters on Nov. 6, 2012 in Los Angeles.

That’s how many votes President Barack Obama received in Los Angeles County, California, in the Nov. 6 election, or 70 percent of the total vote in the nation’s most populous county.

The president won more votes in Los Angeles County than he did in 42 states including North Carolina (2,178,391) and New Jersey (2,122,786). The Obama votes in Los Angeles County exceeded the combined vote total for the president in 10 small-population states and the District of Columbia.

There were 9.89 million people in Los Angeles County in 2011, according to a Census Bureau estimate. More than one in four Californians live in the county, which includes Los Angeles, Long Beach, Glendale and Santa Clarita.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 2,216,903 by Political Capital.

Merriam-Webster defines it as “a euphoric dreamlike mental state detached from the harsher realities of life.”

House Speaker John Boehner today called President Barack Obama’s proposal of $1.6 trillion in taxes as part of a solution to averting the so-called fiscal cliff at year’s end a “la-la land offer, which couldn’t pass the House, couldn’t pass the Senate.”

It’s also the name of a 1996 song by Shihad:

“We’re in the land, la la la land the land of everything and nothing at all.”’

The name has been applied to Los Angeles.

And now the House speaker has applied it to a certain neighborhood of Washington, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Twenty-eight days to the fiscal cliff.

Original post is `La-La Land:’ Boehner Sees LA in DC by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

President Barack Obama chats with host Jay Leno during a break in the taping of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" on Oct. 24, 2012 at NBC Studios in Burbank, California.

When a president rides, it’s in an armored limousine. When he flies, it’s Air Force One.

Yet President Barack Obama did get out for a little “joy ride” recently — taking a friend’s electric Chevy Volt for a spin.

“That was my big joy ride. Three times around the South Lawn driveway,” Obama told Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” — the president’s eyes rolling with sarcasm for his expedition around the White House grounds.

In the third leg of what he’s dubbed the “48-hour campaign marathon extravaganza,”  Obama took a little detour to Los Angeles for his appearance on the late-night show, where he covered a wide range of matters — from Europe’s debt crisis to Wall Street reform — with plenty of politically themed laugh lines.

Obama rarely misses an opportunity to herald his rescue of the U.S. auto industry, and last night was no exception. Asked by Leno which team he’d put his money on in the World Series – the Detroit Tigers or the San Francisco Giants, Obama spent a little time bemoaning the loss of his beloved Chicago White Sox to the Tigers before getting to the punch line.

“I have spent a lot of time in Detroit lately and I didn’t want to let Detroit go bankrupt, so in this particular World Series, I may be a little partial,” Obama said.

Letting Detroit go bankrupt is, of course, a reference to Republican rival Mitt Romney’s Nov. 19, 2008, op-ed in the New York Times, under the headline “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” in which he argued against using federal funds to bailout the U.S. automakers.

Sticking with the U.S. auto theme, the president also let slip his secret about the tour of the South Lawn in a Volt.

“I’m having fun,” Obama said, noting that the Secret Service was getting nervous. “I went around once. I was really kind of getting into it.”

He decided to go around again, he said, which led the Secret Service to call out an APB: “Under No Circumstances is he to leave the gate.’

The president also had a message for any trick-or-treaters stopping by the White House on Halloween night: If you’re from a swing state, you’ll get better candy.

Leno asked Obama if the White House got “egged” last year because First Lady Michelle Obama handed out fruit as part of her anti-childhood obesity initiative, Let’s Move.

“It is an election year, so candy for everybody,” Obama exclaimed. “If anybody comes from Ohio to the White House, they will get a Hershey bar about this big,” said the president, holding arms up wide.

Original post is Obama’s `Joy Ride,’ Tigers Pitch, Swing-State Hershey Bars: Jay Leno by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mario Tama/Getty Images

Mitt Romney addresses the Latino Coalition's 2012 Small Business Summit at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on May 23, 2012 in Washington, DC.

