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SACRAMENTO — Former vice presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman Wednesday jumped on the pile of key Democrats thumping President Bush for ignoring California’s energy crisis. 

“You can’t disengage from California’s problems as if they were happening somewhere else on the globe,” Lieberman, D-Conn., said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles during his three-day speaking and fund-raising tour of the state. 

Lieberman said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should impose price caps on electricity wholesalers, a move Bush opposes. 

“If FERC does not do that,” Lieberman said, then the Senate should act. He said he will support a bill by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., ordering FERC to impose caps. 

Lieberman – who said he is “not closing any doors” on a possible presidential run in 2004 – is crisscrossing the state delivering speeches and meeting with powerful fund-raisers and lawmakers. 

He is scheduled to meet separately Thursday with Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante to discuss the energy crisis. 

Lieberman also is to attend a prayer breakfast in Sacramento Thursday morning with Hertzberg and Gov. Gray Davis, where Lieberman jokingly said the three will “pray together for more energy, more rain and more electric generation.” 

Later Thursday, Davis plans to meet with 25 members of the state’s congressional delegation from both parties, to discuss what the federal government and lawmakers can do to help the state. 

Davis and others have said price caps will help ease the electricity crisis that has caused rolling blackouts statewide and record electricity rate increase for many residents. 

The state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., filed for bankruptcy April 6 and two other investor-owned utilities say they are drowning in debt from paying sky-high wholesale electricity prices. 

Lieberman’s trip comes at a time when Democrats are accusing the Republican president of shunning the Golden State, where Vice President Al Gore beat him by 1.3 million votes in November. 

Bush’s recently released budget plan calls for cuts in several California-oriented programs, including a more than 50 percent reduction in a program that helps states pay to incarcerate criminal illegal immigrants. It also shaves dollars from agriculture, renewable energy programs and hints at possible military base closures. 

The president also has not visited California despite traveling to 26 other states, including Lieberman’s Connecticut Wednesday, in his first three months in office. 

However, Bush’s sole Democrat on the Cabinet – Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, a former House member and San Jose mayor – defended the White House this week. Mineta told reporters Tuesday that Bush realizes the state’s political clout and the power crisis’ potential national effects. 

Bush also has appointed three Californians to his Cabinet, including Mineta, and dozens of others for key administration jobs. On Tuesday, the White House announced Bush has nominated Huntington Park City Councilwoman Rosario Marin to be U.S. treasurer. 

White House spokesman Ken Lisaius declined to say whether the president has any future plans to travel here. 

“I don’t think that the president’s travel schedule suggests the president’s opinion of one state or another,” Lisaius said. “He’s the president of all 50 states.”