Abel Maldonado

Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles, Kings and Santa Barbara counties in response to destructive rains this week. State of emergencies were already declared in Kern, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo and Tulare counties. The declarations came as work crews, residents and business owners traded sandbags for shovels Thursday to clean up after a week of storms that caused severe damage to at least 40 homes across Southern California and claimed one life.

The first candidate to show up at Democrat Gavin Newsom's campaign rally Monday was not Gavin Newsom. It was Abel Maldonado, Newsom's Republican opponent in the lieutenant governor race. At 11:30 a.m., Maldonado strolled into Cafe de Camacho, a coffee shop near Olvera Street where Newsom was set to speak alongside a group of Latino leaders, including civil rights activist Dolores Huerta and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The cafe was packed with Newsom supporters holding blue campaign signs.

It's not easy being Gavin Newsom. In righteously progressive San Francisco, the two-term mayor who calls himself a "pro-business Democrat" has been slammed as too conservative, even as he grappled creatively with chronic homelessness, signed into law the city's groundbreaking universal healthcare program and even helped make composting compulsory. Everywhere else, though, he's the liberal who rubbed the nation's nose in gay marriage. Now, as the 43-year-old finds himself in a tight race for lieutenant governor against Republican incumbent Abel Maldonado, he will need to persuade voters that he is more than the Gay Marriage Mayor ?

Party: Republican Occupation: Lieutenant governor Age: 43, born in Santa Maria Residence: Santa Maria Personal: Married, four children. Education: Attended Cal State San Luis Obispo, no degree Career highlights: State Assembly, 1998-2004; state Senate, 2004-2010. Lieutenant governor, 2010 Platform: Create jobs as chairman of the Commission for Economic Development. Use position on CSU Board of Trustees and UC Board of Regents to push for transparency in administrative costs and keep higher education accessible and affordable.

First in a series of candidate profiles Early on a winter morning in 2007, a 25-year old Mexican farmhand was crushed beneath a tractor on Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado's family farm, sparking an investigation that resulted in citations for four workplace safety violations, including failure to have a spotter direct the tractor driver and failure to have someone on the scene with first-aid certification. Although the young employee's death was an isolated tragedy, the run-in with regulators was part of a pattern for Agro-Jal Farming Enterprises, the farm in Santa Maria that pays Maldonado a six-figure salary to serve as controller.

Not since Goodwin J. Knight succeeded to the governorship in 1953, after Earl Warren resigned to become chief justice, has a California lieutenant governor moved up in the middle of a term. Not since Gray Davis was elected governor in 1998 has a California lieutenant governor even been voted into the top office. Other than Knight and Davis, only two other lieutenant governors in the last century have become governor. Yet the role of governor-in-waiting overshadows all the other tasks that Californians have given their lieutenant governors to keep them busy.

The two top candidates running for California lieutenant governor traded accusations of pampering criminal illegal immigrants and slashing public school funding in a debate Thursday that added a dash of drama to what has otherwise been a little-noted race. Democrat Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, set the tone at the outset when he blamed his opponent, GOP Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, for casting the key vote for a state budget that produced the "biggest tax increase in California history and the biggest education cuts in California history.

One candidate is a far-left Bay Area mayor with a polarizing political history, a hefty war chest and national name recognition. The other is a Republican moderate with less money, a lower profile and the incumbency. They're vying for a largely ceremonial office that some government watchers have said should be abolished. This year, the candidates in the lieutenant governor's race have more sizzle than the office at stake. Polls show that Gavin Newsom, the Democratic mayor of San Francisco, has a slight edge over Abel Maldonado, a three-term state senator from Santa Maria who was appointed lieutenant governor by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and installed in April.

With less than six weeks until election day, the corruption scandal enveloping the tiny Southern California city of Bell has become the headline-grabbing cause celebre for politicians running statewide. In the last two weeks, the candidates have descended on Bell: Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, the Republican appointed to the post in April who hopes to win the job full time, held a quasi-political pep rally in front of City Hall to sign a new law refunding to residents millions in illegal taxes collected by the city.

No one would have wished for such an opportunity, but one certainly came Abel Maldonado's way last week when a PG&E gas line blew up in San Bruno, taking with it dozens of homes and, most horribly, several lives. By a quirk of timing, Maldonado was, when the blast occurred Thursday evening, the state's highest ranking official. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who appointed Maldonado to the job of lieutenant governor last fall, was en route to Asia as the fires raged. The unelected Maldonado was, thus, acting governor.