How Núñez rose to power so fast

California

Núñez, 41, is the mastermind behind Prop. 93, and he enlisted his top political consultant, Gale Kauffmann, to lead the campaign for the measure. He would be able to serve six more years in the Assembly if the measure passes, rather than being termed out at the end of this year.

Núñez got his big break among the labor circles when Contreras hired him as political director of the labor federation. He kept that post until 2000, when he took a job as lobbyist for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Núñez arrived at the Capitol in 2003 and became speaker the following year. The first two years of his leadership were marked by political battles against Schwarzenegger. The speaker struck deals with the governor on bills that increased the minimum wage and, more importantly [?], made California the U.S. leader in efforts to curb greenhouse gases. "I put the power of the speakership behind it," Núñez said of the emissions bill. "Otherwise it wouldn't have moved."

"The bottom line: It was all about Prop. 93 and (Núñez's) ambition to continue to be speaker and his terror that Big Four gambling tribes would put money against (the measure) if he didn't do their bidding," said Jack Gribbon, California political director of UNITE Here, a labor union that opposes the gambling deals. "It was one of the coldest political calculations that I have seen in my life."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/22/MN9UU0M5L.DTL