CA: Arnold's New Secretary of State Faces Hell in Courtroom

Nothing could be better for Republicans than the news former State Senator Bruce McPherson has been named by Arnold S. as California Secretary of State. This appointment comes after sleazy San Francisco Democrat Kevin Shelley was driven from office in a major scandal.

To those of us who know McPherson, we understand it couldn't happen to a nicer or more deserving person. And for once the news from Santa Cruz is something positive rather than embarrassing.

I'll never forget working on his first campaign in 1993, the impossible was achieved as McPherson beat one of the worst "progressive" Democrat tyrants in the state, Gary Patton, to win the state assembly seat. This is an overwhelmingly Democrat district.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, thought Bruce could win the campaign. I will never forget election night as the Patton headquarters, which normally would have been in party mode, was deserted as soon as the election results came in.

Top Dem officials in Sacramento, including Bill Press, were in shock that a Republican could take Santa Cruz.

That campaign is where I got my start in talk radio as well, after a night functioning as McPherson's stand-in at a candidate's debate (he was booked for two events at the same time by mistake).

Sadly, however, the McPherson family is still dealing with the daily hell of the aftermath of the cold-blooded murder of their son, Hunter, on a San Francisco street in 2001. The trial of one of the defendants in the street mugging-turned-killing is underway and it must be horrible to hear this creep make excuses.

I interviewed McPherson several times last year for radio programs in Seattle and Dallas-Fort Worth and even at that point he would only address the murder off the air. I can't imagine, nor can anyone, what this must be like to endure every single day.


(Santa Cruz Sentinel- Cathy Redfern)

Terrell, 21, of San Francisco, is facing murder and robbery charges for the Nov. 17, 2001, shooting of McPherson, a Harbor High graduate and son of secretary of state-designate and former state Sen. Bruce McPherson of Santa Cruz. McPherson, 27, was shot in the chest after refusing to give up his wallet as he and his girlfriend walked on Mariposa Street, in what prosecutor Harry Dorfman called "a city dweller’s nightmare."

Terrell and a friend, Dwayne Reed, robbed three couples that night, Dorfman says. They were high on Ecstasy, marijuana and alcohol. But Terrell told jurors he passed out in Reed’s car and does not remember what happened. Terrell said he never questioned Reed on specifics after Reed woke him up and said he had shot a man.

Terrell’s attorney claims Reed committed the slaying and pinned it on Terrell.

Yet Terrell told his mother in a phone call secretly taped by police that he killed "the senator’s son." He said the gun discharged after McPherson grabbed for it. Later, he said he did not remember the shooting, but believed he did it because Reed told him he did and because detectives told him he had been identified.