Capitol Alert

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer filed for divorce Friday, months after his wife's affair with a methamphetamine addict and her own substance abuse problems became public.

Lockyer, 71, cited "irreconcilable differences" in his filing in Alameda County Superior Court, said spokesman Tom Dresslar. The veteran Democratic politician has been married to Nadia Lockyer since April 2003, and they have a 9-year-old son.

Their troubles became known in February when she said she was injured in a violent assault at the hands of her former boyfriend, Stephen Chikhani, a methamphetamine user she met in an addiction treatment program. The California Department of Justice, which took over the assault inquiry from Alameda County, declined to pursue charges against Chikhani.

Nadia Lockyer, 41, resigned in April as Alameda County supervisor, a post she won in 2010 thanks in part to $1.5 million in contributions from her husband's war chest. She said in her resignation statement that she could no longer balance her duties as a mother and supervisor while recovering from addiction and dealing with the "aftermath of interpersonal violence," a reference to the Chikhani incident.

"(Bill) Lockyer wants two things," Dresslar said. "Above all, he wants the matter resolved in a way that serves the best interests of his son. Two, he wants it handled as privately and amicably as possible."

PHOTO CREDIT: State Treasurer Bill Lockyer holds his child, Diego, as he enters the Democratic Donvention in San Jose with his wife Nadia on Saturday, January 17, 2004. Sacramento Bee/ John Decker

Can centrist politicians survive and thrive in today's political climate?

Former California Gov. Gray Davis doesn't think so.

"Those people are toast today," the California Democrat said in a taped interview that first aired yesterday, describing his own ideological score as governor as "left of center, maybe a moderate liberal."

Davis made his comments in an interview that aired at the end of "Chasing the Hill," a Web-based series that debuted Sunday. The political drama chronicles a fictional California congresswoman's tough re-election fight in the primary.

Davis, who has been active in California politics since the 1970s, said he's seen partisan gridlock get worse over the years, saying the "the heightened partisan divide has made governing extraordinarily difficult."

"You have to either be on the left or the right or else you end up with both sides shooting arrows at you," he said.

The twice-elected governor said that dynamic was also apparent in the governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor-turned-Republican politician voters picked to replace him in a 2003 recall election.

"Arnold started off with good intentions and probably ended up with good intentions, but 85 percent of what he did, I would have done and, you know, he had a difficult time as well," Davis said. "It's very hard to be in the center in today's environment, which is a shame because people are paying the salaries of elected officials ostensibly to help those people live a better life, and what it's gotten down to is just both sides blaming the other and nothing getting done."

The interview was part of a segment called "Chasing Chasing The Hill" that adds insights from real political figures to the scripted show. The premiere can be downloaded online for $1.99.

PHOTO CREDIT: Former Gov. Gray Davis laughs with then-Gov. Arnold in the Capitol rutunda, Wednesday Dec. 7, 2005. Sacramento Bee//Brian Baer

President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney will return to the Bay Area on Sunday and Monday -- back to buck-rake once again in donor-rich California.

Romney will appear at two $50,000-per-plate events on Sunday, according to campaign invitations, one at the San Francisco home of Shaklee Corp.'s Roger Barnett and his wife, Sloan, and one at the Woodside home of Tom Siebel.

The former Massachusetts governor is also expected to attend a less exclusive event at a San Francisco hotel before heading south for a batch of high-dollar fundraisers on Monday in the Los Angeles area.

Obama is scheduled Monday to raise money at a dinner at the Piedmont home of developer and real estate investor Wayne Jordan and his wife, activist Quinn Delaney. Tickets were listed at $35,800 per person.

Obama is also scheduled Monday to attend a larger fundraising reception at the Fox Theater in downtown Oakland.

One might assume that California, the cradle of the global technology revolution, would have the highest penetration of Internet access of any state.

But that assumption would be very wrong, according to data in a new Census Bureau report.

In fact, the proportion of Californians over the age of 3 living in homes with Internet access, 78.2 percent, is only fractionally higher than the national average of 75.9 percent, and 21 states have higher rates, the Census Bureau study, based on its periodic national surveys, shows.

New Hampshire tops the list at 86.2 percent, and other New England states are also high. New Mexico is at the bottom at 64.1 percent. The study breaks down Internet access and usage not only by state but by ethnicity, gender, age and other factors.

In its first online ad, Gov. Jerry Brown's campaign to raise taxes heaps praise on Brown for spending reductions he has enacted, while including a direct appeal by Brown for higher taxes.

