Doris and the “P” word

The election of L.A. Democrat Karen Bass to the Assembly speakership conjures up memories of the first female speaker, way back in 1995.

That was so long ago that Republicans actually had a one-seat majority in the lower house. Faced with a hostile majority, and with term limits forcing him to seek employment elsewhere anyway, longtime Democratic Speaker Willie Brown convinced Assemblywoman Doris Allen, R-Cypress, and Assemblyman Brian Setencich, R-Fresno, to jump ship and vote with the Dems for a speaker to replace Brown.

Then Brown got all the Dems to vote for Allen, who, while tough and candid, was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and who had had her differences with GOP leaders. She became speaker on June 5, 1995. It was a short stay. The Reeps, outraged at her defection, launched a recall campaign. After 102 days as speaker, she handed the post off to Setencich on Sept. 14. Two months later, she lost the recall election and was ousted from the Assembly seat she had first won in 1982. She died of cancer in 1999.

The kicker: Two days before she quit the speakership, Allen told the L.A. Times her opponents were “a bunch of jerks."

"Do I let a group of power-mongering men with short penises tell me what to do?" she asked rhetorically. "Well, I don't know. What am I supposed to do?
"These men have a real problem," Allen added. "They can't be doing it from logic and truth. Logic and truth don't dictate a recall. Certainly not from the party. So what else can it be? They can't help it if they were born with shortcomings."

The kicker kicker: A month after being recalled from her Assembly seat, Allen appeared on the “Politically Incorrect” cable TV show. Talking about power politics in general, she said, “To me, the penis is a small part of an anatomy.”

You have a tough act to follow, Speaker Bass.

Update from the 12th CD

It was noted here last week that Stanford law prof Lawrence Lessig was thinking of taking on former state Sen. Jackie Speier for the Bay Area congressional seat made vacant by the death of Tom Lantos earlier this month.

Forget it. Lessig told the San Jose Mercury News Monday that he did some polling of the heavily Democratic district and "it looked pretty clear there would be no way to win."

Lessig, who is internationally known for his work on Internet law, said he'll use the 40 grand he raised for the race on his "Change Congress" project, which is aimed at reducing special interest influence on Congress.

Readin’ ‘n writin’ ‘n packin’ heat

They take the Second Amendment purty durn serious over there in Arizona. A state Senate committee narrowly approved a bill Monday that would let people with concealed-weapons permits tote firearms on to college campuses in the state, under the theory that the lawfully armed folks could help gun down any unlawfully armed people if they began shooting up the schools.

Arizona is one of a dozen states around the country that are musing such laws in the wake of several shooting sprees that have occurred on U.S. campuses in the past few years. About three-dozen states, including California, specifically prohibit guns on campuses. Utah is the only state that currently allows people with permits to carry guns on the campuses of its public universities, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The Arizona bill’s author, Sen. Karen Johnson, R-Mesa, told the Associated Press she wanted to extend her bill to allow guns to be carried on elementary and high school campuses too, but couldn’t get the votes for it.

Administrators and police chiefs at Arizona’s three public universities are opposed to the idea, contending it would be hard for cops answering an emergency call to know who were the good guys and who were the bad guys in a gun battle.

Dueling quotes in the battle:
“When you have 18-to-25-year-old kids with guns in their pockets, it’s just a recipe for disaster.” – Fred Boice, president of the Arizona Board of Regents.
“Guns in the hands of bad people do bad things. Guns in the hands of good people do good things.” – Rick Dalton, Mesa, Az., teacher and former police officer.

No such measure has surfaced in California. Yet.

We’re No. 1, we’re No. 1

The latest fund-raising figures from the presidential campaign are in, and California is still the nation’s premier piggybank when it comes to presidential pretenders.

Figures culled by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics show White House candidates harvested $73.3 million from California through the end of January. That’s 10 percent more than those pikers in New York shelled out, and more than twice as much as the pitiful patriots of Texas.

Demo hopeful Barack Obama edged out Hillary Clinton ($19 million to $18.6 million) for most money from Californians. The most successful Reep – although not in actual vote-getting – was Mitt Romney, at $8.9 million. The booby prize went to Demo never-got-started-candidate Dick Gephardt, who actually not only raised no money in California, but also gave back a $3,000 contribution.

