ShareThisIf California governors exhibit any regional biases, they usually reflect their hometowns. Recent history has offered two exceptions: Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Although Brown called Los Angeles home during his governorship, he developed an affinity for Oakland and showered attention on the city -- fast-tracking a local freeway project, for example, while stalling many other long-pending highway projects.
Brown settled for a while in San Francisco after leaving the governorship in 1983, but by and by he moved to Oakland, living in and running a radio talk show out of a building at Jack London Square before running successfully for mayor of Oakland in 1998.
Ironically, as he announced his mayoral candidacy he denounced a certain freeway project for dividing the city's ethnically diverse populations -- the same project he had fast-tracked as governor. But that's to be expected from someone who once scorned consistency as the "hobgoblin of small minds."
Schwarzenegger also calls Los Angeles home. But he, like Brown, has adopted another community, Fresno, as his personal favorite, visiting so often that even he makes jokes about it.
Why Fresno? Only Schwarzenegger could answer that question, but his patronage has paid off for the city and the entire San Joaquin Valley. He created a special "partnership" to foster economic development in the region and, tellingly, his 2006 infrastructure bond issue included a billion dollars specifically for upgrading Highway 99, the region's most important artery.
Schwarzenegger made what was expected to be a routine visit to Fresno last week to announce a $32 million public-private partnership to increase training of nurses and other health care workers in short supply.
The venue Schwarzenegger's office chose for the announcement was Fresno City College, which was quite appropriate since it is the state's largest and the nation's second-largest supplier of registered nurses and Schwarzenegger has been a booster of community colleges.
With little advance notice, college officials hurriedly made arrangements, only to hit an awkward glitch at the event itself. While Schwarzenegger toured Fresno City College's health training facilities, a gubernatorial aide physically barred college trustee Richard Caglia from joining Schwarzenegger on the tour.
Caglia, a Republican businessman and official host, was, as he said later, miffed.
"I did feel like I was dissed a little bit," he told The Fresno Bee.
As word spread of Caglia's embarrassing slight, Fresnans' complaints found their way to the governor's top staffers in Sacramento.
At first, they offered rationales for Caglia's rejection, then dismissed it as a harmless misunderstanding. But that just made college trustees more upset.
By week's end, gubernatorial aides were dispatching apologies and pinning the slight on an overeager advance man -- the timeworn blame-the-staff syndrome.
(E-mail Dan Walters at dwalters(at)sacbee.com. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
ColumnMust credit Sacramento Bee