Though running online only, the spot suggests a campaign slogan - "Take a Stand" - and its willingness to prominently feature the Democratic governor with only a mediocre public approval rating.

"After a decade of gimmicks and deficit spending, California was on the brink of fiscal insolvency," Mary Jane Burke, Marin County's superintendent of schools, says in the ad's opening scene.

"Then, Gov. Jerry Brown took office," says Dean Murakami, a faculty member at American River College and president of the Los Rios College Federation of Teachers. "He cut phones, cars, travel budgets and state commissions."

Brown's Proposition 30 would raise the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners.

"We've made progress, but we still have very serious budget problems in California," Brown says. "We simply have to take a stand against further budget cuts for schools or for our public safety. To do that, we're going to the people."

The California Democratic Party is poised to take sides in a handful of same-party runoffs on the November ballot.

Democratic delegates throughout the state met over the weekend and last week to cast endorsement votes in a number of districts where no Democrat won the party's official backing ahead of the June 5 primary.

Here are the unofficial results of those votes, which CDP spokesman Tenoch Flores said will be certified as early as Friday if no challenges to the vote are filed.

Assembly District 18:Rob Bonta endorsed over Abel Guillen.

Assembly District 47: Joe Baca, Jr. endorsed over Cheryl Brown.

Senate District 13: Jerry Hill endorsed over Sally Lieber.

Senate District 15: Jim Beall endorsed over Joe Coto.

The party won't be taking a side in the heated 30th Congressional District battle between Democratic Reps. Howard Berman and Brad Sherman. Berman won support of a majority of delegates at the weekend vote -- a reversal from a spring convention vote that put Sherman in the lead -- but failed to hit the 60 percent threshold needed to secure an endorsement.

The party automatically backs candidates who are the sole Democrat on the November ballot, unless a successful attempt to challenge that endorsement is filed. A list of pre-primary endorsements made at the party's spring convention is posted here.

RELATED POSTS:

Endorsement wars heat up at California Democratic Party confab

California is home to more military veterans than any other state - about 2 million - but it doesn't have a particularly high proportion of veterans, according to a new Census Bureau "infographic."

The state has about 12 percent of the nation's population but only about 9 percent of its veterans, the graphic display of data indicates. Nor do any California cities emerge as having relatively high proportions of veterans in their population.

Killeen, TX, with 28.9 percent of its population as veterans, is tops on that list. It's home to Fort Hood, one of the Army's largest installations. Overall, Texas and Florida have the nation's second largest populations of veterans, 1.6 million each.

For anyone who thinks it's OK for police officers to have sex with offenders they're driving to jail, state law now says it's not.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 2078 last Friday to close what its author, Republican Assemblyman Jim Nielsen of Gerber, called a legal loophole that surfaced in the case of an Anderson police officer initially charged with raping a woman he was transporting. The new law takes effect Jan. 1, 2013.

The accused police officer, Bryan Benson, ultimately pleaded guilty to lesser offenses in a plea deal offered by prosecutors who were wary that the loophole could have allowed Benson to argue that the sex in 2010 was consensual, according to news accounts at the time.

State law bans officers from having sex with confined inmates in a jail or prison, or while they are being transported to one. In the Anderson case, however, the woman arguably was not yet confined - she had been taken into custody on suspicion of drunken driving and was headed to jail for booking.

If AB 2078 had been in effect when Officer Benson was arrested, and he had been convicted of rape and kidnapping charges initially filed, he could have been sentenced to life in prison.

The plea deal promised Benson no more than one year in jail - and he does not have to register as a sex offender.

Dan Walters says that California's chronic budget troubles have set it apart from other states.

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

See other Dan Walters Daily clips here.

VIDEO: In today's report, Dan Walters talks about a distinction that California could do without -- how its credit rating stacks up against those of other states.

The Nov. 6 election is still some five months away, but the campaign cash is already flowing.

Sunday was the deadline for congressional campaigns, PACs and party committees to file their quarterly reports with the Federal Election Commission covering April 1 through June 30.

At least one California candidate didn't wait until the last minute.

The campaign of Democratic Rep. Lois Capps -- who faces Republican Abel Maldonado in the 24th Congressional District -- released her numbers late last week, noting that she took in more than $577,000 during the quarter and ended it with more than $1.2 million in cash on hand.

As of late Friday, Maldonado had yet to file. Neither had Republican Rep. Dan Lungren or Democrat Ami Bera, who's challenging Lungren in the 7th Congressional District.

Come back later -- Capitol Alert will be sifting through reports in those and other races.