Who Killed Joe Nunez?

Many readers have asked: Why isn't Senate leader Don Perata being blamed for killing the appointment of California Teachers Assn. executive Joe Nunez to the state Board of Education?

Indeed, Republicans provided the two votes necessary to put Nunez over the top. But two Democratic lawmakers, Sens. Ed Vincent and Ron Calderon, called in sick Thursday, and Nunez went down. But it looked like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had reappointed Nunez to the school board, had been sabotaged by his own party.

The conventional explanation is this: The two Republicans who voted for Nunez and the two Democrats who didn't show up should be considered outliers. There is always someone sick, someone crossing party lines, someone in the bathroom. Once you get that out of the way, you look at the political situation: Senate GOP leader Dick Ackerman and his fellow Republicans, and Schwarzenegger himself, did nothing to round up the sufficient votes needed to get the governor's appointee over the top. And Perata corralled almost every Democratic vote for Nunez.

The Senate had to vote to confirm Nunez before Jan. 15, which is a holiday, said Perata spokeswoman Alicia Trost. So yesterday was the last day the Senate could act. Vincent recently had surgery and Calderon had a fever; Perata said it wasn't worth forcing them to come back. (But Perata could have held the vote earlier perhaps! And so on.)

Some Capitol insiders smell something rotten, given that the CTA ran billboards and made phone calls in Perata's district after he dared to suggest Proposition 98 should be tweaked to help balance the state budget. One Republican wrote in about CTA chief Barbara Kerr: "If she had done her job and made sure all the Dems were here yesterday, she would have gotten her boy confirmed." A Democratic operative: "If Perata had wanted to make this happen, he could have made sure the ('effing) votes were there." Another reader: The "CTA won't make a big stink about it because they don't want to show that they just were served payback for their hits on Perata."

I dunno. It's quite possible that if Vincent and Calderon had made it to Sacramento, Republican Sens. Abel Maldonado and Jeff Denham would have stayed neutral, killing his reappointment anyway.

Nevertheless, it was the perfect political scenario, the kind they love in Sacramento. Maldonado and Denham made easy "yes" votes on Nunez without really offending their party or their CTA patrons. Beleaguered Republicans eagerly poked a stick in Schwarzenegger's eye. The governor looked post-partisan for appointing his former CTA enemy to the school board, but now gets another appointment. And Perata voted in favor of the union, while he simultaneously allowed the destruction of their nominee.

Like on the Orient Express - everybody killed Joe Nunez.

(Photos: Rich Pedroncelli / AP)