As the caucuses in Iowa caucuses heat up, somebody in Los Angeles wants to let the world know that they support Republican contender Ron Paul -- a street artist in Beverly Hills slapped a painting of the candidate at the bottom of a statue, with the title "Consistency." more ›

Election 2012 approaches, and with possible candidates just now making declarations of their intent to (not) run, those who are already in the race have been making appearances and raising bucks. Now the California Democratic Chairman John Burton has released a statement on Texas Governor Rick Perry’s California Fundraising Swing, and he says Perry is not what our state wants. more ›

The Orange County Fairgrounds was the site of a small Tea Party rally this morning, where people gathered to hear a speech by Republican presidential candidate hopeful Michele Bachmann. A few hundred fans were there to hear the Congresswoman from Minnesota speak, according to the OC Register. more ›

Presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman is hitting the campaign trail in SoCal today, holding fundraising dinners in Los Angeles and Newport Beach, reports the Daily Breeze. The GOP candidate, who formerly served as the governor of Utah and announced that he was throwing his hat in the ring for president on Tuesday, spoke at a lunch at the Jonathan Club in downtown LA and will speak a dinner at The Island Hotel in Newport Beach. more ›

That was fast. Newt Gingrich's campaign to be the 2012 Republican nominee for president appears all but finished just weeks after it began. Gingrich's entire senior staff resigned on Thursday, having decided they had better things to do than slave away for the hapless former Speaker of the House's hopeless campaign. more ›

Ron Paul, 75, will once again play the role of pissed-off anti-establishment candidate, ironically not as an Independent or third-party candidate but on the GOP ballot. He's the second GOP candidate to officially announce candidacy after Newt Gingrich. "Time has come around to the point where the people are agreeing with much of what I've been saying for 30 years," Paul told George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America. more ›

"Newt Gingrich, a former Georgia congressman who became the first Republican speaker of the House in decades in 1995, announced Wednesday afternoon his candidacy for president in 2012," reports the Los Angeles Times. Gingrich released a YouTube video touting his hat-in-ring-tossing for the next big American vote, saying that he believes "we can return America to hope and opportunity." more ›

Orange County GOP leader Marilyn Davenport has made a more official and contrite apology for being the mastermind behind the "joke" e-mail she sent out containing a doctored family portrait of chimpanzees with President Obama as the baby. Though Davenport initially balked at criticism of her attempt at political humor, she told the OC Weekly yesterday that she needed to say sorry "with different words." more ›

Orange County GOP official Marilyn Davenport is refusing to step down from her elected post today after she was outed as the sender of an email of a digitally-altered "family portrait" of President Obama as a baby chimp according to Top of the Ticket. Davenport said she thought the photo was "amusing," and definitely not racist. more ›

Once upon a time, a person could count on some things: death, taxes, and a Republican majority in Orange County. But all that's changing, according to the OC Register. The county that once prided itself on having the most Republican registered voters in the state is slipping...slipping into Democratic control. more ›

In 2003, former corporate exec Steve Poizner had sold off his business and had some time on his hands, so he called around to several local schools to offer his services as a teacher. He'd never taught before, but wanted to reach out to school-aged kids and make a difference. more ›

Naturally, it takes an Oregonian to set the record straight in the media about what really goes on at West Hollywood's Voyeur club, the spot where the RNC's Young Eagles after-hours hang-time netted the GOP a whole mess of scandal this week. more ›

Finally, the two Republican governor hopefuls will duke it out tonight in a debate in Costa Mesa. The hour-long event, hosted by the GOP-based New Majority California and moderated by KNBC's Conan Nolan, will be streamed live on www.sacbee.com/live starting at 5:30 p.m. Billionaire and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman has put millions into the her campaign and is pulling ahead in polls. She faces current California Insurance Commission Steve Poizner. more ›

Steve Poizner is scheduled to speak tonight on his second day of campaigning for the GOP gubernatorial ticket in the San Fernando Valley--an area of Los Angeles that is largely populated with Democrats, according to the Daily News. more ›

Everyone's a songwriter when there's something big going on. YouTube is busting at the seams with song parodies of candidates and campaigns; some mourn for better choices, some simply sing their support, and some poke lots of fun at the candidates' foibles. more ›

