By Tim Redmond
I got a bit of a start this morning when I read on Calitics that Assemblymember Fiona Ma, who has done some awful stuff in Sacramento, was in the running to be the next speaker of the Assembly.
But that, for the moment, appears to be a false alarm — when I contacted Ma, she forwarded me this Capitol Weekly piece that quotes her supporting John Perez, who would be the first gay speaker.
So it looks at this point as if the race is between Perez and Kevin De Leon, who will have a lot of progressive backers. Perez supporters say he has the advantage of being a first termer, which means he’d be around as spekaer for five years — an eternity in term-limit land. On the other hand, he’s also relatively inexperienced; this is his first elective office, and when you’re fighting with the governor and the GOP, experience helps a lot.
But it won’t be Ma — “Unless she suddenly changes her mind again,” one Capitol insider told me. “And with Fiona, you never know.”