Posted by
TheChair on Tuesday, August 05, 2008 12:36:31 AM
Sacramento Bee Columnist Dan Walters, the preeminent reporter/columnist on California politics, exposes Attorney General Jerry Brown's cynical maneuver for the dirty trick it is.
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1119183.html What's more, it's not the first time Brown has monkeyed with ballot language in order to skew the result:
Brown's action is reminiscent of the misleading and biased title and summary he issued for a February ballot measure to modify legislative term limits that obscured its true impact. And it's likely that Brown altered Proposition 8's title language either at the behest of gay rights groups opposed to Proposition 8 or to curry favor with them, with the likely motivation that Brown wants to run for governor in 2010 and helping defeat Proposition 8 would help him win the Democratic nomination.
Walters figures 2010 will be Gavin Newsom vs. Jerry Brown duking it out for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Key demographic groups will include greens and gays. This shenanigan helps Brown neutralize some of Newsom's hard-won (read: "ignoring the law on marriage") advantages. You'll recall, Newsom, as mayor of San Francisco, ordered city personnel to solemnize same-sex marriages back when no statute or court decision allowed it and when Prop. 22 forbid it. In fact, I found a Penal Code section that made it a misdemeanor. As principal instigator of those crimes, Newsom should have been prosecuted. Had there not been another Democrat Attorney General who also harbored gubernatorial ambition, Bill Lockyer, that might have happened. In a just world, Newsom's crimes would have given possibly hundreds of years in county jail.