Angelides Hunkers Down With Advisors

I was sitting in a restaurant last night trying to figure out why a lumpy, brown, aging crab cake was floating in my gazpacho when Phil Angelides walked through the restaurant. He greeted a few people and came to the table to say hello. He had just finished a four-hour meeting with his three closest advisors — media guru Bill Carrick, campaign manager Cathy Calfo and Democratic Party strategist Bob Mulholland. Everyone had thick binders under their arms.

After essentially three years of campaigning, it would be natural for Angelides to call a meeting to deconstruct why he suffered such an embarrassing loss to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Any politician would want to find out what went wrong.

But that is not what the meeting was about. (Although some post-election analysis did occur, Carrick said.) The meeting at the 33rd Street Bistro was to plan his comeback in California politics, which seemed sort of astonishing to the people at my table. Isn't he, like, a loser?

Mulholland came over and suggested Angelides would be a candidate in 2010 for governor or another higher office (U.S. Senate, if Barbara Boxer leaves?). He mentioned other politicians who lost big elections — Bill Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, Alan Cranston — and then came back to win higher office. Cranston, Mulholland said today in a telephone conversation, announced immediately after losing reelection for state controller in 1966 that he would run for U.S. Senate in 1968. Reporters dismissed him as crazy — he was, after all, a loser — but Cranston won.

Mulholland said Angelides has been active in Democratic politics for 15 years and "still has another good 15 years in him." He said he wants to play a big part in getting a Democratic president elected in 2008, and would look to something for himself in 2010. "Phil will not be running for Board of Equalization, let's just put it that way," Mulholland said. "I will guarantee that you will see a very active Phil Angelides in politics."

All of this seems sort of delusional to me. I still remember sitting in the piercing sun on the porch of Al Checchi's Beverly Hills mansion listening to him explain how he would remain a player in California politics even though he had just lost big to Gray Davis in the 1998 Democratic primary. Checchi really hasn't been heard from since. But Angelides is a different animal, so who knows?

Meanwhile, don't order the gazpacho at the 33rd Street Bistro.

(Photo: Rich Pedroncelli / AP)