One of the fascinating sidelights of the autumn election campaign:
While Karen Bass is more of a cinch to be elected to Congress next month than tomorrow is to become Tuesday, she has seemed inexplicably reticent about shifting into campaigning gear.
She would rather feast on her pas since her projected election makes her one of the rarest and luckiest Democrats in the entire country.
In a bundle of recent appearances throughout the congressional district, Ms. Bass only has been billed as the Speaker Emeritus of the state Assembly — not as a candidate for her first trip to Washington.
The curiosity is that the accent in her travels has been placed on her two-year Speakership rather emphasizing how she plans to introduce a new era in Washington.
Having maxed out her state Assembly eligibility by completing three 2-year terms, Ms. Bass announced about five months ago she was running for the seat held for the last decade by the retiring Democrat Diane Watson.
The Baton Never Fell
The slick handoff from Ms. Watson to Ms. Bass was choreographed fluidly and flawlessly with the touch of a world-class ballet master. Ms. Watson announced her retirement and ordination of Ms. Bass as her successor after an appropriate period of reflection, an estimated 11 minutes.
For most of the past six years in Sacramento, Ms. Bass has been well-received by her colleagues. She has almost single-mindedly pursued her flagship motivation, improving benefits for foster children and foster families. Foster care has transcended every other subject that arose after 2004, say Sacramento observers, and that is the way she preferred it.
Forced to surrender the Speakership last March 1, Ms. Bass made it plain to the Culver City Chamber of Commerce breakfast audience last Friday that she did not depart with a smile on her face.
But she squeezed in the last word, and this time there was not a smile within a mile.
Whatever her motivation for leaving on a negative chord, for the second time in less than a year Ms. Bass landed in a frying pan of scalding water for the same perceived attempt to wink at accepted ethical standards.
As she was reluctantly vacating her prized chair, she stealthily — some say sneakily — slid fat unannounced raises for her staff under the door, essentially after everyone had left the building. As she resistantly gave up her glittering title, she absorbed a strong round of criticism for alleged ethical chicanery.
Upbeat, fashionable and cheerful, Ms. Bass addressed the Culver City Chamber of Commerce at the Courtyard by Marriott hotel without divulging any information of note.
Her speech, sparkling with pleasantries, was a quarter-sip of water, substantively speaking.
She chided Gov. Schwarzenegger for run-ins with her, and criticized him and the legislature for failing to bring home a budget three months after the June 30 deadline.
Ms. Bass indicated that she will not try to establish change when she gets to Washington. In the act of pledging to ship as much federal money as she can round up back to California, she echoed the words of the late Republican Senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens:
“I think earmarks are not a bad thing.”
