Who is Cruz Bustamante, this generally conservative, pro-business Democrat — the most prominent California backer of conservative Democratic presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, longtime chairman of the anti-liberal Democratic Leadership Council — who, without credentials, is running as a reinvented left-liberal in this recall election? And would Bustamante, who has read his only two policy speeches of this campaign word for word, even exist politically without his controversial political consultant and lobbying string puller, Richie Ross?

Bustamante’s career is a product of term limits and Democratic catering to the Latino vote. In 1992 he was an unknown district aide to a term-limited Fresno assemblyman who leaped at a high-paying university job, allowing Bustamante, guided by consultant Richie Ross, to win the seat. When legendary Speaker Willie Brown was forced out by term limits and Republicans couldn’t take advantage, Bustamante, by now a “senior” Latino figure and a moderate who dealt well with Sacramento lobbyists, put together enough votes to serve briefly as speaker...

In the Assembly, Bustamante was a standard conservative Central Valley Democrat. Sierra Club lobbyist John White says Bustamante was “weak on pesticides and weak on endangered species.” United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta says he was “no friend of the farm worker. He was very friendly with the growers.”