2010 already? Kehoe can run for Assembly, if she wants
In my colleague Kelly Davis’ report on who’s running for State Assembly in 2010 (including the surprising news that City Council President Ben Hueso has filed papers), Kelly noted that State Sen. Christine Kehoe also filed papers to run for Assembly in 2010. Kehoe has served in the Assembly before, leaving us wondering whether she’d been termed out.
As it happens, Kehoe won races to represent the 76th Assembly District in 2000 and 2002 before running for State Senate in 2004. The term limits law allows her to run for Assembly for one more two-year term. But running in 2010 is peculiar because a) it pits her against her former employee, former Councilmember Toni Atkins, who’s also running for that Assembly seat, and b) the two years of the Assembly term would exactly overlap her final two years in the Senate. She’s currently in the first year of her second four-year term.
I’ve got calls out everywhere, more on this as I learn it.
Kehoe has no intention of running for the Assembly. She put her name in to scare off others. She will “drop out” of this at the last possible minute so that Atkins will have as clear a field as possible in the primary.
Kehoe, Ducheny, Salas, Block, etc. are all backing Atkins for the 76th Assembly District. She will win in a landslide. Kehoe is absolutely not trying to “scare off others,” her staff just put the wrong year on the FPPC form — it was supposed to say 2012 (the year she is termed out of the State Senate). Not that it matters because under the state rules she just needs a committee for any office in order to raise funds — funds that can later be transferred to a campaign for whatever office she really wants to seek. Bottom line is because of Prop 11 (redistricting turned over to a commission), and local redistricting, no one has any idea what any one will be running for in 2012 because no one has the foggiest notion of what will be available. 2012 is the wild west!
I wouldn’t consider Atkins a shoe in. There is a lot of time left before that election and anything can and will happen.