Capitol Alert

Buddy Roemer, the one-time congressman and Louisiana governor, was bound for Sacramento this morning to promote his long-shot candidacy for president when, at Reagan National Airport, in Washington, D.C., he crossed paths with a former presidential hopeful, John McCain.

"I heard this shout," he said. "'Roemer!'"

The Republican senator from Arizona has endorsed Republican Mitt Romney this year, but Roemer said he told him his campaign is "awesome," too.

After running as a Republican but failing to qualify for a single debate, Roemer is running as an independent. He is trying to become the nominee of Americans Elect, which will hold an online primary in June, and he is focusing this week on college students, with appearances Tuesday at University of the Pacific, UC Davis and UC Berkeley.

"They're less entangled with the current parties," Roemer said over a BLT at The Big Salad Shop in Sacramento. "They're freer."

Roemer feels he is freer, too. But the 68-year-old, who was a Democrat before he became a Republican many years ago, has some paperwork to catch up on to reflect that. In Louisiana, he is still a registered Republican.

"I will change that when I discover my state again, when I get back there," he said. "I'm not sure when I'm going back. I'm in California all this week."

Roemer had a newspaper in front of him, and he borrowed his campaign manager's red pen. The Republicans and Democrats are in their own circles, he said, pulled further and further apart by special interest money.

"I think the two parties are corrupt. I think they're joined at the billfold," he said. "Tell me what the difference is?"

He pointed to a space on the newspaper between the two circles he'd drawn. That's where he is, he said.

"They just don't know me," he said. "They will."

Roemer was planning to rest tonight, before his three events Tuesday. He had been up since early this morning, and for the first time in his campaign he said he was coming down with a cold.

He said: "I'm a long-shot, obviously, but I run to win."

PHOTO CREDIT: Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer in July 2011. Associated Press/Jim Cole

Molly Munger, the wealthy tax proponent whose initiative has frustrated Gov. Jerry Brown, has launched a second ad portraying her measure as an outsider effort.

With upbeat music and a young girl as narrator, the 30-second "Our Children, Our Future" ad attacks Brown's plan without ever referencing it. Munger's initiative would hike income taxes on all but the poorest residents along a sliding scale to raise $10 billion annually.

Of efforts to fix schools, the ad says, "We've waited years for the politicians to do it. Now, we can do it ourselves. Our Children, Our Future sends every K-12 dollar straight to our schools, not to Sacramento."

Munger has contributed $6 million so far to the campaign, which must gather 504,760 signatures to place the initiative on the November ballot. The campaign said the $1.2 million ad buy will air on broadcast and cable stations in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.

Spokesman Nathan Ballard said the campaign is "on track" to qualify its measure.

"The environment out there is crowded with the governor's measure and various other measures that are being shopped around," Ballard said. "There's quite a bit of noise, and we believe this ad will cut through the noise."

Five out-of-state corporations are banding together to fight efforts by Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez to hike taxes on some out-of-state firms to fund a billion-dollar relief plan for college students.

Chrysler, General Motors, International Paper, Kimberly-Clark and Procter & Gamble all stand to lose under Pérez's Assembly Bill 1500 and have formed a coalition called California Employers Against Higher Taxes, spokesman Peter DeMarco said today.

The corporations are speaking jointly through a Sacramento consulting firm, Randle Communications, and they have launched a website, www.cajobsnottaxes.com. But the coalition has not hired lobbyists or made political contributions DeMarco said.

Pérez's AB 1500 would raise taxes on various corporations by requiring that companies operating in multiple states calculate tax liability based on the portion of sales in California.

The tax portion of Pérez's package would eliminate a component of a 2009 state budget deal that allowed firms to pick the more advantageous of two formulas for calculating tax liability. Pérez's plan would force use of one formula, called the "single sales factor."

Touting AB 1500 as a middle-class scholarship, Pérez said that funds generated by it would cut by two-thirds the cost of attending state universities for families earning less than $150,000 per year.

The bill also would augment community college funding statewide by $150 million statewide, Pérez said.

DeMarco said that AB 1500 would have a chilling effect on job creation in a time of economic distress. What good is a middle-class college scholarship plan if its ultimate effect is to reduce middle-class jobs, he asks.

"It's a billion dollar tax increase," DeMarco said.

John Vigna, spokesman for Pérez, said that AB 1500's benefits to middle-class families are enormous.

"Every member of the Legislature will have a choice: Will they stand with major out-of-state corporations or with working families?" Vigna said. "We believe that the Legislature will stand with California's middle-class families."

* Updated at 3:40 p.m. to add comment by John Vigna, spokesman for Assembly Speaker's Office.

Republican Rep. Dan Lungren took in more than $500,000 for his re-election campaign in the first three months of the year, outraising rival Ami Bera for the first time since the Elk Grove Democrat emerged on the fundraising scene in mid-2009.

Lungren, of Gold River, ended March with just under $900,000 on hand, according to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission. Bera, whose filing has not yet appeared on the FEC website, said in a release issued last week that he raised $366,000. He ended the quarter with a cash advantage over his rival, saying he has roughly $1.15 million in the bank heading into the June 5 primary.

Bera, who lost to Lungren in 2010 by seven percentage points, had outraised Lungren in every quarterly filing period since the July 2009 reports. Lungren consultant Rob Stutzman said while both candidates took in significant sums, the latest numbers reverse "what has been what has been a mostly two-year streak."

"He's finding a lot of support and he's working very hard to gather the resources to take on Bera," Stutzman said of Lungren.

Bera's campaign, meanwhile, touted its own numbers as a sign of "grassroots" support, saying in a release that 60 percent of donors this quarter were giving to the campaign for the first time.

