California's former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado recently started to capitalize on his desire to take over Governor Jerry Brown's position a couple of weeks ago. He did not, however, get off to the best of starts.

Maldonado, a Republican who lost his bid at Congress last year, kicked off his unofficial campaign almost two weeks ago. He took a stance against Brown's prison policies, and did not mince words when he did so.

"This is the biggest issue, it threatens the lives of Californians," he told The Times. "This notion of families being afraid to go out on the street, being afraid of parking garages, families who are just afraid. The governor uses a fancy word called realignment," Maldonado said. "At the end of the day, it's early release.... A shell game is what it is."He went on to claim that "today will be the beginning [of the] end of early release," at a well-sculpted news conference that had all the makings of someone with newfound political aspirations. He certainly got the 'lying politician' part down.


"It's quite simple," corrections department spokesman Jeffrey Callison said. "There is no early release program called realignment. Realignment is not an early release program. There are no early releases as part of it."

Not only was Maldonado incorrect in his usage of words, but in his display of images as well. He had a photograph of one of the inmates that Brown's prison policy was supposed to benefit, which was fine except for one small problem. Brown's prison policy did not apply to that inmate, just inmates similar to him.

All in all, most agree that this was an inauspicious start to a campaign that hasn't even technically started yet. As for what to do? Well, the jury is still out on that, though it's clear the Maldonado will have to clean up his act.

"Go out there and don't act like a Republican," said one source, who didn't want to be identified knocking his own party. "We've all seen this [anti-crime] narrative. It's like watching episodes of 'Gilligan's Island' for the 20th year. It's really bad political theater."