The Nuñez Camp Pushes Back

Fabian Nuñez' spokesman came back from his Tuscan villa (I'm not making that up), and they all realized that they had to go after this growing story hard and push it back, so over the past two days they did. And they've regained their footing, so to speak.

But that's an argument about how he's handling the story. That has nothing to do about the essential veracity of it, or whether it's wholly necessary for the Speaker to accept every single invitation from a European who asks him to show up at their event, or whether it's respectful to say "I don't live differently from middle class Americans" when he has a giant loft downtown and a house in Sacto with over $8,000 a month mortgages between them, etc. The question is whether or not the trips are ethical and whether or not they are necessary.

Politically speaking, the facts are extremely simple. There's a major ballot measure on term limits coming up, and those opposed to it know they don't have as much money, and they can't win unless they go hard negative, so they did. Perata's got a rap sheet a mile long, so they had to knock the other guy that stood to benefit, a squeaky clean guy, off his perch. Only he wasn't all that clean before and he really isn't now. Now they're blowing it all out of proportion, demanding that the Speaker's wife release her list of clients and tax forms and really stupid stuff.

But initially, this didn't start as a smear campaign. People bothered to read public disclosure forms. And what they saw didn't make them particularly happy about how their government works. Now, the Speaker has offered that changes in California's campaign finance laws might be in order. 'Course, he's been saying we need redistricting for approximately the last 4 years in a row.

Here's the key quote:

"I think in the end what people need to understand is this: Every campaign expenditure that I have made either has a governmental purpose attached to it or a political purpose attached to it."

How's that different from "I think what people need to understand is that we do not torture"? There's no explanation beyond an assertion. And there's an explicit refusal to detail various expenditures beyond saying they have a purpose.

I see no reason to trust either side of this debate right now. I have little use for insider pols flattered by Europeans so much that they have to run over there every other week. "Trade missions" is a euphemism. They're junkets. Everyone knows it and they won't say it.

And by the way, the only one playing the race card in this whole thing is Fabian Nuñez:

Núñez also apologizes for saying the Times "tries to destroy important people including Hispanics," in an interview to air Sunday morning on "News Conference."

The largest criticism I've seen about this story has been on Latino blogs. It's absurd to suggest that this is about someone being Hispanic. It's about someone taking what he's given. I'm sure he sees nothing wrong with that because he believes it furthers the interests of California. I think it furthers the interests of Fabian Nuñez.