By CARLA MARINUCCI, San Francisco Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO - Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman was registered as a Republican voter in San Francisco from 1982 to 1985, city records show, contrary to a report last month that there was no evidence of her registration when she lived in the city in the 1980s.

Republican Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, took her first formal step Tuesday to challenge incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer -- but does she pass the Citizenship 101 test?

Critics suggest maybe not, considering that Fiorina, 54, who has a spotty California voting record, never cast a ballot in two other states where she lived, according to public records.

With polls showing the legalization of marijuana gaining public support, and a state budget crisis fueling an ever-more-desperate search for revenue, backers of the first major statewide initiative to legalize marijuana for personal use -- and allow counties to tax and regulate the drug -- say they're preparing to get the matter on the November 2010 ballot.

In the aftermath of the California Supreme Court ruling upholding a ban on future same-sex marriages, other states are wrestling with the issue.
Five states -- Massachusetts, Iowa, Vermont, Connecticut and Maine -- have approved same-sex marriage. And at least three others, New York, New Jersey and New Hampshire, are seriously considering the matter.

In the wildly diverse worlds of bodybuilding, movies and politics, Arnold Schwarzenegger has consistently marshaled one critical skill -- an uncanny knack for salesmanship -- to catapult him to the top of his class.

When San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom visited Los Angeles Tuesday for a town hall session with voters, his campaign dramatized a strategic -- and tantalizing -- theme in the 2010 Democratic race for governor.

When San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom visited Los Angeles Tuesday for a town hall session with voters, his campaign dramatized a strategic -- and tantalizing -- theme in the 2010 Democratic race for governor.

President Bush once remarked at a White House party that in the famously liberal enclave of San Francisco, his supporters were so rare that "you could probably fit them all in one room."

SAN FRANCISCO -- As he prepares to enter the ring of White House politics, President-elect Barack Obama might need to perfect that left jab just as much as his right hook.

In a presidential race in which unexpected factors like lipsticks and pigs have driven questions about sexism and feminism, a central question remains: What do women want?This is especially true now that Alaska's Republican Gov. Sarah Palin, a self-described hockey mom, is a major player in the race -- and is shaping its coverage and its issues in surprising ways.