California Politics

Nobody knows what's happening behind the closed doors, where some of the big guns of California business and politics are trying to persuade Mayor Richard Riordan to run for governor. But if history is any guide, it's a selling job of car-dealer proportions on a man who has said he doesn't want the burden of running in this huge state, with its grueling, dirty and expensive political campaigns.

WITH SUPPORT FROM Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and leaders of both parties in the Legislature, the prospects are looking good that California will move its 2008 presidential primary from June to February. That would put the contest for the largest bloc of delegates (about 12% or so) needed to win a party nomination at the front end of the nominating process, after Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

This has not been an easy summer for Los Angeles' elected leaders. Two citywide officeholders have been involved in messy personal scandals with some spillover into their work, and one of the county's five supervisors now finds herself embarrassed by a professional lapse. We offer here a summary of the recent meltdown, along with our recommendations for those involved.

Re "Not pure, not simple," Opinion, Nov. 12 Bill Boyarsky glorifies Jesse M. Unruh, along with the notion that a legislator needs power to be effective, citing Unruh's 1959 Civil Rights Act as evidence. (Did I mention that Fidel Castro's got great healthcare?) He even quotes one of my heroes, Molly Ivins, to tell us that "getting power is usually ugly," as if the ends justify the means. But where's the guarantee that the ends won't be ugly as well?

If the historic recall election three years ago upended California politics, the race between Democrat Phil Angelides and Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006 has returned the political system to its regularly scheduled programming. Between state Treasurer Angelides and the incumbent Gov. Schwarzenegger, there is little talk about sweeping away special interests or transforming the political system as we know it.

SHE starred on Broadway and in the opera. She was described as one of the most beautiful women in the country, and she married a famous actor. She came out to Hollywood and starred in the adventure picture "She." History, though, remembers Helen Gahagan Douglas for something else entirely. She blazed the trail down that curious and starlit road leading from celebrity to politics. Back in 1944, it was a novelty to see a movie star on the stump.

So let's recap. The governor of South Carolina disappears and is thought to be hiking in the Appalachians. On Naked Hiking Day, no less. He turns up at the Atlanta airport and later admits spending the previous several days crying in Buenos Aires with a woman not his wife. That followed close on the heels of the admission from a U.S. senator from Nevada that he'd had an affair with a campaign worker married to one of his aides.

Re "Tax Breaks Intensify State Fiscal Debate," news analysis, Jan. 24: We agree that all Californians should be asked to do their fair share, including our largest corporations and wealthiest residents, particularly those who have benefited greatly from recent federal tax cuts. Budgets are not simply financial documents; they are moral and political statements about government's priorities and choices. The governor and our elected leaders are making the wrong choices for California's children by taking any discussion of taxes and needed reforms out of the equation in their approach to balancing the budget.

The current presidential campaign is shaping up as the nastiest and most partisan in recent memory. Like the northern pike introduced to Lake Davis in Plumas County in the early 1990s, devouring local fish, it threatens to destroy the reawakening centrist tradition of state politics at the very time we need it most. For most of the 20th century, intense partisanship did not mark California's politics.

Garry South, the man who turned the key in Gray Davis' back and pointed him toward Sacramento, may soon be taking his act to presidential politics. South, who recently returned from powwows in Washington, D.C., tells me he's been approached by representatives of several Democratic candidates. He said he has made "no firm decisions yet," but will do so "probably very soon."