Jerry Brown’s wife, political strategist and personal
manager – Anne Gust – is the subject of an informative interview
today in Capitol Weekly. Jennifer Chaussee tells the tale.
"When Brown told reporters recently he probably wouldn’t be hiring a chief of
staff, rumors caught fire that Gust would fill the
niche. But she, like Brown,
is unimpressed with the title. She noted that she’s flexible to do whatever the
job requires of her, although down the road, her private,
unofficial role as
Brown’s top adviser could raise political negatives."
“I don’t know what that means, 'chief of staff,'” said Gust. “I think the way
Arnold has run the office, with Susan Kennedy, there
pretty much really is one
person at the top of the pyramid. That’s not really Jerry’s style. Obviously
Jerry has a lot of (people). Jim Humes (chief deputy attorney general) will
also be working with him very closely. I don’t know what my role will be. I
certainly don’t know what my title will be,” said Gust."
The interminable vote count in the attorney general's
race still isn't over, but Kamala Harris is maintaining her lead over Steve
Cooley, reports Jack Leonard in the L.A. Times.
"Harris, the Democrat, led the Republican nominee by
nearly 53,000 votes — 4,385,438 to 4,332,596 — according to a Times review of
updated vote tallies in all 58 counties. Although the gap remains narrow in one
of the closest statewide races in California history,
the chance for Cooley to
pick up enough votes to make up the difference appears
increasingly remote."
"The secretary of state reported late Tuesday that
there
were 154,806 ballots left uncounted statewide. To win, Cooley would
need more
than two-thirds of those to overtake the Democratic nominee.
So far, the gap
between the candidates has been less than a single
percentage point."
The turmoil in California's water wars continues, this time with the withdrawal of the mighty Westlands
Water District from the plan to repair the Delta.
From Mark Grossi in the Fresno Bee: "After investing millions of dollars, Westlands Water
District is
pulling out of an extensive planning effort to heal
the troubled Sacramento-San
Joaquin River Delta, saying high-ranking federal officials are derailing it."
"The
draft of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan offers hope
of restoring slumping
water deliveries to west Valley farmers, Westlands
officials said this week.
But the Department of Interior advocates more limits
on deliveries, they said. "We're not going to
spend another dime on this," said Jean Sagouspe, Westlands
board
president. "They changed the goals because they didn't
like what the
studies say."
Assembly Speaker John Perez, who is gay, is filming a TV spot he hopes will help deal with
the problem of suicides among gays, reports Capitol Weekly's Malcolm Maclachlan.
"In the wake of several high profile suicides by young
gay people in recent months, Perez decided to film
a YouTube spot for the “It Gets Better” campaign to stop suicides among young gay people."
"The campaign was started in September by sex-advice columnist Dan Savage in the wake of several
high-profile suicides by young people who had been bullied
for being gay. The most widely publicized of these
was the case of Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi,
who threw himself off of a bridge after his roommate,
Dharun Ravi, posted a video online showing Clementi
kissing another young man."
Meanwhile, CW's John Howard examines the multibillion-dollar health insurance exchange that is scheduled to be created
in California as part of the nation's health care reform.
"It is the single most important piece of the health-care
reform effort in California, observers say. If it works,
reform succeeds; if it
fails, reform may fail, too. The exchange is the result
of hard-fought
legislation involving doctors, health care plans, patient
advocates, insurers
and others. What they reached, in the end, is a fragile, complex
compromise."
“Our main concern is that if you want it to work for
health care, you need to
make sure people can see a doctor when they need to
get access to care and that
the health plans have adequate networks of providers,” said California Medical
Association spokesman Andy LeMar.
And finally, we turn to our "We'll Always Have Paris" file to find the case of a 69-year-old French woman who got locked in a bathroom for three
weeks.
"She became stuck after the bathroom door lock broke."
"Police said the woman, who
is recuperating in hospital, survived by drinking warm
water from the bathroom
tap and at night tried to call for help by tapping
on piping."
"But neighbours in the
apartment block said they thought someone was doing
home repair work and
launched a petition to find out who it was and to have
it stopped."
Ahh, oui....