Closer to home: Clinton raised the most in the Sacramento metro area, followed by Romney; GOP has-been Rudy Giuliani beat out Romney in the Fresno and Modesto areas, and Obama beat out Clinton in San Francisco and Oakland.

And the top-giving California zip code? Beverly Hills, 90210. Go figure.

You can see all the numbers here.

In Texas, even the staffs are bigger

I took some guff recently from expatriates of the Lone Star State, when I poked a little fun at the fact that Texas legislators get paid only $7,200 a year for working 140 days every two years – and have to live in Texas.

Several of these aforementioned guff-dealers noted stiffly that Texas runs pretty well, thanks for asking, with a part-time legislature, and maybe California could learn a thing or two from them.

Maybe. Then again, maybe the secret’s in the staff. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the part-time Texas legislature had a staff of 2,268 in 2003, the last year comparable numbers were available. That compares pretty closely to the full-time California Legislatures's 2,359.

Of course it pales in comparison to New York’s 3,428.

Stupid New Yorkers.

Lessig may leap for Lantos seat, calls foe 'extraordinary'

The news that Stanford U law prof Lawrence Lessig may run for the 12th Congressional District seat that opened up last week when longtime incumbent Tom Lantos died should be of interest if for no other reason that Lessig appears to be killing his chief foe with kindness.

Former state Sen. Jackie Speier is the favorite to succeed Lantos in the Bay Area district, which is a safe Democratic seat. In fact, Lantos all but anointed her as his successor. But Lessig, who has an international reputation as an expert in Internet law, said this week he might run in the April 8 special election, on a platform to reform Congress by banning PAC money and congressional earmarks, and establishing public campaign financing.

And while a rookie, Lessig showed in his 10-minute, maybe-I’ll-run Web video that he knows how to jab without drawing blood.

Referring to Speier as an “extraordinarily good state senator,” Lessig said, “Nothing in this campaign will be a criticism of that extraordinary service by this extraordinary public servant.”

However, he continued: “She takes money from the interests she regulates. As the chair of the Senate Insurance Committee, she accepted over $250,000 in contributions from insurance companies. It’s exactly that kind of behavior that I think is wrong.”

He didn’t say whether it was extraordinarily wrong, or just the ordinary kind.

Brown as Green

California Attorney General Jerry Brown isn’t letting any grass grow under his feet when it comes to reducing greenhouse gases, even though most of the global warming rules and regulations contained in the state’s landmark AB 32 don’t go into effect until 2012.

Brown sent out letters today to more than 500 mayors, county supes, planning directors and other local officials for a series of workshops his office is hosting starting March 20. The workshops, according to the letter, are designed to provide the locals with practical tips on how they can use the California Environmental Quality Act to mitigate environmental impacts when pondering development projects under their purview.

The workshops are scheduled for Oakland (March 20); Sacramento (April 3); Visalia (April 24); Los Angeles (May 15) and Monterey (May 23).

The ex-governor, who may want to be a governor again come the 2010 elections, has been aggressive in developing a role for his office on the global warming issue. Last year he threatened lawsuits against local governments who didn’t include greenhouse gas reduction strategies when they approved local development.

“Even under the aggressive timetable that the governor and the Legislature have set (in 2006’s AB 32)” Brown wrote the locals, “most of the rules being developed to reach those targets will not take effect until 2012. A tremendous amount of local and regional planning will occur between now and then.”

Not to mention the 2010 governor’s race.

Some more-or-less interesting stuff

The California Budget Project released a sun-rises-in-the-east report yesterday that basically says stuff like poor people are less likely to own their own homes than rich people; housing prices and rental rates in California are pretty high, and the mortgage mess was caused in large part by people using shaky financing methods to buy houses they couldn’t afford.

But here and there in the 58-page report are a few little “I didn’t know that” nuggets. At least I didn’t know that:

· California has a lower rate of home ownership than any other state, except New York.
· In all 58 counties, the income needed to purchase a median-priced house exceeds the median household income.
· California has the second-most expensive rental housing market in the nation, trailing only Hawaii.
· Overcrowding – defined as living with more than one person per room – is more than twice as prevalent in California as it is in the U.S. as a whole.
· The median income for dental hygienists in the state is higher than that for registered nurses, cops, firefighters or elementary school teachers.

Conclusion: At least be glad you don’t live in Hawaii or New York, and encourage your kids to be dental hygienists.

