California: Gil Cedillo

The San Gabriel Valley is a unique area.  Within 5 minutes of Gil Cedillo's campaign kickoff for Congress yesterday in El Monte, I visited a 200 year-old Spanish mission, and a Pho shop in Alhambra where I was the only guy in there who didn't speak Cantonese.  This is a series of highly homogeneous communities, which doesn't have the same media, doesn't have the same leadership, and doesn't even speak the same language.

However, it's a demographic reality that the district is over 60% Latino while being about 18% Asian.  This is an urban, middle-class Hispanic district.  And while Gil Cedillo doesn't represent it in the State Senate, he drew a lot of support to his initial campaign event yesterday.

Sen. Gil Cedillo's campaign for Congress got a boost today, as Rep. Howard Berman, a long-time area congressman, endorsed him.

"Gil Cedillo is the type of strong advocate that working and middle class families need in Washington, D.C.," Berman said in a prepared statement.

The former speaker of the Assembly hasn't actually been gone all that long, and it was always anticipated that he would make a run at the State Senate in 2010. Fabian Núñez has filed papers to run for the SD-22 seat currently held by Gil Cedillo - a seat that might open up even sooner if Cedillo wins a special election to replace Hilda Solis in the Congress:
This week, he filed paperwork to fill the seat of termed-out Sen. Gil Cedillo in 2010. Cedillo's seat could be vacated even sooner, as the Los Angeles Democrat is running for Congress to replace Rep.

For a number of reasons, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't likely to take a position in the Obama administration even if offered one, said a political science professor at California State University, Sacramento.

Too many factors here and on the national front make it a less-than-ideal fit, said Tim Hodson, director of the university's Center for California Studies.

Among them is that while Schwarzenegger won't be doing state Republicans any favors by taking a job in environmental or energy agencies, Hodson said.