Our crack political team is projecting "reason to believe" that both Rudy Giuliani and Gov. Schwarzenegger will endorse John McCain for the Republican nomination very soon. more ›

The eyes of the nation are turning to the Ronald Reagan Library today, where debates for the Republican front-runners will begin. This is the last debate opportunity for the GOP before "Super Tuesday" next week (LAist is throwing an Election Party to celebrate). more ›

If you plan on participating in either the Republican or Democratic primary on February 5th (in two weeks) you MUST register to vote by midnight tonight. more ›

California is still a hue of royal blue in the bloody bruise that exemplifies partisan U.S. politics. But with the ludicrous and often homogeneous plans suggested by members of the so-called "right" and "left," California voters have only grown to embrace their right-to-choose in a people's democracy. Californians who choose not to register as a red, blue, or third-party voter -- "Decline to State" voters -- comprise nearly one-fifth of the state's registered voters according... more ›

According to an MSNBC online poll participated by over 16,000 people, Texas Congressman Ron Paul won the GOP Michigan debate in a landslide. Sister-station, CNBC, who hosted the debate also had an online poll but they, like Pajamas Media, took it down when they saw that the most conservative congressman in office was winning by such a wide margin. When asked who they thought was standing out from the pack, Paul, who favors the... more ›

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is stopping at Chapman University in Orange on Sunday, capping off weekend fundraising dinner rounds elsewhere in OC. The public forum is billed "Ask Mitt Anything," and we've got a few suggested questions with which you can do just that... after the jump. WHAT: Public Forum w/ Mitt Romney WHEN: Sunday 9/23, 2:15 p.m. WHERE: Chapman University Theater, Orange (map). RSVP: Call (857) 288-2667, or email california@mittromney.com. AP Photo... more ›

Texas congressman Ron Paul pointed his pen at his fellow conservatives at the New Hampshire presidential debates yesterday and won the Fox News text message poll, a day after winning the Maryland Republican Straw Vote, to the outrage of Fox mouthpiece, Sean Hannity. Hannity, who clearly hates freedom and obviously believes that all elections and polls that aren't rigged by Karl Rove must be rigged, flat out accused the American people of cheating when... more ›

Last night we showed you the Rosie O'Donnell vs Elisabeth Hasslebeck catfight. We felt sorta lame posting it because it was already 14 hours old and figured everyone had seen it by then, but today it was the most popular post all day on LAist. During the onslaught of traffic we got an email asking if we saw what happened to Elisabeth right after the break. Whaaaat? Apparently Alicia Silverstone, despite being a vegan... more ›

If you set your TiVo to record the GOP debates tonight on C-SPAN you're SOL. Unlike the previous debates that were shown on MSNBC, and allowed by NBC to be broadcast on the cable channel, Fox isn't playing as nicely. The CBS News blog Public Eye has the scoop: Public Eye has learned that Fox News Channel refused C-SPAN's request to simulcast the debate on C-SPAN radio, as well as the opportunity to rebroadcast... more ›

Wonkette is reporting that the next Republican "Pagefucker" (ahhh, Wonkette) who will be outted will be Jerry Weller from Illinois, who recently tried to blow hot air up the asses of a delegation of students from Olivet Nazarene University (Bourbonnais, IL) who visited him in DC to ask him what, as a member of the house international relations committee, he was doing about the 20,000+ children abducted each year in Uganda's civil war and... more ›

Just minutes after a passenger airplane accidentally smashed into a hi-rise apartment killing journeyman pitcher Cory Lidle, the GOP machine pounced on the tragedy by blaming former President Bill Clinton for knowing that air travel could be dangerous and not doing enough to prevent situations like yesterday's crash. "He was President for eight years, he didn't lower the buildings, he didn't create bumpers on planes, he basically sat back and got oral sex and... more ›

NPR broadcast a story the other day about the new great white hope of the GOP: black evangelicals. It seems that many of the reverent and religious in the African-American community are paying attention to the morals and family values stressed by conservatives. Can you guess which issue (that dare not speak its name) is top on their list? Some black affinity for the GOP is understandable. Law and order would do wonders for... more ›