Are you going to believe us or your lying eyes? Our aging tickers have almost, finally, chilled out from all the excitement of the big finish to Dianne Feinstein’s epic Dance of the Seven Veils (free at last, free at last!)
So it’s time to shoot the wounded among the insiders and other hacks who kept retailing the rumors that she was about to jump into the governor’s race – Psst! We hear it’s any minute now! – months after all right-thinking people agreed that this would never happen.
Few find themselves in a state of such embarrassing exposure as Sherry Greenberg, who blogs occasionally over at California Majority Report.
As grizzled, veteran, long-time Capitol Hill Outsiders, Calbuzz was most impressed with Greenberg’s blog credentials as “a long-time Capitol Hill insider.” And her connections came in pretty handy when she wrote, on Feb. 15, that Indiana Senator Evan Bayh’s surprise retirement was a clear signal that DiFi was about to flee Capitol Hill for our parochial governor’s race.
So, what does (Bayh’s move) have to do with California? Quite possibly a 
lot…I can’t help but think that faced with serving in the minority in the next Senate, Dianne Feinstein might decide that trying to cure California’s many ailments is more desirable than remaining in the Senate. Certainly, the gridlock in California is no worse than that in the US Senate and the opportunity to cap her career by becoming California’s first female governor and the savior of the state might outweigh remaining in a likely hostile Senate.
While Feinstein just missed making history as the first female Vice Presdiential candidate in 1984, she has the opportunity to become a role model to young girls by showing that a woman can be a tougher and more effective governor than a film action star…
The record will show that:
a) Generally speaking, “I can’t help but think” is not what you want to lean on for your Well-Informed, Reliable Source.
b) Difi “just missed making history as the first female Vice Presidential candidate in 1984” by a considerably greater amount than former Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, who actually did make history as the first female Vice Presidential candidate in 1984.
c) To the surprise of no one, Feinstein officially announced she wasn’t running for governor. Less than 48 hours after Greenberg’s 7:10 p.m. post.
Considerably more effective at covering his tracks was Willie Brown, who had at least stopped flogging the Feinstein rumors a couple of weeks earlier.
Faced with the fact-based reality that she wasn’t running, despite his best and repeated efforts to sell it in the news pages of the Chronicle, Mr. Speaker at least had the grace to construct an entertaining narrative to explain away his energetic bid to keep the DiFi speculation alive for the past year.
The first indication I got that she was cooling to the idea was when Jerry Brown and his wife, Anne Gust, were seated front and center at her 30th wedding anniversary party at the Fairmont a few weeks back.
For some of us, politics is a bit like the Mafia: Kiss you one day, kill you the next. Not Dianne. She would never invite someone she was planning to run against.
As Mrs. Humphry Ward famously said: “The first law of story-telling – Every man is bound to leave a story better than he found it.”
He told me he taught The Political History of the Mideast: Tom Campbell was doing some serious whistling past the graveyard Friday, hyping a new poll from something called M4Strategies that was featured in a Fox & Hounds piece proclaiming he’s widened his lead in the GOP Senate primary.
Team Campbell was doubtless glad to have something to talk about other than his past ties to Professor and Islamic jihad figure Sami Al-Arian, a nasty little controversy that suddenly gave Dudley Do Right foes Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore a hammer with which to bash him over the question of how good a friend Campbell is to Israel.
Conservative blogs were smoking for several days with tough attacks on Campbell over the Al-Arian connection before LATer Seema Mehta put the legal and policy issues in context. As for the politics of the matter, check out Politico’s reprise of how a Senate candidate in Florida lost his race amid a similar controversy involving the good professor.
How about 10 cents on the dollar? DBI honors to Chronicler Wyatt Buchanan, whose piece on whether California can/will/should go bankrupt was excellent. Buchanan also gets credit for capturing the quote of the week, from L.A.
Assembly member and newly-minted congressional candidate Karen Bass, who’s pretty darned pleased with herself for her not-very-impressive term as Speaker:
“I am one of those that serves out of a calling and not out of a personal ambition,” she said. And I guess I’d add that my biggest weakness is really my incredible humility.
Please don’t call my wife: Don Ringe takes a hard look at the candidacy for governor of alleged Prince Frederic von Anhalt, ninth husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor.
