This past weekend, about 600 Republican leaders from all around the Golden State gathered in the greater Palm Springs area for the California Republican Party’s Biennial Convention. The event marked the “opening bell” in the June 2010 statewide primary races. Much attention was paid to who will carry the GOP torch in the governor’s race, since Arnold Schwarzenegger, to the relief of many, is being term-limited out of office.

Governor Schwarzenegger skipped the convention last February — he literally signed the largest tax increase in the history of any state while it was taking place (no wonder he didn’t stop by!) — but attended this one. Absent were ex-GOP legislative leaders Dave Cogdill and Mike Villines and the other four Republican legislators — collectively dubbed the “Quisling Six” — who voted with all of California’s Democrat lawmakers to pass that tax increase.

The two leading GOP candidates for governor, California state insurance commissioner Steve Poizner and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, were both well received at the convention. Both hail from Silicon Valley and have promised to spend heavily from their personal fortunes (each is worth hundreds of millions of dollars) on their campaigns. Poizner is a fixture at these conventions, having been a regular attendee for years. For Whitman, this was only her second convention appearance. Neither candidate is a social conservative, while virtually all members of the state GOP are, yet each has made significant inroads with party regulars. Perhaps when compared to Schwarzenegger, both Poizner and Whitman seem like modern-day versions of Attila the Hun.

Whitman did have to play defense a bit, after it was revealed late last week that she apparently had not voted, nor even registered to vote, until the middle of this decade. This amazing revelation led to a showdown between Whitman and reporters at the convention.

Moderate Republican Tom Campbell, a former U.S. congressman and currently a law professor, is also in the governor’s race, but he is running a bare-bones campaign, and the presence of the two tycoons in the race has nearly relegated him to also-ran status. The eventual winner of the GOP primary will face off against either California attorney general (and former governor) Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown or San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom.

With Sen. Barbara Boxer up for re-election next year, there will also be a spirited GOP Senate primary. State assemblyman Chuck DeVore, a stalwart conservative who has been running for more than a year, came into the event bolstered by a Rasmussen survey showing that, in a one-on-one matchup against Boxer, he performs better than former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who is poised to jump into the Republican primary race after she finishes a few remaining weeks of radiation therapy for breast cancer.

Three individuals familiar to NRO readers — House Republican Conference chairman Mike Pence, Rep. Darrell Issa, and the now uber-famous Andrew Breitbart — were well received by GOP leaders at the convention. (It may have been lost on Andrew that the applause he received was louder than that received by the gubernatorial hopefuls.)

The delegates to the convention overwhelmingly opposed an open-primary measure that will appear on next June’s ballot. This measure is expected to be championed by the lame-duck Schwarzenegger — his final attempt to knife conservatives before returning to Hollywood.

– Jon Fleischman is publisher of the FlashReport on California Politics, and is serving his second term as elected Vice Chairman, South, California Republican Party.