The hits on Nunez get cheeky

by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

Well, the meat of the Fabian Nunez expense story having been already milled down to a fine pulp, it's the columnists turn to take a whack at the Assembly Speaker. And whack away they do. In the Sacramento Bee, Steve Wiegand provides 4 "defenses" of the Speaker. By defense, he actually means snarky little comments "It's not like he's taking the money from special interests that stand to benefit from his support on legislation they are pushing. Oh, wait."

It's almost like Wiegand wishes he was a blogger. Oh, wait.

In the LA Times, Steve Lopez comes up with such one-liners as "This guy needs his own American Express commercial." Oh, snap, no you didn't! But what could be far more hurtful for the Speaker doesn't come from the mind of either columnist, but rather from UNITE-HERE's political director, Jack Gibbons:

I thought he was someone who carried the fundamental principles of rights for workers in his heart and soul, and clearly the guy's been completely enamored with this jet-set lifestyle that he's picked up in his years in the Legislature."

And from a union bus driver, Miriam Collingwood:

"It upsets me to find out he's spending this kind of money, and I can't understand how he can do this," she said. "We work hard for our money and support our causes, not just by donations but time and effort on campaigns. So it's really upsetting for me to put my trust in someone like that."

Now, I doubt that anything Speaker Nunez did is illegal, or even all that rare. This line of attack was pushed by the term limits folks, meant as a salvo across the bow for those who would dare to challenge their precious term limits.  But, it seems to me that the term limits have failed miserably. If they are using this little episode to illustrate how we need term limits to fight corruption, it seems some strained logic at best given that we have these ridiculously restrictive limits now.

The term limits folks just went at the wrong cog. They went after people, they should have gone after the money. If anything, this situation screams out for public financing of campaigns. Money is an equal opportunity corrupting force, and that's not likely to change until we remove the money from politics.