In some of the more – uh – interesting political analysis seen in a long time, Fabian Nunez’s 
communications guru Steve Maviglio is promoting the embattled Assembly Speaker for Governor of California. In a blog post that Steve wrote for the The California Majority Report, he lists Nunez, his boss, as #8 on the list of Top Ten Democratic potential candidates for Governor in 2010. Incredibly, Nunez’s gubernatorial prospects have improved since the blog’s previous assessment of would-be Governors when the Speaker was ranked Number 10. Now that’s what we call spin. Talk about failing upward.
Since Maviglio’s last handicapping of Nunez’ odds at being the next Governor of California, a few things have taken place…
- Nunez is under investigation by the FPPC for personal use of campaign funds, failure to adequately disclose campaign expenditures and the use of his campaign account to finance international travel and luxury goods.
- It has been revealed that Nunez personally benefits financially from special interest money thanks to his wife’s six-figure salary from a foundation financed by interests with business before the Legislature. (There is no way that Nunez could afford his expensive Sacramento home without his wife’s income)
- The press has reported the Speaker also pays a bargain rent to live with his professional fundraiser (who’s received a whopping $600,000 from Nunez in recent years) in a luxury loft when he’s in LA.
- Nunez also funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars from special interests with business before the Legislature – and who had already contributed the maximum allowed to the Speaker’s campaign accounts – to a non-profit foundation suspended by the state and legally which should not have been operating but which explicitly promoted Nunez politically in his Assembly district. (Imagine – curry favor with the Speaker, and get a write-off!)
The litany of Nunez scandals is one way to boost name identification – and it has worked rather dramatically. Perhaps the Majority Report has a point. In a June 2007 survey by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), Nunez only had 11% name ID among likely California voters. Recent private polling which I have seen has shown that in the last six months the Speaker has quadrupled his name ID. The only problem is that Nunez’s name ID is now almost 2 to 1 negative!
The glory-seeking Nunez has always wanted to surpass the fame and accomplishments of previous Assembly Speakers Jesse Unruh and Willie Brown and he’s finally succeed in at least one respect – the same polling shows Nunez’s negative ratings are dramatically higher than even those of the legendary Willie Brown among California’s electorate. That’s one heck of a campaign platform – to loosen term limits and pass Prop. 93 – much less run for Governor.
I heard from a reliable source over the weekend that the back-room politicking is going on to decide what the Assembly leadership will look like come February, after a termed-out Fabian Nunez is forced to accept being a lame duck. Nice.
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