SACRAMENTO, CA -- When Democrats in the State Assembly elected Cruz Bustamante (D-Fresno) as speaker, they scored a short-term public relations victory. As the state's first Hispanic Assembly speaker, Bustamante's election was favorably reported by the media. More important, Bustamante was perceived as a Central Valley "moderate" who would rein in the more outrageous tendencies of his liberal party caucus.

It hasn't happened. Sacramento pundit Dan Walters recently labeled Bustamante "the weakest speaker of recent memory." Bustamante's weakness stems precisely from the fact that his key lieutenants, the chairs of key committees, and his caucus in general are significantly to the left of him.

Take, for example, Speaker Pro Tem Sheila Kuehl. Although Bustamante is viewed as a moderate on social issues, the Assembly's social-issues agenda is currently being driven not by the centrist Bustamante, but by the aggressively liberal Kuehl and her equally liberal allies. Kuehl's AB 101, which would insert the category of "sexual orientation" into the non-discrimination laws governing the K-12 public schools, colleges and universities, has become the key battleground issue in the Legislature's culture wars. Among probable effects of Kuehl's legislation: changes in textbooks to portray homosexuality in a positive light, prohibition of campus religious clubs that oppose homosexuality, prohibition of groups such as the Boy Scouts from meeting on public school campuses, and preventing parents from controlling the values taught to their children in public schools.

Indeed, gay-rights legislation has become an important component of the Assembly Democrats' social agenda. Democrat-authored bills include: legislation to require property owners to rent to homosexuals, legislation that would legalize adoption of children by homosexuals, and legislation that would give state approval to "domestic partners" (i.e., homosexual couples).

In other policy areas the story is the same: behind the moderate Bustamante fig leaf lurks the same old liberal Democrat mindset. There are bills to raise the state personal income tax for upper-income taxpayers, bills to give universal government-subsidized health care to large sections of the state population, and a proposed state constitutional amendment to reinstate race and gender preferences.

Not only are Assembly Democrats pushing solidly liberal legislation, they are also changing the legislative process to favor their agenda. For example, under proposed rule changes for the critical Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee, the committee's Democrat chair will have sole authority to determine which bills coming to that committee are eligible for a vote. In other words, the committee chair will be able to prevent any bill he opposes from receiving an up or down vote (the bill would simply die in legislative purgatory). The proposed rule is a convenient tool for Democrats who don't want to vote on popular Republican tax-cut proposals.

The Assembly Democrats remind one of the old saying: if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck. And in this case, only the left wing of that liberal duck is flapping.

-By Lance T. Izumi