Politics: State leader Shawn Steel speaks his mind, even when Bush team advises against it. Shawn Steel threw himself into politics on the streets of the San Fernando Valley in 1964 by ripping down Lyndon Johnson posters at construction sites. In the Youth for Goldwater brigades, it was known as "sniping." "You peel off their stuff and trash it, and you put up your stuff. I loved it," Steel recalled. "I learned to be confrontational pretty early." Decades later, Steel, now the state Republican Party chairman, still has a knack for confrontation, even when others—important others—would like him to back...