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Weekly comes down hard on Cruz

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The L.A. Weekly, being predictably liberal again to excite the cadre for Bustamante (sarcasm alert), in a piece by former Democratic consultant Bill Bradley headlined "Take the Money and Run":

Who is Cruz Bustamante, this generally conservative, pro-business Democrat — the most prominent California backer of conservative Democratic presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, longtime chairman of the anti-liberal Democratic Leadership Council — who, without credentials, is running as a reinvented left-liberal in this recall election? And would Bustamante, who has read his only two policy speeches of this campaign word for word, even exist politically without his controversial political consultant and lobbying string puller, Richie Ross?

Bustamante’s career is a product of term limits and Democratic catering to the Latino vote. In 1992 he was an unknown district aide to a term-limited Fresno assemblyman who leaped at a high-paying university job, allowing Bustamante, guided by consultant Richie Ross, to win the seat. When legendary Speaker Willie Brown was forced out by term limits and Republicans couldn’t take advantage, Bustamante, by now a “senior” Latino figure and a moderate who dealt well with Sacramento lobbyists, put together enough votes to serve briefly as speaker...

In the Assembly, Bustamante was a standard conservative Central Valley Democrat. Sierra Club lobbyist John White says Bustamante was “weak on pesticides and weak on endangered species.” United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta says he was “no friend of the farm worker. He was very friendly with the growers.”

Clearly Cruz is a man bent on leading MEChA to Aztlan -- not! In a sidebar, Bradley critiques his good source Arnold and the other majors, and gets Schwarzenegger to confirm that he would not revive Proposition 187.

Update: The OC Weekly's Gustav Arellano remembers his time in the Chapman University MEChA chapter.


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