California Assembly

At the end of a long meeting and an even longer day, Elihu Harris looks around the table at a Chinese restaurant. The man who will be mayor of Oakland for the next four years asks a question that none of the experts who have been talking about the drug crisis can answer. "Politics is perception," Harris says, referring to that most difficult of problems in his city. "How do you get people to think that things are getting better?"

A Marilyn Monroe impersonator is adding a little spice to a Northern California Assembly district primary contest by campaigning in a gold lame dress and long white gloves. But Libertarian Vicki Lynn Vallis of Truckee, 35, would be a long-shot candidate in the fall in the 3rd District, which includes the mountain counties of Modoc, Lassen and Sierra. Voter registration is 43% Democratic and 43% Republican.

In a unanimous vote devoid of the infighting and animosity that have marked some successions, the California Assembly on Monday elected moderate Democrat Bob Hertzberg as its next speaker. Hertzberg, an energetic Sherman Oaks attorney known for his attention to detail and tendency to hug everyone in sight, becomes the second straight Los Angeles lawmaker to head the lower house--and the seventh speaker in the past five years.

A statewide coalition of human rights groups Thursday urged Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown to devise a plan to comply with a federal court order to reduce the California prison population by 44,000 rather than delay the inevitable by appealing it. Activists who support sentencing reform and broader rehabilitative efforts delivered letters to Brown's offices in Los Angeles, Oakland and Sacramento saying that the California Assembly has shown itself unable "to...

The placement of uniformed security guards at various Santa Ana precincts to allegedly prevent Hispanic non-citizens from voting stands out as the grossest kind of affront to our democratic process. Thomas A. Fuentes and his Republican constituents should be made aware that these Gestapo tactics do little to bolster their constant jingoistic tirades espousing "unwavering patriotism." The only purpose the guards' presence served was to dissuade legitimate Hispanic citizens from voting.

During World War II, our own home-grown Tokyo Rose served a long prison term for broadcasting Japanese propaganda, even though she had become a citizen of that country in the course of the conflict. Britain executed "Lord Haw-Haw" for the same offense of treason--though he, too, had taken out citizenship in his adopted land. In either of these cases, conviction on the grounds of treason seems at least somewhat questionable because of the accused's switch of nationality. However, what possible defense can there be for Tom Hayden and his wife, Jane Fonda, who broadcast for the enemy over Radio Hanoi in time of conflict without bothering to become citizens of North Vietnam?

Assembly Democrats this afternoon tapped John A. Perez to be the next leader of the California Assembly, a boost that would make him the first openly gay lawmaker to hold the powerful post. Perez emerged from an afternoon meeting of the Assembly Democrats locking arms with his chief rival, Assemblyman Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) and the current top leader, Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles). "It obviously an incredibly moving experience to have the unanimous support of my colleagues," Perez said of his fellow Democrats.