A close registration split has made the newly drawn 7th Congressional District a top target this election. Lungren and Bera have huge fund-raising advantages over the other two candidates running in the primary and are expected to face off in a rematch in November.

Now that California's legislative and congressional districts have been drawn for the first time ever by an independent citizens commission, the 14-member panel is recommending ways to smooth the process in years to come.

The commission's recommendations are contained in gut-and-amended legislation, Senate Bill 1096, proposed by the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee.

The redistricting commission, created by voter passage of Proposition 11 in 2008, drew Assembly, Senate, Board of Equalization and state congressional districts last year that will be used in this year's statewide election.

By law, the panel consisted of five Democrats, five Republicans and four independent or minor-party voters. Three votes from each bloc were required to pass new district maps.

Proposed changes have bipartisan support and focus on timing and technical issues, including:

• Requiring the state auditor's office, not the secretary of state's office, to provide support functions when a new redistricting commission is formed every 10 years, until it hires staff and becomes fully functional.

• Revising deadlines to provide more than four additional months to select commission members.

• Requiring that only veteran auditors employed by the Bureau of State Audits can be chosen, by random drawing, to serve on a three-member panel that screens redistricting commission applicants and helps to create a pool of finalists.

• Mandating that the commission publicly display its first preliminary statewide maps no later than July 1 of the year it plans to vote on them. The public would have 14 days to comment on those initial maps, then seven days for any other preliminary maps and three days for final statewide maps

• Specifying that any bill proposing legislative amendments to the redistricting process be in print for 12 days, rather than 10. It would prohibit lawmakers from altering the redistricting process in any year ending in 9, expanding upon current law, which bans procedural changes in years ending in 0 or 1.

It's all hands on deck as the deadline approaches for supporters of Gov. Jerry Brown's tax measure to turn in the hundreds of thousands of signatures they need to qualify for the November ballot.

In addition to calling and mailing voters pleas to send signatures in, campaign supporters have asked some Democratic staff members in the Legislature to circulate petitions for the constitutional amendment on their time off.

The volunteer effort is organized by the political, non-state arms of the Assembly and Senate Democratic caucuses, which are funded and staffed by the California Democratic Party, both the Assembly and Senate Democrats say.

VIDEO: Dan Walters says Jerry Brown sees Molly Munger in his rear-view mirror.

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See other Dan Walters Daily clips here.

Read Dan Walters' columns here.

Dan Walters, in today's video report, lays out how wealthy civil rights lawyer Molly Munger could play havoc with Gov. Jerry Brown's ballot tax campaign.

The Legislature has floor sessions today, with the Senate meeting at 2 p.m. and the Assembly at 10 a.m. The lower house is also holding a special event at 11 a.m. -- a Holocaust memorial. The ceremony, hosted by Democratic Assembly members Betsy Butler of Los Angeles and Michael Allen of Santa Rosa, is part of Holocaust Remembrance Week.

After the upper house adjourns, the Senate Public Employment and Retirement Committee takes up Senate Bill 1234, which would establish a pension plan for private-sector employees. Find that hearing in the Capitol's Room 3191.

Another Senate hearing will look at the decline in public access to the state's justice system, given recent budget cutbacks. Before the hearing, Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye joins Democratic Sens. Noreen Evans of Santa Rosa and Loni Hancock of Berkeley, California State Bar President Jon Streeter and attorneys David Boies and Theodore Olson to talk about the implications.

Their presser starts at 1:30 p.m. on the Capitol's south steps. The hearing itself starts at 3 p.m. in Room 4203 or after the Senate adjourns.

Another presser touts legislation that proponents say will "tackle piracy, business fraud and the state's expanding underground economy," according to a news release.

Senate Bill 1185, by Democratic Sen. Curren Price of Los Angeles, would create a multiagency task force involving the Board of Equalization, the Franchise Tax Board, Employment Development Department, as well as the Departments of Insurance, Justice, Health, Motor Vehicles, Consumer Affairs, and Industrial Relations.

Price will join the BOE's Randy Silva and Mira Guertin, of the California Chamber of Commerce at an "undisclosed warehouse in West Sacramento containing millions of confiscated products," the news release says.

Meanwhile, dueling rallies abound, with the National Association of Social Workers meeting at 11 a.m. on the Capitol's south steps. Listed speakers include Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada, D-Davis, and Democratic Sens. Mark Leno of San Francisco and Christine Kehoe of San Diego.

Then at noon on the west steps, it's the Tea Party United with the Citizens Reclaiming Constitutional Liberty PAC. Listed speakers at that rally include Republican Sen. Doug LaMalfa of Richvale, former Republican legislator Chuck DeVore, and Tom Del Beccaro, president of the California Republican Party.

The ACLU also meets at noon, but its members will be over near the fish pond.

If you're seeing red this afternoon, the members of the California Federation of Republican Women are meeting up for their annual Red Jacket Day photo. That's at 3:15 p.m. on the south steps.

ELECTION 2012: Peace and Freedom Party presidential candidates Stewart Alexander, Stephen Durham and Peta Lindsay will be in Sacramento at 6:30 p.m. at Integrate, 1529 28th St. (Lindsay won't be listed on California' primary ballot as she's too young to serve as president.) The party's Marsha Feinland, who's running for U.S. Senate, and C.T. Weber, who's running for the 9th Assembly District, will join them.

TALK: Former presidential advisers Paul Begala, who worked for Bill Clinton, and Ari Fleischer, who was George W. Bush's press secretary, share the stage tonight in Sacramento, appearing at the Scottish Rite Temple from 8 to 9:30 p.m. at an event organized by Temple Or Rishon in Orangevale. For more information, click here.