April
9 More than Money

That, and other news, in Monday's Political Panorama.

With California's new early primary, candidates no longer have the excuse to treat the state and its donor pools as an ATM. Slip in, raise money, slip out.

Politico/producer Rick Jacobs' progressive group Courage Campaign has launched a new feature and separate website of its ATM Watch, in which readers can submit questions that they think should be addressed by campaigns as they roll through the state. The ATM Watch is designed to track candidates and their movements, measuring whether they actually are interacting with voters and doing the honest to goodness business of campaigning. Jacobs, who chaired Howard Dean's efforts in the state for the 2004 race, only to see California play little role in the primary outcome, enlisted Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez to launch the endeavor. Among his issues: global warming, fair immigration and tax disbursement. "This is the time to ask the tough questions that most affect Californians," Nunez says.

Obama in New York: Barack Obama once again ventures into Hillary Clinton country today, with a pair of New York City fund-raisers. One is at the home of Huffington Post founder Kenneth Lerer and another is at the home of former MTV and AOL exec Robert Pittman. He guests on "Late Show with David Letterman" this evening.

Trip to Bountiful: We've done very little on Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), who is running for the GOP nomination, but would be remiss if we didn't point out that he has stepped in to try to prevent the Mexican government's extradition of bounty hunter and reality TV star Duane "Dog" Chapman. He sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asking her to deny the extration. Here's what happened, according to the D.C. Examiner: "After convicted rapist Andrew Luster, an heir to the Max Factor fortune, jumped bail last fall, Chapman pursued him into Mexico and captured him without the cooperation of the Mexican government. U.S. Marshals later arrested Chapman at his home in Hawaii as Mexican authorities demanded extradition." Tancredo's website is now playing up his move, allowing visitors to download a form to tell their representatives how they feel about the whole matter.