Republicans Elect New Chairman

California Republicans have elected Palo Alto attorney Duf Sundheim as their new chairman. Sundheim is head of a moderate Northern California Republican group. He was chosen by state GOP delegates at a meeting in Sacramento yesterday in a struggle between conservatives and moderates.

Sundheim faces major challenges leading a party that´s in a minority in state voter registration and in both houses of the California Legislature. In the last election Democrats captured all statewide offices – the first time one party has won all the posts in 120 years.

Sundheim told the GOP delegates: “I want us all to commit to work together to unify this party in a way it´s never happened before.”

Also yesterday, the GOP delegates approved a resolution to support a grass-roots drive to recall Democratic Governor Gray Davis. A group seeking to have Davis ousted by California voters hopes to receive approval from state election officials within the next week or so to begin collecting the nearly 900,000 petition signatures required.

If a recall petition collects enough signatures the lieutenant governor would call an election. Recall efforts have been launched against every California governor in the past 30 years but none of the drives collected the needed signatures.