The Sacramento Bee is calling for a federal investigation into the Oracle scandal.

It will be interesting to see how the phalanx of anti-scandal Democrats responds to this, since the California governorship is the only major executive post they hold in the nation...

[Update a few minutes later]

It's even worse now. The SF Chronicle is piling on. They've run a story saying that this is going to be a tough deal to get out of. Sounds a lot like the idiotic energy deals, that are costing the state billions.

When a Democratic governor can't get the SF Chronicle behind him, he's in such deep kimchi that he can't even see a way out. He should have quit while he was ahead (as Jerry Brown's chief of staff). He's an exemplary example of the Peter Principle.

Don't count Gray out yet... much as I'd like to see this Clinton-after-Slimfast bounced from office, he's still got a huge warchest and can slime Simon with negative adds just as surely as he did Riordan, and Cali has replaced the South as the home of the "Yellow dog Democrat"

As for major governorships, I remember seeing that the GOP is in danger of losing a lot of governorships due to term limits and people leaving for other jobs. Here in Michigan for example, It's going to take a miracle to save us from Governor Granholm. Pennsylvania is in jeopardy with Ridge gone, and they already lost New Jersey. I haven't seen how Pataki is doing, but I gotta think the state that elected Hillary is going to make Cuomo a serious threat to him.

Michigan may be a lost cause, but I don't think that Cuomo has a chance, post 911. In fact, I'm not sure that Hillary could win again now. That photo of her smooching Suha Arafat would have a lot more resonance today than it did in 2000...

There was an article in today's Los Angeles Times [at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-050502oracle.story] stating that Logicon (as one of the parties to the agreement) was willing to help rescind the deal, saying "...we will do whatever it takes to fix that and make the state of California a satisfied customer, up to and including walking away from the contract."

Gray Davis may escape disaster on this one, if indeed the deel is called off. And the difference between this deal and the energy deals is that this is worth a piddling $100 million or so (and maybe only a few tens of millions in profits). That won't do nearly as much harm to Oracle or Logicon (a unit of Northrop Grumman) as the scandal threatens to do to them, PR-wise.

The energy companies, however, stand to lose TENS OF BILLIONS of dollars if California is able to renege on Davis' idiotic long-term contracts. So those deals are much more likely to stick.

Last time I checked (I moved from Rochester, NY to San Diego, CA last year, so I still follow news at home), Cuomo was trailing in the polls for the Democratic nomination, and both he and McCall were trailing Pataki badly (McCall polled 1% better than Cuomo, but both trailed pataki by over 20%).

Back home in California, I voted for Simon once already, and will again, but I don't think my vote will be enough...

The funny thing is, nobody seems to mention that not only did Oracle donate $25K to the Gray Davis campaign - they also donated $50K to the campaign for Bill Lockyer, the California Attorney general who's supposed to be investigating this fiasco. One donation in the amount of $25K occurred 15 days after the controversial donation to the Davis campaign (see http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/calaccess.asp?session=2001&id=1013582&detail=MADE ); the other donation occurred in right at the end of December 2000 (see http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/calaccess.asp?session=1999&id=1013582&detail=MADE ).