Republican Mitt Romney, the winner of a party presidential primary contest that tested how tough candidates were willing to talk about illegal immigration, will try to make amends today with a speech in Los Angeles embracing “a nation of immigrants.”

As noted by Bloomberg’s John McCormick, in California today for Romney’s address to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Romney is working against not only a two-to-one deficit among Latino voters nationally, but also an advantage for President Barack Obama that has grown since the parties’ conventions:

“Romney has lost ground in polls following the political conventions in late August and early September,” McCormick writes. “The debate has shifted to issues around the new national health care law’s coverage of pre-existing conditions and the administration’s handling of protests in Libya and other Middle Eastern nations. A poll released Sept. 14 by CBS and the New York Times showed Obama taking a three percentage point edge over Romney.”

Romney today will, in effect, attempt to talk around his party’s debate on illegal immigration — the one in which he spoke of “self-deportation” and pledged to repeal the Dream Act. “When it comes to immigration,” he plans to say, “politics has been put ahead of people for too long.”

He’ll talk past the fact that Obama, failing to win that act in Congress, effectively has ordered a limited implementation of it. Romney will speak more broadly about the economy, its impact on working people and the president’s inability to right it — this is the message that fellow Republicans such as Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida, have encouraged Romney to deliver: A common message for all Americans which also appeals to the fast-growing constituency of Latino voters.

In L.A. today, Romney plans to talk about more than 23 million Americans who are “out of work, underemployed or have just quit looking for a job.” He will say: “The number of people on food stamps has risen by almost 15 million since President Obama took office,” according to excerpts released by his campaign. “Median household income has fallen for four years in a row.”

Here is more of the excerpt:

Seeing such a poor jobs and income picture, the Federal Reserve has announced that it will once again print more money. The Fed knows this comes with a high cost and risk for the future, but it feels it has no choice: Our leaders in Washington have failed to produce a real recovery.

No one is exempt from the pain of this economy, but the Hispanic community has been particularly hard hit. While national unemployment is 8.1 percent, Hispanic unemployment is over 10 percent. Over two million more Hispanics are living in poverty today than the day President Obama took office.

In 2008, candidate Obama promised us a world of limitless hope. What we got instead is a world where hope has painful limits — limits that make it harder to start a business, to grow a business, or to find a job.

I expected the president, at his convention, to talk about the unemployed and to unveil a jobs plan. Astonishingly, he did not. I have a plan, and my plan for a stronger middle class will create 12 million jobs by the end of my first term. And it will raise take home pay.

My plan is premised on the conviction that it is freedom that drives our economy–that free people, creating free enterprises, is what creates good jobs with good wages. Government supports the job creators, but it cannot take their place.

[W]e must cut the deficit and put America on track to a balanced budget. I believe that it is immoral for us to continue to spend more than we take in, to pass massive debts on to our children.

I’d like to spend some time talking about this issue in particular. As businessmen and women, and as Hispanics, you understand the threat President Obama’s spending poses for our future. Many Hispanics have sacrificed greatly to help build our country and our economy, and to leave for their children a brighter future. Today, those sacrifices are being squandered by a President who cannot stop spending.

I know how to balance budgets. We balanced our budget in my business, in the Olympics and every year in my state.

I will put the federal government on a track to a balanced budget by eliminating programs that are not absolutely essential. My test is this–is the program so critical that it is worth borrowing money from China to pay for it?

In addition, I will send a number of programs that have been growing uncontrollably fast back to the states where I will limit their funding to the rate of inflation, or in the case of Medicaid, to inflation plus one percent.

And finally, I will look to sharply increase the productivity of Washington by reducing federal government employment by 10% through attrition, by combining agencies and departments to reduce overhead, and by linking government compensation with that of the private sector. These things combined will reduce spending by $500 billion a year by the end of my first term.