Damn the term limits, full speed ahead

Voters’ rejection last week of Prop. 93, the scheme to change term limits to let 42 current legislators stay in office awhile longer, may have dashed the dreams of incumbents, but it has certainly spurred the hopes of a bunch of wannabe lawmakers.

Take the 19th Assembly District. Please. This mostly San Mateo County, safe Democratic district is currently repped by Gene Mullin. But Mullin is out come November. The morning after Tuesday’s election, within a few minutes of each other, press releases came hurtling via the Internet from Mullin's would-be successors.

In the missive headlined “Hill Campaign Moving ‘Full Speed Ahead’ Toward June Primary,” San Mateo County Supervisor Jerry Hill announced that “out of respect for the exceptional work” of Mullin, he was willing to put aside his personal ambitions in case Prop. 93 had passed. Since it hadn’t, Hill said, he was running hard.

A few minutes later, a guy named Richard Holober, who’s president of the San Mateo County Community College District, sent a press release saying how Mullin “is an exceptional citizen.” Of course he’s also a lame duck, so Holober is in the race too.

And if that’s not enough, tonight there’s a fundraiser here for Gina Papan, the daughter of the late Assemblyman Lou Papan. Guess what? She’s running for Mullin’s seat too.

Fasten your seatbelts: The freeway to Sacto is going to get real crowded.

3,668, 3,629, who’s counting?

When they took the plastic wrap off Warren Furutani, California’s newest legislator, last week, Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez noted the Democrat from Gardena was the 3,668th person to serve in the state’s lower house.

That didn’t seem right – at least in a numerical sense – to two legislative Fellows. So Alex Vassar, a Senate Fellow in Sen. Bob Dutton’s office, who runs a website on California political history, here and Chelsea Minor, an Assembly Fellow in Roger Niello’s office, put their heads together and went through the records. They came up with 3,629.

“I’m confident in our number,” Vassar said in a press release heralding their feat. “We included everyone, including the short-term members who only held office for a few days before resigning or having their seats contested.”

Hmmm. And I thought Speaker Núñez knew everything…

Every silver lining has a cloud

Overheard at the Barack Obama party last night at the Parlare Euro Lounge:

“I could live with either one of them (Obama or Hillary Clinton) winning.”
“Yeah, I could too.”
“Two good choices, but you know we’ll screw it up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dude, we’re Democrats.”

Growth club clubs Ose; gets clubby with Oller

When it comes to the Republican primary race for the 4th congressional district seat being abdicated by Congo John Doolittle, you can forget about Ronald Reagan’s “11th commandment” dictum on not speaking ill of thy fellow Reeps.

That goes particularly for the personal animosity between GOP contenders Rico Oller, the former state senator, and Doug Ose, the former congo. And it extends to various GOP groups. Take the Club for Growth. Please.

The club is a political action committee out of D.C. that generally gives money, much of it raised from retired people, to the most conservative candidates in contested GOP primaries. In the 4th CD, it’s backing Oller.

As a state senator, the club announced in a press release today, Oller was “an outstanding defender of taxpayers, consistently voting against state budgets because they spent too much.”

The clubbies also excoriated Ose for having a “lackluster” career when he was previously in Congress, and cites nine votes he cast “for increased spending, increased regulation, and limiting economic freedom.”

Funny thing: Of the nine votes, Ose voted with the majority of GOP congressmen six times.

And here all this time I thought the Dems were the increased spending- increased regulation-limiting economic freedom party…

O say can you see, at the ol’ EDD?

Patriots and fans of transparency in government will be heartened to know that the U.S. and California flags are once again waving over the Employment Development Department building on Auburn Boulevard.

It seems the flags, as well as other outside signs that revealed the presence of the EDD in the privately owned building, had been removed so as to discourage people seeking unemployment compensation from dropping in on the privately owned building’s inhabitants.

EDD spokeswoman Patti Roberts said the office is a call center, and there are no more state over-the-counter unemployment offices anymore. “It was done just to avoid any confusion on the public’s part,” she said.

But after an EDD worker complained about the lack of patriotism to this writer, and this writer inquired about the lack of flags, Roberts said the banners were sent back up the flagpole.

And the way things are going in the newspaper business, it’s good to learn you don’t have to go all the way down to the unemployment office to file…