Capitol Alert

Vice President Joe Biden was in town this afternoon. Here's The Bee's pool report from the event:

Vice President Joe Biden arrived before 3 p.m. - a bit earlier than expected - at a fundraiser at the Sutter Club, near the state Capitol in downtown Sacramento.

Pool was ushered into the hall about 3:17 p.m., just in time to hear Gov. Jerry Brown at the podium ahead of Biden. Biden started speaking about three minutes later to a crowd of about 130 people.

"Nothing has changed," Biden said of Brown, who was governor before from 1975 to 1983. Biden said he met Brown in San Francisco in the 1970s. He said, "He was the smartest guy in American politics then. He's still the smartest guy in American politics."

"He speaks his mind," Biden said, and the crowd laughed when he said, "I like guys like that."

Biden said the fundamental question of the campaign is, "Are we going to restore the American middle class?"

"It's a simple proposition: When the middle class does well, the poor have a shot, and the wealthy do very well. When the middle class is not doing well, and atrophies, the poor, they're in trouble, and only a certain part of the super-wealthy do very well."

Biden said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm all for people being wealthy. It's a good thing; it's not a bad thing. I come from the state of Delaware, one of the wealthiest states in America, and I have never played this populist card because I don't believe it. Wealthy people are just as patriotic as poor people. But the truth is it doesn't trickle down."

Biden said on environmental policies that Mitt Romney is "an anathema to things that the Republican Party used to stand for."

Talking about the slumping economy, he said, "We believe that the way to deal with this God awful recession we've inherited is that everyone is in on the deal."

Biden predicted $800 million in super PAC spending against Obama.

"Rooms like this all over America, you are enabling us to do the only thing that will allow us to counter $800 million spent on carpet-bombing of the president of the United States, my friend, scurrilously attacking him with these super PACs, because that's what they're going to spend. Remember I said it. They're going to spend about $800 million unaccountable dollars attacking my friend. There's only one way to counter that. That's to put together the single most consequential ground game in the history of American politics. We did it last time. It's got to be better this time."

Biden said Democrats are at an advantage in part because, for the first time he could recall, "Republicans aren't hiding the ball," but are "saying exactly what they believe."

He said, "They're just saying flat-out what they believe."

Biden finished after about 18 minutes. He wore a dark suit and tie and spoke at a podium before a black backdrop. Two large tapestries hung on one side of the hall. Guests ate meats and cheeses and stood around white tablecloth-covered bar tables. There were shouts of "Four more years!" as Biden ended.

Before Biden spoke, Brown, who walked into the Sutter Club with senior adviser Nancy McFadden, encouraged attendees to raise "a lot of money" for Obama in what Brown called a "watershed election."

He said, "We're either looking forward, we're looking at investment, inclusion for all of us, or we pull back to a rather narrow perspective of what America could be."

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson were also in the audience.

Biden said Johnson has a bright political future. Not only can he play basketball, Biden said, "He knows how to play politics, too."

From a campaign official:

On Tuesday afternoon, the Vice President will attend a fundraising event at the Sutter Club in Sacramento, California. Ticket prices start at $500. All proceeds will go to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee of Obama for America, the Democratic National Committee and several state Democratic parties.

Holding area was lavish for a one-person pool - including 20 bottles of Dasani, 10 cans of Coke, three Sprites, three 7-ups and one large tray of ice.

Rep. Dan Lungren has come to the defense of a Sacramento County Republican Party voter registration drive that has come under fire for filing potentially fraudulent registration cards.

Lungren said he supported the voter drive and understood that there were sufficient safeguards in place to prevent fraud. "The overall registration effort made by the party was very successful. I am unaware of any single registration that was paid for by that program that had any problems," he said last week, adding that it's possible that the voters filling out the forms made mistakes.

Sacramento County election officials forwarded information about the registration effort to the Secretary of State last month after finding irregularities with the voter registration cards submitted by circulators working for Momentum Political Services, a firm hired by the Sacramento County Republican Party.

Lungren said it was his understanding that cards collected by the drive had to go through multiple validity checks before a payment to the vendor would be made, though he said he had to distance himself from the operation because of campaign finance laws.

Elk Grove Democrat Ami Bera, who is challenging Lungren in November, has called for an investigation into the drive, writing in a letter to the Secretary of State that reports showed "3000 voter registration cards contained false or illegally changed information to inflate the amount of registered Republican voters in the newly drawn seventh Congressional District."

His campaign has raised questions about the Gold River Republican's involvement in the effort, pointing to a form submitted to county election officials that called the effort a "Lungren Voter Drive."

Lungren said last week that he supported the effort and did what was allowed under campaign finance laws to help the drive. At least two of his donors gave money to the county GOP's federal campaign committee last fall, but he declined to specify whether he solicited any contributions to help with voter registration.

"The law is so complicated that we're allowed to do certain things for certain days and then as you get closer to the election we're not allowed to. I can raise funds under certain circumstances and certain times and I can't raise it in others," he said. "Sometimes I can tell people there's a registration drive going on and if they want to send money they can, other times I can't even say that. So whatever the constraints were, we worked within them."

