In case you’ve neglected your political calendar lately, we’re nearly to the 4th of July, beyond the June 8th primary, and the November 2010 general election race for the 3rd Congressional District seat between challenger Ami Bera and incumbent Dan Lungren is in full swing. Nowhere has this race been more evident recently than it was in the mid-June dust-up in which Bera accused Lungren of being silent about the gulf oil spill, calling him “a pawn of BP and big oil” who tacitly defends BP (the firm that caused the Deepwater Horizon spill, easily the nation’s worst environmental disaster ever), because he (Lungren) relies heavily on the oil and gas industry to finance his political campaig

California's Democratic and Republican chairmen addressed how their parties' candidates will overcome the budget crisis if elected in November at the Capital Plaza Halls Tuesday afternoon. The lunch was hosted by the Sacramento Press Club and was attended by members of the working press, state politics, and public. Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring and Democratic Party Chairman John Burton spoke mainly on the gubernatorial and senate elections, claiming that in the coming months it will become increasingly clear why either party has the better candidate. Among the issues addressed was that of campaign financing. With Meg Whitman's campaign likely to spend hundreds of millions of doll