Nu\u00f1ez thought he had brokered a deal where his guy [Kevin de L\u00e9on] would become speaker, and in return P\u00e9rez would run unopposed for the state Senate seat now held by Gil Cedillo. Cedillo, in turn, would go back to the Assembly.<\/p>\n
They even opened a great bottle of wine at the mayor’s house and toasted the settlement.<\/p>\n
But when de Leon couldn’t swing the votes by the end of the Thanksgiving holiday, P\u00e9rez said, “Time’s up,” and announced he had 28 members on his side. Then he called me and asked, “What do you think?”<\/p>\n
I said that the last time I looked it took 41 votes to be speaker, so you’re still 13 short.<\/p>\n
Actually, I said, you’re 15 votes short.<\/p>\n
Why’s that? he asked.<\/p>\n
Answer: You need to add one for the cross and one for the double cross that are bound to happen once the voting starts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Why would Willie Brown go public with this? The intent seems to be to undermine John P\u00e9rez and to give fuel to Kevin de L\u00e9on’s effort to prolong a race he’s already lost.<\/p>\n
If the deal did go down as described, then P\u00e9rez has done nothing wrong. de L\u00e9on had to find the votes and he couldn’t do it. A deal at Antonio Villaraigosa’s house doesn’t matter if the Assembly Democratic caucus won’t ratify it and don’t want de L\u00e9on as their speaker. de L\u00e9on and Cedillo can whine all they want to, but the caucus seems to have spoken: they want P\u00e9rez.<\/p>\n
And if that’s the case, then de L\u00e9on, Cedillo, N\u00fa\u00f1ez and others need to accept that reality. de L\u00e9on’s backers need to close ranks behind P\u00e9rez as their choice for Speaker. Deals with Republicans don’t do anything at all to further the Democratic cause in this state, as we can be sure that the Republicans will demand a price that is simply too high for Californians to afford.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-87"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2LG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}