She inherited a fractured caucus that her predecessor, Fabian Nunez, corralled with a mix of power politics and charm. Bass was the anti-Nunez, a genial facilitator reluctant to mete out punishment and bully fellow members, many of them Type-A overachievers.
Some have been bothered by her refusal to play hardball with the governor, especially after he began proposing cuts in health and human services. Finally, when the governor stepped in last week and worked with GOP lawmakers in the Senate to block a Democratic deal to delay the onset of IOUs, Bass peeled back her normal calm.
She conspicuously missed a Monday morning meeting of legislative leaders with the governor, then held a news conference to talk about it. She accused Schwarzenegger of shifting the rules mid-game with new demands.
Sitting in her office a day later, Bass dismissed her absence from the meeting as "much ado about nothing," said she would not miss another such session and held out hope that she and the governor could eventually see eye to eye.
"The last thing in the world I want to do is have a war with the governor," Bass said. "I'm a goal-focused, product-oriented person. And I want this situation to stop."
Schwarzenegger has refused to take on Bass directly, calling her "a great public servant" who is "passionate about what she's doing."
Bass has a convivial relationship with Steinberg, who has at least two advantages -- more legislative experience and more time to rule. Bass will be forced out of the Assembly next year; Steinberg won't face his term limits until 2014.
His resume includes a stint in the Assembly that has given him a half-dozen more years in the building. And Steinberg, who is also struggling with a restless caucus, has taken a different tack on the budget fight.
He resigned himself to unbending GOP resistance to tax hikes. And his continued efforts to engage the administration even as the governor threw more demands on the table have muted Bass' battle cries.
The governor has demanded that any budget agreement include policy changes that organized labor groups find unacceptable. Some of them would shrink the state's in-home healthcare program.
The unionized workers in that program pay millions of dollars monthly in dues to the Service Employees International Union, one of the biggest donors to legislative Democrats. Those include Bass, by tradition the key fundraiser for her caucus.
