In less than 90 minutes today, the new two year session of the California Legislature convened… and then promptly adjourned until the new year. But even amid a day of celebrations and collegiality, a few interesting issues managed to surface– ones that are might dominate the state’s political headlines in 2007.

First, some odds and ends from the festivities. It was SRO in both chambers, especially the Assembly, as family members and friends gathered to watch new legislators take the oath. There were an awful lot of VIPs, too, who were milling about… from ex-legislators now officially termed out to local officials like LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Oakland Mayor-elect Ron Dellums. There were also several incoming, and outgoing, constitutional officers… from Treasurer and defeated gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides to soon-to-be Attorney General Jerry Brown and soon-to-be Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner. Other VIPs on the floor included head honchos of some of the most powerful interest groups, like Barbara Kerr of the California Teachers Association.

In fact at one point, the dais of the Assembly (where Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger also participated, something rare for chief executives) looked like a who’s who of potential gubernatorial candidates in 2010… including outgoing Controller Steve Westly; re-elected schools chief Jack O’Connell; Brown; Villaraigosa; and Angelides (I’m excluding Speaker Fabian Nunez, former Senate Pro Tem John Burton, and former Assemblymember Lou Papan from that list).

Schwarzenegger’s appearance at the swearing-in ceremony in the Assembly seemed to be a symbolic gesture of bipartisanship for the coming year. And while no one was pessimistic about such working relationships, several issues do threaten to derail the political peace train.

Most interesting will be how things play out on next year’s state budget. In his first big Q&A with Capitol reporters, new Assembly GOP Leader Mike Villines (R-Clovis) called last year’s state budget “a mistake.” And while he said he believes it’s possible to get a budget enacted on time in 2007, he also didn’t seem to put too much emphasis on the constitutional deadline. “I think it’s always important to do what’s right, first,” he said.

And the budget just happens to be the likely home for some of the legislation needed to implement portions of the November infrastructure bonds.

In fact, legislative staffers say even the bonds that do not need to be part of the budget… including some of the flood control and housing bond offerings… will require GOP votes if they are to move forward in 2007, i.e. through an “urgency measure” rather than a majority-vote bill that wouldn’t take effect until 2008.

And Democrats, while saying they are also optimistic about cooperation, made it clear that the burden is going to be on GOP legislators.

“Republican legislators,” said Speaker Nunez, “have an opportunity to get on the bipartisan bus. Or not.”

You can open the audio file of yesterday’s story by clicking here.

During election season, political reporters always want to know every single detail about the inner workings of a campaign. Polling, focus groups, strategy sessions… all of it. But we rarely see how these kinds of decisions are made.

This afternoon on the newsmagazine version of The California Report, you can hear how we finally got that chance.

For the final seven weeks of the fall campaign, I got the chance to watch some of how a statewide campaign works, with access to the team behind the $10 billion education bond, Proposition 1D. The only ground rules were that the story was embargoed until after the election.

After watching and listening to several focus groups, reading the internal polls, and listening to strategy conference calls, it becomes clear that political professionals take their cues from the techniques largely created by Madison Avenue’s advertising industry.

But it also became clear that a lot of voters were, well, grumpy this year. In regards to Prop 1D in particular, several focus groups in both southern and northern California became gripe sessions that wondered where had all the earlier money gone when it came to education ballot measures?

Prop 1D, the $10 billion infrastructure bond, will provide money for better classrooms. But voters want improvements into what happens inside those classrooms. As for infrastructure… in the words of 1D strategist Gale Kaufman, “that’s not sexy.” And that reality required Kaufman and the Prop 1D team to position the ballot measure in broad terms, and not the narrow realities of the bond offering.

Click here for stations and airtimes for today’s story; the story will be online here later this afternoon.