Representatives for the Secretary of State and the Sacramento County District Attorney's office, which would have power to prosecute, declined to comment on any complaints or investigations into the matter, citing confidentiality policies. The Secretary of State's elections fraud division said in a letter responding to Bera's complaint that they are "evaluating" the materials the campaign sent.

Lungren said he supports an investigation if evidence shows one is merited.

"Look, if there's any foul play, they ought to look at it, on any side," he said.

RELATED POSTS:

Suspicious voter registration cards found in Sacramento County

California legislation that would have restricted -- and possibly eliminated -- news media access to recordings of 911 emergency calls died in the Senate Public Safety Committee on Tuesday.

Assemblywoman Norma Torres, D-Pomona, for many years a 911 dispatcher, said her bill, Assembly Bill 1275, was needed to avoid disclosure of sensitive medical information and thus discourage the public from making 911 calls. She said 911-call access benefits just "tabloids and gossip magazines."

However, representatives of newspapers and broadcast media said that although it was aimed at medical and other personal information, the practical effect would be to close access to all 911 calls and thus make it impossible to investigate how authorities are responding to emergencies.

AB 1275 was backed by public employee unions and law enforcement groups but Public Safety's chairwoman, Berkeley Democrat Loni Hancock, agreed with the media representatives that its enactment would chill news media oversight of emergency operations and "needs a great deal of work."

With Hancock's opposition, the bill didn't receive a single affirmative vote in the committee.

How did the East Bay - Oakland and Berkeley specifically - evolve from a conservative Republican bastion into a region with a global reputation for left-wing politics?

John Curl, an inside player and observer of the region's complex political matrix, explains the transition in a lengthy, and more than slightly critical, examination of one of its most enduring characters, Berkeley Mayor (and former assemblyman) Tom Bates. And it's creating a stir in Berkeley's hyper-active political community, where minute shades of ideological difference can have a major effect.

Bates, whose wife, Loni Hancock, is now an East Bay state senator, is quoted extensively in the article, "Tom Bates and the Secret Government of Berkeley," thanks to an oral history archive in which Bates participated during a lull in his nearly half-century-long political career. And some of his pithiest and most candid observations are about what happens behind the scenes in the Capitol and how its appearances conflict with political reality.

Curl's 54-page article was first published in the Berkeley Daily Planet. Although he praises Hancock for her decades-long activism on behalf of leftish causes, he depicts Bates as posing as a true-blue progressive while aiding pro-development forces, particularly the expansion of the city's immense University of California campus.

Bates did not respond to a request for comment on Curl's monograph.

What, California has no golf courses?

Bill Berryhill and Steve Knight are planning a two-day golfing "Duel In The Desert" featuring the two incumbent Republican assemblymen, who currently are running for separate state Senate seats.

Now the kicker: The event is in Arizona.

For $3,000 per person, donors can join Berryhill and Knight in teeing off July 12 at the We-Ko-Pa Golf Club in Fort McDowell, Ariz., and the following day at the Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. Resort lodging is included, but not airfare.

Proceeds will be split evenly between the campaigns of Berryhill, a Stockton resident, and Knight, of Palmdale.

Despite its billing as a "Duel In The Desert," Berryhill characterized the event as a golf outing rather than a competition. The two days of fun in the summer sun are planned during a monthlong legislative recess.

Why Arizona?

Berryhill said he thought it was odd to hold the event out-of-state. "Quite frankly, I don't like having to go to Arizona," he said, adding that lobbyists organized the event and chose the location.

Knight could not be reached immediately for comment.

Dan Walters says people at the Capitol are waiting on many things, including a finalized budget.

Have a question you'd like Dan to answer? Post it on our Facebook page.

See other Dan Walters Daily clips here.

Dan Walters Daily: In today's video, Dan says "there's a lot of waiting going on."

Vice President Joe Biden will hit California today to keynote the 40th Annual International Convention of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, in Los Angeles. AFSCME is celebrating its 75th anniversary.

Then he'll travel north for a fundraiser at Sacramento's Sutter Club. Tickets for the event, to raise money for the Obama Victory Fund, start at $500.

Tickets prices begin at $1,000 for another fundraiser today, a shoe-shine event to raise money for Assemblyman Das Williams. But then, he's working for the money - he says he'll shine some himself.

CASTING CALL: If you're out and about at 1:30 p.m., you can catch a fly-casting competition organized by Cal Trout and Trout Unlimited. They're out to promote AB 1961, a measure aimed restoring habitat for salmon, trout and steelhead. Scheduled participants include Assemblyman Jared Huffman, Sen. Tom Harman, Assemblyman Wes Chesbro, Sen. Bob Huff, Assemblywoman Alyson Huber, Sen. Tom Berryhill, and Assemblyman Martin Garrick. Alert readers will note that it's a bipartisan affair.