Missteps by Both Strain Ties Between Davis, Bustamante

So much for the “Clinton-Gore model” working in Sacramento. It doesn’t and never has.

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante had been touting his relationship with Gov. Gray Davis as a Triple-A league version of the teamwork between President Clinton and VP Al Gore. Happy, cooperative partners--albeit one of them a very junior member. Loyal and respectful.

Then came Thursday, April 15. Suddenly Bustamante began acting like a minority opposition leader, rather than the first lieutenant governor in 24 years who is from the same party as the governor.

Davis set off his junior partner by seeking court mediation of the Proposition 187 case--a decision that hit home personally for Bustamante, the grandson of immigrants and the first Latino to be elected lieutenant governor in 128 years.

To back up: 59% of the voters approved Prop. 187, which sought to deny public benefits to illegal immigrants. A federal judge tossed out most provisions. Gov. Pete Wilson appealed. Davis, who opposed 187, could have dropped Wilson’s appeal or continued it. Many Latino leaders wanted him to drop it, thereby killing much of 187. (Some parts have become federal law.) But Davis felt he couldn’t ignore the electorate. So he asked the appeals court to mediate a compromise and it has agreed to.

It wasn’t just that Bustamante opposed Davis’ decision. It’s how he did it--out on the Capitol steps, for reporters, right after the governor’s announcement, very articulately. Short and to the point:

“During the campaign and in his inaugural ceremony, Gray Davis said he was going to ‘end the era of wedge issue politics. . . .’ I didn’t think he meant ‘pending appeal’ or ‘pending mediation.’ ”

Two weeks have gone by, and Bustamante has not backed off. If anything, he has escalated his attacks on Davis’ decision.

“He’s a big boy,” Bustamante said in an interview Tuesday. “He’s the governor. He can do whatever the hell he wants to do. It’s not for me to decide. But once he makes his decision--after all the games and the strategies--the public policy ends up affecting real people.”

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Indeed, there probably has not been a bigger real rift between a governor and a lieutenant governor in anybody’s lifetime around here. And this is a Capitol where governors and lieutenant governors never have been cozy.

Unlike vice presidents who owe their jobs to the president, lieutenant governors run and get elected on their own. The powerful governor and his powerless understudy operate separately, without a natural allegiance.

In truth, lieutenant governor is a job that shouldn’t even exist. If a governor leaves in mid-term--and the last time that happened was 46 years ago--why not just turn over the office to the next highest-ranking elected official of the same party? Maybe the attorney general. Save a lot of money and grief.

But Bustamante, as other lieutenant governors naively had before him, really thought he could be a “partner” with the governor and “influence” public policy. Maybe he still can, but it’s going to be even harder now.

Basically, the Gore-Clinton model means that one guy chooses and the other cheers. Bustamante forgot that. Davis never forgets.

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The first big mistake, however, was Davis’. As a former lieutenant governor himself, he should have been sensitive enough to grant Bustamante’s request for a meeting to lobby him on his 187 decision.

“I do believe I could have made the case,” Bustamante asserts. “Why would you want to mediate a [lower court] victory?”

When Davis finally invited Bustamante to come see him, the governor already had reached his decision. It also was not a one-on-one meeting. It was a group heads-up to key Democrats only one hour before the governor’s public announcement. And by that time, Bustamante had read a leaked version in a newspaper.

So he boycotted the governor’s little meeting. And that was Bustamante’s mistake.

Now Davis aides are firing shots. “Here’s a guy who could have been the Al Gore of the Davis administration and instead has chosen to be the Jesse Jackson,” says one gubernatorial advisor.

“Becoming the chief public defender of illegal aliens is a curious way for a self-described moderate to introduce himself to the California electorate.”

Says Bustamante: “I can’t go home and look at my kids . . . my mother . . . my community and say that while I was here, I honored the lieutenant governor’s position by staying silent on this issue . . . 187 was like illegitimatizing the Latino experience. . . .

“You would think [the governor] would give me, especially, a pass on something like 187. You would think. We are going to agree on so many other things down the road.”

No. In the Clinton-Gore model, there are no passes.