California Watch

Sitting members of the California Legislature have raised more than $380,000 during the last five days, as lobbyists and special interest groups scramble to push their bills through the Assembly and Senate before this year's legislative session draws to a close.

Before we dig in deeper later this week, we thought we'd show you how things are stacking up.

The Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association, which is pushing a slate of bills related to mobile homes and property taxes, has contributed the most, giving $22,700 to nine different lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

The Consumer Attorneys of California, which backed legislation that would streamline jury trials as well as several other bills, gave more than $14,000.

Groups representing telecommunications, insurance companies, doctors and pharmaceutical companies round out the top of the list, which you can see here as a Google spreadsheet. The biggest donors are listed below:

Fundraising for state Supreme Court campaigns nationwide more than doubled between 2000 and 2009, pitting business groups against trial lawyers and highlighting loopholes in the often murky world of judicial campaign finance, according to a report released yesterday by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Lawyers and business groups were by far the biggest spenders cited in the study, which tracked more than $46 million in judicial fundraising in 2007 and 2008 alone. Most of the money raised was ultimately spent on television ads, which can be particularly effective in judicial elections, where most voters know little about the candidates involved.

Special interest groups in particular spent most of their money on attack ads, which can be devastating to judicial candidates, the study shows. Because California Supreme Court judges are appointed, not elected, they did not figure prominently in the study.

However, concerns about elections and campaign spending in the state's lower courts have prompted debate and legislation in the state Legislature, which has mulled the issue for the better part of the summer.

Hewlett-Packard Co. is the ultimate rationale for Carly Fiorina’s U.S. Senate campaign.

The Republican candidate was CEO of Hewlett-Packard for six years. She engineered the mega-merger with Compaq. She managed the “reinvention of the legendary company,” as her campaign biography says.

But in the end, Fiorina’s stormy proprietorship ended in her firing. And before that, she faced bitter criticism – from the 28,000 people who lost their jobs as a result of the merger, and from Packard family heirs who passionately believed Fiorina was wrecking a company they considered their birthright.

Today, the lingering nature of that bitterness may be reflected in campaign finance records. Four months before the election, Sen. Barbara Boxer, a liberal Democrat with no particular ties to HP, is raising more money from Hewlett-Packard sources than the company’s former CEO.

Boxer has obtained $7,373, Federal Election Commission records show: $3,000 from HP’s Political Action Committee; $2,000 from HP computer scientist Jeffrey Mogul; $1,000 from Executive Vice President Michael Holston; $675 from computer scientist Ahmed Ezzat; $250 from Jason Rodriguez, director of government affairs; $200 from software engineer John Clark; $198 from programmer Thomas Wang; and $50 from Bruce Culbertson, another engineer.

For her part, Fiorina has obtained only two donations from HP sources: $2,400 from Anne Livermore, head of HP’s enterprise business division; and $500 from Steve Huhn, a vice president for sales.

That’s all the money the former CEO has managed to raise from her former company.

At least two Pennsylvania politicians have already returned campaign contributions made by a committee tied to California Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, who will face an ethics trial this fall over questions that she used her power to help a bank with ties to her husband.

The politicians, Reps. Kathy Dahlkemper and Patrick Murphy, both Democrats, have faced pressure from Republicans in Pennsylvania to return contributions from both Waters and embattled New York Congressman Charlie Rangel, who also faces ethics charges in the House.

Dahlkemper received $2,000 from Waters and Murphy received $1,000. The National Republican Congressional Committee reportedly plans to attack candidates who received money from Waters and Rangel using robo-calls.

Though it has been clear for several weeks that Waters would face ethics charges, a detailed report outlining those charges was released Monday.

Among other things, the report charges that Waters helped steer $12 million in federal bailout funds to a bank where her husband recently sat on the board. The assistance was facilitated in part by Waters' chief of staff, Mikael Moore, who is also her grandson.