Public Eye Sunshine Boy Bob Hines , press aide to local Republican poster boy Jim Cunneen , was busy blasting the Democrats for killing the assemblyman's online campaign-filing bill this month when another phone call came in. Hines asked Eye, only to return a couple of minutes later with a changed partisan tune. Turns out Cunneen had just signed on as a co-author of a similar bill sponsored by a Democrat that had just passed the Senate, now headed for the Assembly.
Republican support is crucial because the bill needs a two-thirds majority to pass.
The question now is whether Reeps can let bygones be bygones. A Sacramento veteran watching the debate fears that Assembly Reeps scarred by ex-Speaker Willie Brown 's reign of terror might kill the bill out of partisan spite. Cunneen promises he's going to try and work out a compromise with his esteemed colleagues in the coming weeks. When Eye called the Quackster's committee to see if the high-tech mathematical device had made it safely, a befuddled staffer revealed that it had indeed arrived but no one quite knew what to make of the unsolicited gift. Reached at his Sacramento office, attorney Bell kindly clarified his earlier explanation to Business Insurance magazine.