Word: feinstein
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...working on the farms of California's Central Valley, far from the centers of power in Los Angeles and San Francisco. He got into local politics after training to be a butcher and showed a talent for the meet-and-greet part of the trade. Whenever Senator Dianne Feinstein flew into the valley, Bustamante was there to meet her and take her to appointments. He still counts her as a powerful friend. Bustamante entered the state legislature in 1993 and, largely because term limits eliminated his rivals, he was named assembly speaker in 1996. When he was elected lieutenant governor...
...Feinstein took a pass. But then, just hours later on Wednesday, Schwarzenegger didn't, and the fragile shell of solidarity that the Democrats had built around the embattled Governor collapsed. By the next day, two Democrats with proven statewide appeal--Lieutenant Governor Bustamante and insurance commissioner John Garamendi--added their names to the list of candidates on the second ballot who were offering themselves up to replace Davis. And so Davis was left facing members of his establishment and a simple yea or nay verdict on his future: the state supreme court last Thursday rejected the Governor's lawsuit...
...this left the Democratic field fractured, with no heavyweight to take on Schwarzenegger. Sensing a disaster, such influential figures as former Governor Jerry Brown and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown took to the cable news shows to suggest that Davis should step aside and beg Feinstein to run in his place. Meanwhile, panic-stricken union officials, who had pledged to stand with Davis, started putting out the word privately that he should not count on the $10 million in assistance he has asked from them...
...running for re-election. On Monday, when Davis found himself in Chicago at an AFL-CIO convention with Bill Clinton, he privately sought the counsel of the master political survivor. As they talked for more than an hour at the Drake Hotel, Clinton (who has also been advising Feinstein) compared Davis' situation with his own during impeachment. The key, he told Davis, is to stay engaged and make sure voters see him every day on the job. Saturday's filing deadline found Davis signing environmental legislation at a health-care center in Santa Monica...
What no one knew in the days leading up to Schwarzenegger's announcement was precisely how the pieces were falling into place for the actor. He had started to doubt whether Riordan really had his heart in the race. And Feinstein's decision not to run removed from the field his most formidable opponent. (In the TIME/CNN poll, she edges out Schwarzenegger by 2 percentage points.) George Butler, a co-director of the Schwarzenegger film Pumping Iron, said that if Feinstein dropped out because she believed Schwarzenegger wasn't running, then she fell for the same tactic the bodybuilder used...