It’s Open Season on Donkeys, Elephants

Whatever the results of Tuesday’s hold-your-nose primary for governor, this much is true:

Democrats Steve Westly and Phil Angelides were both gutted and fileted by this newspaper over the past several weeks. I mean that in a good way.

Readers learned, primarily from reporters Dan Morain and Evan Halper, that Westly and Angelides were anything but the upstanding, straight-talking crusaders they claimed to be. It was this newspaper, let’s remember, that pointed out the absurdity of an Angelides TV ad blasting Westly for donations from “a corrupt Chicago businessman.” As Morain and Halper discovered, Angelides himself had tried to tap the same guy.

I almost hesitate to mention any of this, because there’s nothing surprising or unusual about the way Westly and Angelides were knocked around by The Times. That’s a newspaper’s job: Hold candidates up to public inspection, study the viability of their promises and slap them around as needed.

I’m just wondering why the paper hasn’t gotten huzzahs from the professional gas bags who worked themselves into a frenzy three years ago over our equally tough reporting on a candidate named Arnold Schwarzenegger. As that doddering shill Hugh Hewitt put it back then, The Times was “an organ of the Democratic Party” with no interest other than “agenda journalism.”

Have John and Ken of radio fame weighed in on The Times’ coverage? If you don’t know them, they’re the carnival barkers who jumped all over the newspaper for its apparent bias and then showed up at Schwarzenegger rallies to sing his praises, yapping like lap dogs.

“Wondering if anyone can tell me how much time the show has devoted to The Times’ coverage of Westly and Angelides,” I wrote to them in an e-mail that was not answered by my deadline.

Maybe they’ve talked of nothing else on-air. To be honest, I wouldn’t know. I’d rather stick my head in a kettle drum and beat it with a soup spoon than listen to these guys. But I sure hope they’ve given us our props for reporting on the Westly-Angelides sleaze factor -- especially given their cheerleading for Schwarzenegger.

I called Ken Khachigian, my favorite GOP consultant, even though he worked with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, to ask if he’d heard any Republicans complimenting The Times’ tough coverage of Westly and Angelides.

Khachigian gave The Times a pat on the back but said there’s a reason conservatives aren’t ready to hand out any medals just yet. “Their expectations are that once the primary’s over, the target turns to Arnold,” he said. “They think that once the choice is a liberal, or left-winger, and a Republican, then the gun sights go to the Republican side.”

You can’t win with these guys.

Khachigian is predicting the paper will now empty both barrels on Chuck Poochigian, the GOP candidate for attorney general against Jerry Brown.

Wait a minute. If there’s a standing liberal agenda, why has The Times broken the kneecaps of Westly and Angelides before one of them busts out of the gates against Schwarzenegger?

That’s not to say the paper won’t tee off on Schwarzenegger between now and November. Both he and his opponent will be vetted anew, and based on what we already know about them, there’ll be plenty of material to work with. Readers sometimes confuse this kind of relentless snooping as the work of a political agenda rather than an attempt to hold candidates accountable and keep readers informed, and I’d like to try and set the record straight.

As a breed, good reporters are a mutant species, often completely lacking in social graces, fashion sense and normal interests. They don’t have many friends other than themselves, and even those relationships involve unhealthy levels of suspicion.

Show a good reporter a bright, sunny day and he’ll wonder if the ozone is burned to hell. This is not a matter of training, but of molecular chemistry. They’re like hunting dogs, in love with the chase and deliriously happy to go sniffing after any old bird, regardless of hue.

A couple of weeks ago, to give you an example, Cruz Bustamante was in town. True-blue Democrat, right?

By that measure, a left-leaning Democratic apologist like yours truly should have given him a pass. As a columnist, I’ve got a license, after all, to be biased. But I never let that get in the way of a good public flogging. Bustamante was rolling in insurance industry dough while running for state insurance commissioner, and he was hanging his campaign on a plea to drop 50 pounds as an example for healthy living.

What choice did I have but to conceal a bathroom scale in my backpack and pull it out after lunch at a Mexican cantina?

If holding people accountable means occasionally making them uncomfortable, then I’m an equal opportunity agitator.

Speaking of which, one of Schwarzenegger’s aides recently suggested it might be time for me and the governor to break bread. Finally. I’ve been waiting three years for him to accept my invitation to get to know my sweet side.

It’ll be painless, Arnold. Just a light workout.