I know small business, not because I studied it in school, but because I lived small business. And I know that small businesses are being crushed by President Obama’s policies. Too often, government regulators treat businesses like the enemy, and they crush them with an avalanche of regulations.

This is at the heart of the difference between President Obama and my vision for the American economy: he wants government to tax more and regulate more because he believes government can do a better job than you can. I believe in you. I believe you can do a better job than government. I believe that you, and that your dreams and freedoms, will build a stronger future for all of us, and for our children. This belief in free people and free enterprises is the American heritage. This is why America has outperformed the world.

Finally, I want to say a word about immigration. Americans may disagree about how to fix our immigration system, but I think we can all agree that it is broken. For years, Republicans and Democrats seem to have been more interested in playing politics with immigration than with actually fixing it.

Candidate Obama said that one of his highest priorities would be to fix immigration in his first year in office. Despite his party having majorities in both house of Congress, the president never even offered up a bill. Like so many issues confronting our nation, when it comes to immigration, politics has been put ahead of people for too long.

I will work with Republicans and Democrats to permanently fix our immigration system.

We will never achieve a legal immigration system that is fair and efficient if we do not first get control of our borders. I believe we can all agree that what we need are fair and enforceable immigration laws that will stem the flow of illegal immigration, while strengthening legal immigration.

America is a nation of immigrants, and immigration is essential to our economic growth and prosperity.

 

Original post is Romney’s Latino Pitch: `Politics Has Been Put Ahead of People’ by Political Capital.

In the fashion of a TV game show, the Obama campaign is welcoming Republican Mitt Romney to Los Angeles, where today he plans to address the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce: Romney, the Obama campaign says, is making “one of his most implausible makeovers yet — making his extreme policies seem appealing to Latino voters.”

The Web video quotes Rommey on illegal immigration and asks:“Can he cover up his belief in self-deportation with a bold new wallpaper choice?”

– Can a “new support beam” hold the weight of his talk about kids borrowing money from parents for college?

– Can he dress up his economic plan with “a new paint job?”

“He does something amazing with Spackle — can he patch up his promise to repeal Obama-care and deny health care to 9 million Latinos?”

– And perhaps duct tape can cover up his stated promise to veto the Dream Act.

Of course, this is for Internet consumption. There is no campaign advertising in California, which is one of the states that can be counted on to support Obama in November. And Obama holds a two-to-one advantage over Romney among Hispanic voters nationally, polling shows. The two campaigns are making their own TV appeals to Latino voters in the battleground states of Florida, Nevada and Colorado. This one’s a Web tease.

Original post is Romney’s `Makeover’ Show: Obama by Political Capital.

Photograph by Christopher Polk/AMA2010/Getty Images

Singer Pink performs onstage at the 2010 American Music Awards held at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on November 21, 2010 in Los Angeles. Photographer: Christopher Polk/AMA2010/Getty Images

In the Pink?

Not as much as President Barack Obama counted on in rallying gay donors in L.A.

While Obama still plans to raise some re-election campaign money at a gay-rights gala tomorrow night in Los Angeles, the event — for which tickets start at $1,250 — will no longer feature the singer Pink, who’s been in the hospital and, by her own account, seriously bummed about the whole thing.

The pop star behind the 2010 hit “Raise Your Glass” posted on the Twitter social network site: “now I’ve let down my daughter and the President. wow. great week.”

Earlier tweets revealed her daughter would have to celebrate her birthday at the hospital and that the pop singer had experienced symptoms of flu, ulcers or gall bladder trouble.

Pink’s 2006 song “Dear Mr. President,” featuring the Indigo Girls, challenged President George W. Bush on an array of policy and asked: “And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay?”

Darren Criss, who will fill in for Pink, tweeted that he’s “so bummed I’ll have to miss my dental appointment to sing for the US President.”

He thanked Pink “for messin that up!!”

Original post is Cancel Dentist, Singing for President by Political Capital.