Tim Donnelly, the Tea Party Assemblyman from Twin Peaks, has launched an exploratory effort to run for governor in 2014, the Ventura County Star reports.

“There's nobody out there fighting for us,” Donnelly told the Patriot Update website, shortly after he was re-elected earlier this month. “California needs somebody to stand up and fight, and somebody who believes this is the greatest state in the union and that we can be the Golden State again.”
The Weekly profiled Donnelly back in 2010, in a story that traced his political awakening and his bedrock opposition to illegal immigration.

Here's a sample of Donnelly's editoralizing on the subject from 2005:
We are told the illegal alien is now a resident of our communities, entitled to all the protections of the law, but none of its penalties. We are told that 'diversity' is a goal, and although it is unclear when we will reach this utopian dream, it involves more Hispanics and fewer of everyone else.
We are told that anyone who does not go along with the above program (or pogromme) is a 'racist,' 'xenophobe' or a 'vigilante.'… 
We are told that raping young girls, marrying extremely young girls, ogling women in an aggressive manner and using a child as a human shield are all cultural differences that we must learn to accept. 

And so forth…

As to Donnelly's chances in a statewide race, it's worth considering the career of Sen. Richard Mountjoy. He authored Proposition 187 and in some ways Donnelly has become his political heir.
Mountjoy ran for lieutenant governor in 1998, and came in third in the Republican primary. He also ran as a sacrificial lamb against Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 2006, losing by 24 points. If Donnelly were to win the Republican nomination — which is not unthinkable — he would face a similar landscape in the general election.

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