Features

Under Currents: Perata Displays His Formidable Snooker Skills

J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR
Friday October 31, 2003

Well, you gotta hand it to 9th District State Senator Don Perata. Thanks, in part, to a calendar-challenged Superior Court judge and Attorney General Bill Lockyer (both of whom seem to think that four days equals four years), Mr. Perata has figured out a way to stretch his term limit from the voter -mandated two to a more convenient (for him) three. Now it looks like Mr. Perata, may have simultaneously managed to snooker his toughest opponent out of the race against him.  

And by toughest opponent, I don’t mean our current 16th District Assemblymember, Wilma Chan. 

Like Inigo Montoya said in The Princess Bride, there’s too much here to explain, so I’ll just sum up. 

In 1998, Perata barely edged out then-State Assemblymember Dion Aroner in the Democratic primary to fill the unexpired State Senate term of Barbara Lee. (Some folks say that Mr. Perata won because he snookered Keith Carson into running, thus splitting the vote, but that’s another story.) (Oh. And some of the same folks say that Mr. Perata won because he got a boost from an illegal, last-minute loan from his father in excess of the Special Election contribution limit, a violation for which Mr. Perata was found guilty and fined by the California Fair Political Practices Commission, but that’s another story, too.) (Gosh, these Perata stories are beginning to add up to a whole book of these things.) 

Anyways, Mr. Perata ran unopposed in the 2000 Democratic primary, and got himself re-elected to his second term (or first term, if you count along with the attorney general and Judge James Richman) in November. Meanwhile, Ms. Aroner stayed in the Assembly until she was term-limited out in 2002. In April of this year, a California National Organization for Women newsletter announced that Ms. Aroner “will run for the state Senate when Majority Leader Don Perata ( D-Oakland), is termed out in 2004.” 

Like they say in the Hertz commercial, not exactly. Stick with me gang, ‘cause this is where it gets complicated. 

A couple of things then happened. In 2000, Wilma Chan wins the 16th California Assembly seat from the woeful Audie Bock, with the help of Mr. Perata (the Oakland Tribune calls her Perata’s “protégé”). And then, in 2001, the state legislature rearranges the boundaries of the 9th Senate District to fit population of the 2000 census. The new 9th District boundaries—surprise, surprise—better fits someone running from the southern part of the district (like, say, Alameda and Oakland, where Ms. Chan and Mr. Perata live) than it does someone from the northern part of the district (like, say, Berkeley, where Ms. Aroner lives). Well, maybe not so much of a surprise, since Mr. Perata has a big hand—maybe the biggest hand—in drawing the new lines. 

So a couple of more things happen.  

Ms. Chan announced that she was going to leave the Assembly after only two terms (she has the right to try for three) to run for the 9th Senate District seat that Mr. Perata is (involuntarily) vacating. Thereafter Ms. Aroner, looking at a race against a popular legislator in a district with a lot of voters who don’t know Ms. Aroner, figures that she’d have to run too negative a race to win, and decides she’s not going to run for the State Senate. 

But, suddenly, an odd twist in the story.  

Out of the blue, Mr. Perata decides he wants to run for the State Senate again. He gets State Attorney General Lockyer to agree, even though the term limit law seems to mandate that Mr. Perata cannot serve another term. Everybody assumes that Ms. Chan will now drop out of the race in favor of Mr. Perata, but when I talk to her staff some days after the Lockyer opinion, they tell me that “Wilma is in the race to stay.”  

Okay. Looks like we’re going to have an interesting Senate race in 2004: Chan v. Perata.  

The Protégé Bites Back. 

It looked even more interesting when two East Bay women—with Chan’s support—bring a lawsuit into Superior Court, asking Judge Richman to rule that Perata can’t run for another term.  

Earlier this month, the judge denied their request. But here’s where it got bizarre.  

According to the Tribune: “Chan, who backed the lawsuit leading to this decision, said she’ll consult her attorney and supporters before deciding whether to support an appeal. But she also said she’ll consult Perata, a sign that this challenge to his candidacy was made with his consent—a politically shrewd tactic to preempt any similar lawsuit by Republicans.” 

That left some Aroner supporters absolutely fuming, in the belief that from the beginning this whole thing was a dance set to music by Mr. Perata, having Ms. Chan hold his place in line to keep Ms. Aroner out of the race, with Mr. Perata then jumping back in at the last minute, too late for any serious challenger (Ms. Aroner especially) to take him on. I’ve got calls in to Ms. Chan’s office to get their side of this interesting story, but so far, this looks like as good a case of political snookering as I’ve seen in quite a while.