State Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Merced, is ending his campaign for lieutenant governor and running for the Assembly seat being vacated by Tom Berryhill of Modesto.

Denham met in the past two days with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, other GOP leaders and his family before reaching his decision to run for Berryhill's Assembly District 25. It will require him to move out of Merced County and into Stanislaus County.

He said running for the Assembly seat will give him a chance to become a key leader in the Legislature after serving two terms in the Senate.

California unemployment hits 12.5%
Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, November 21, 2009

California employers added 25,700 jobs in October, the first such gain since April of 2008. But the state unemployment rate still rose to 12.5 percent, its highest level in nearly 70 years, as a report issued Friday depicted a downtrodden labor market struggling to rebound.

http://latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pay-cuts20-2009nov20,0,7572266.story

latimes.com
California lawmakers, officials face 18% pay cut
Legislative leaders had challenged the authority of the state's independent pay commission after it voted to trim salaries. But Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown's opinion says the panel can cut compensation.
By Patrick McGreevy

November 20, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento

A group of water oligarchs in California have engineered a disastrous deregulation and privatization scheme. And they’ve pulled in hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars without any real public outrage. The amount of power and control they wield over California’s most precious resource, water, should shock and frighten us — and it would, if more people were aware of it.