Because I live outside of Sacramento, most of the people I spend my days around don’t have much personal interaction with state government, beyond a trip to the DMV or filing for disability during maternity leave.  Most have never had any personal interaction with legislators and assume that all legislators are arrogant and out of touch. I try to tell them otherwise, citing examples of legislators I have known over the years who are honest, hard working, average Californians. 

But then along comes Fabian Nunez.  Arrogant and out of touch seems like a pretty apt description of him right now.  Oh, and he’s the guy who thinks we should be extending the term limits of our legislators.

In case you missed it, the Los Angeles Times broke a story on Friday that detailed some pretty outrageous campaign spending. 

According to the Times, Nunez spent “…$47,412 on United, Lufthansa and Air France airlines this year; $8,745 at the exclusive Hotel Arts in Barcelona, Spain; $5,149 for a "meeting" at Cave L’Avant Garde, a wine seller in the Bordeaux region of France; a total of $2,562 for two "office expenses" at Vuitton, two years apart; and $1,795 for a "meeting" at Le Grand Colbert, a venerable Parisian restaurant.”

In an interview with the paper, Nunez said, “"There’s not too big a difference between how I live and how most middle-class people live." 

Someone needs to clue Nunez in to the fact that most middle-class people don’t buy their office supplies at Louis Vuitton in Paris.  Most middle-class people take their vacations in Disneyland or go camping—they don’t stay in exclusive hotels in Barcelona. 

His excuse is that he’s got a really important job.  He says, “This is a big state to run. You’ve got to know what you’re doing.”

Again, someone needs to tell Nunez that he is a legislator—one vote among 120 votes.  He is not running the state.  He’s part of a body that passes laws that the governor may or may not sign.  Yes, as speaker, he’s got a big job.  Yes, he’s got a hand in creating public policy that affects the world’s 7th largest economy.  Yes, special interests through him tons of money at him which allow him to take fancy international trips.  But the public isn’t going to buy his argument that he needs to travel to Paris, Rome, South Africa or Brazil in order to do that job. 

(On a side note–maybe that comment is more telling about his and the Democrats’ view of the governor’s power and their ability to direct him.  Behind close doors, they probably do believe that they are running the state.  If the governor rolls on health care and water and goes along with the Dems, they may be absolutely right.)

No one is going to believe that he needed to go to Paris in order to decide what he thought about universal preschool.  Or that he needed to travel to before he could decide whether he would throw his support behind renewable energy legislation.

Is he out of touch?  You bet—these expenses are way out of line.  If he were occasionally leaving the country to join the governor on a trade mission or to attend a conference, the voters wouldn’t care.  But to wine and dine your way through Europe using campaigns funds and then try to claim that it was important to your success as a legislator, that’s just silly.  Other state workers travel for their jobs all the time, but they sure aren’t staying at the Ritz or eating at Farallon when they have a work-related conference in San Francisco (at least not on the taxpayer’s dime and they don’t have a campaign slush fund to use).

Is Nunez arrogant?  Absolutely.  He decides to lead an effort to extend legislators terms in office while at the same time taking these extravagant trips and going on shopping sprees (besides the Vuitton purchases in Paris, he reported $300 at Pavilion Salon Shoes in Sacramento).  I’m sure that the folks putting the opposition campaign together are delighted with this story.  Getting handed material for a campaign ad about legislators living like high rollers—it doesn’t get any better than that!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.