Free Republic

When Rep. Hilda Solis inserted remarks in the Congressional Record praising Los Angeles activist John Pérez as "an asset to the labor movement," she was recounting the life story of a man who would later become California's Assembly speaker. "After graduating from the University of California Berkeley, John began working on designing and organizing education programs," Solis, then a Los Angeles congresswoman and now U.S. secretary of labor, wrote in 2004. But the record is wrong: Pérez dropped out of UC Berkeley and never returned. For a decade, Pérez's designation as a UC Berkeley graduate went unchallenged in newspaper articles,...

Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez said today that he is not considering trying to place a multibillion-dollar tax extension on the June ballot by a simple majority vote of the Democrat-controlled Legislature, which would sidestep Republicans. The Los Angeles Democrat downplayed a legislative counsel's opinion, sought by Senate Republican leader Bob Dutton, that said such a measure could be placed before voters by a majority vote of the Assembly and Senate, under narrow circumstances. "No," Pérez said flatly today when asked if he is entertaining such a plan in light of Republicans' failure to support the extension, which is designed...

Democratic Assemblyman John Pérez emerged as the winner last week after a bruising battle for leadership of the state Assembly, a fight that had no shortage of contestants. But as the state heads into another year of staggering budget deficits and difficult decisions - and because term limits have seriously diluted the Assembly leader's power - some are asking why anyone would even want the job. "The question isn't just, 'Can you be a leader?' but, 'Is there anything left to lead?' " said Bill Bagley, a Republican who served in the Assembly from 1960 to 1974. In recent years,...