California Insider

I guess Spanish-language media mogul Jerry Perenchio liked what he saw Tuesday. He dropped a quarter-million-dollar donation on Schwarzenegger's campaign committee on Wednesday. The record is here, at the Secretary of State's site. Also, and more conveniently viewed here, at electiontrack.com

The Rasmussen Reports is out today with national numbers on Schwarzenegger's favorability ratings, which are good but not great. They have him at 55 percent favorable, 31 percent unfavorable. That's a pretty high unfavorable number for a guy who's never been attacked on the national stage.

The poll's other numbers:

Bush: 54-45
Kerry: 50-47
Giuliani: 64-20
McCain: 54-22

AP has moved an interesting story detailing Chevron's influence on the recommendations of Schwarzenegger's California Performance Review.

Don't be surprised if you start hearing a lot more about a hospital crisis in the weeks and months ahead. The folks who run California's private hospitals say they are buried in uninsured patients while struggling to meet new state-imposed nurse-to-patient ratios and deal with state mandates on seismic safety. Now they're appealing to Schwarzenegger for help. Here is a copy of the letter the association just sent the governor laying out their beefs.

Seems just a bit premature, but Larry Kudlow at National Review and Michael Rosen at Tech Central Station weigh in on the prospect of an Arnold candidacy.

The Chronicle reports that television ratings spiked for Schwarzenegger's speech, pushing viewership higher than the average for the Democratic convention and for the first three nights of the 2000 Republican gathering.