Berman-Sherman reminds him of earlier speakership fight

This year's showdown in the Valley between Reps. Howard Berman and Brad Sherman does more than just echo the 1980 fight in Sacramento when Berman tried to unseat fellow Democrat Leo McCarthy as Speaker of the Assembly. As Dan Walters points out in his Sacramento Bee blog, Jerry Brown is governor again and helping Berman like he did in '80. Willie Brown became speaker out of that earlier fight. The scars over that battle have continued as a sore spot between Bay Area Democrats and the L.A. Dems who look to Berman and Rep. Henry Waxman for succor. "McCarthy's friends are busily raising money for [Sherman]...seeing it as payback for what happened 32 years earlier," Walters writes.