In Sacramento, Yet Another Freshman Speaker
By Peter SchragCalifornia Progress Report Columnist
When his Democratic colleagues designated freshman Assemblyman John A. Perez of Los Angeles as the next speaker of that august body, it was duly noted that he was both Latino and gay. Former Speaker Willie Brown also observed that it wasn’t either of those things that got him selected. It was the fact that he has a good labor record.
But electing a Latino as speaker is hardly unusual these days. He’s the third in the past dozen years, among them his own cousin, Anthony Villaraigosa, now the mayor of Los Angeles, and Cruz Bustamante of Fresno, who went on to become lieutenant governor and then had a spectacular flameout when he ran for governor in the 2003 recall.
And while Perez appears to be the first openly gay speaker, even that distinction isn’t terribly notable. At almost the same time he was selected last week, Annise Parker, a lesbian who with her partner in raising three children, was elected mayor of Houston. That’s a real first, though even in Houston they’re not making much of a fuss over it
What may, in the larger scheme of things, be more notable about John Perez is that he won his primary in June 2008 with just 4905 votes – roughly 3000 more than his nearest opponent. He prevailed in the November general election – needlessly to say, in an absurdly safe Democratic and overwhelmingly Latino district – by 51,556 to 9,180, a lopsided margin, but the lowest voter turnout of any of the state’s