Migden: successful, eccentric, vulnerable

State Sen. Carole Migden was in the Legislature pressing her colleagues to back one of her bills when electronic voting began.

Noticing that one lawmaker was away from his desk, Migden impatiently pushed his green “yes” button.

That 2004 breach of protocol drew bipartisan reproof, and Migden, a San Francisco Democrat, was removed from the committee she chaired. But her bill, which increases regulation of chemicals used in cosmetics, ultimately became law even without the improper vote.

In a decade in state office, Migden has racked up several careers’ worth of peculiar episodes, but few embody her talents and excesses so plainly.

One of the first openly lesbian lawmakers, Migden has established herself as a shrewd and tenacious politician with a talent for selling liberal legislation to moderate colleagues. In 1999, she persuaded legislators and Gov. Gray Davis to give gay partners some of the legal rights that married couples have. She has maneuvered 105 other measures into law.

“I’ve never met anyone who works harder than Carole Migden,” said Susan Kennedy, a top aide to Davis and now Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff. “She has a rare combination of someone who lives her values but wants to get things done. She’s got a very practical political side that isn’t satisfied with simply making political statements.”

But her eccentric ways have backfired often enough to become recurring features in San Francisco’s political press and to earn her enmity in Sacramento.

In her first year in office, the San Francisco Examiner published a column calling her “Sacramento’s scariest boss.” That reputation grew during her tenure as she cycled through employees who tired, according to multiple former staffers, of being dressed down for any lapse and dispatched on personal errands like picking up gourmet coffee or fixing her dryer.

Last year Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) personally selected Migden’s chief of staff to help steady both the office and its principal denizen.

Since a car accident May 18, Migden’s behavior has drawn attention beyond political circles. By her own account and that of police, Migden drove 16 miles in an addled state, twice swiping the median barrier before smacking into the back of a stopped car in Fairfield, between Sacramento and Oakland.

After initially saying she was distracted while searching for her cellphone, Migden astonished even her closest friends in the Legislature by disclosing that she had been fighting leukemia for a decade and was declared cancer-free by doctors in February. She said chemotherapy drugs she takes might have disoriented her while driving.

Authorities are considering charges against her, and the investigation continues. Colleagues said the disease helped explain her wan appearance and extreme thinness, which many had chalked up to her aggressive exercise regimen.

Even before the accident, Migden’s career was in jeopardy. Once seen as a potential president of the Senate, in large part because of her fundraising prowess, Migden is facing a challenge for her 3rd District seat from a popular assemblyman, Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). He has made her pre-crash behavior the crux of his campaign.

The race for her seat, to be settled in the June 2008 primary election, has galvanized the Capitol, where sitting members from the same party almost never try to oust one another.

Senate Democrats have rallied around her, but political experts in San Francisco say it could be a close fight; Migden has alienated some potential supporters. One is Dennis Kelly, president of the United Educators of San Francisco, the city’s main public school union.

Kelly recalled a meeting at Migden’s office a year ago when the two were calling each other by their first names. When one of the other union officials addressed her as Carole, “she wheeled around and said, ‘That’s Senator Migden to you,’ ” Kelly said.

The meeting continued, he said, but Migden again rebuked Kelly’s associate, for using the term “bang for the buck.”

“She said, ‘Don’t ever say that in my office; that’s a prostitution term,’ ” Kelly said. In fact, he said, the phrase was coined during the Cold War in reference to defense spending.

“It was really a hostile and nasty interview,” Kelly said.

Although it is too early for his union to endorse anyone in the primary, Kelly said, he will urge officials to back Leno.

“San Francisco politicians are almost all good politically,” he said. “But there’s a matter of how you go about your business and treat people, and that’s where Carole Migden has really fallen down.”

In an interview in her Capitol office last week, Migden, 56, acknowledged, “I think I can be brusque.” Her voice so subdued that her edgy New York accent was barely audible, she continued: “I can also be forthright and blunt, and I think I enjoy a reputation of being straightforward and honest and working well with my colleagues.”

Some who experienced rocky starts with Migden have warmed up to her. Sen. Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) said they did not get along while serving on the Assembly Appropriations Committee, where Migden was the first chairwoman, but now are affectionate colleagues, though often on opposite sides. He said he invited Migden to cosponsor legislation this year that would expand property tax exclusions for earthquake-proof construction.

“I enjoy her,” Ashburn said. “She’s rough around the edges, but I think she’s got a good heart.”

Leno said he is praying for her “continued good health” but is continuing his campaign. “Her behavior does her constituents a disservice because it disrespects them and undermines her effectiveness,” he said.

Leno said such behavior includes her skirmishes with election regulators. Migden’s campaigns have been fined three times, for a total of $110,600, for failing to disclose donations by the state’s required deadlines.

Migden’s supporters say the real reason Leno is challenging her is that term limits are forcing him out of the Assembly next year and that taking her seat would allow him to stay in the Legislature.

“I think part of it is: All dressed up and nowhere to go,” Perata said.

For all the talk of Migden’s extreme deeds, the former governor said it is both cautious incrementalism and directness that have made her a successful legislator.

“She understood progress is made one step at a time,” Davis said in a telephone interview. “In Sacramento, people have a hard time saying no. But she could say no with grace and without people taking offense.”

jordan.rau@latimes.com