The best part about being a reporter is having the opportunity to explore new bridges before they open to the public.

This morning, I toured the new Benicia-Martinez bridge, scheduled to open in late August or early September, with Caltrans engineer Mo Pazooki and public information officer Keith Wayne. (See tomorrow’s Contra Costa Times for the full story and photos by Karl Mondon.)

We drove from one end of the bridge to the other, a feat possible only in the past few months since the contractors finished the concrete segments and installed the hinges in the deck that allow the bridge to move up to 3 feet in an earthquake.

We walked down the middle of the span, which won’t be possible as soon as the five-lane bridge opens to traffic.

And we roamed through the tunnel beneath the toll-taker booths, a place that will be strictly off-limits to the general public after opening day. The toll may only be $4 but multiply that amount by the thousands of vehicles that travel this bridge every day and you are talking about some serious money.

I’ll be working on a full-length retrospective about the construction of the Benicia-Martinez bridge to publish in late summer before it opens. If you worked on this bridge, I’d love to hear from you. Call me at 925-945-4773 or email me at lvorderbrueggen@cctimes.com.

The presidential hopefuls headed for California this week probably won’t be talking about the weather although their visitation schedule takes advantage of all the green in the Golden State, i.e., the money.

Check out the California candidate appearances set for the next few days:

Democrat John Edwards will visit Google on Wednesday.
Republican Rudy Giuliani will be in Burlingame on Wednesday.
Democrat Hillary Clinton will be in Las Vegas on Wednesday and in the Silicon Valley on Thursday.
Democrat Barack Obama will be in Piedmont on Saturday

Former congressman and ex-Republican Pete McCloskey says he’s feeling a “lot cleaner” since he registered as a Democrat.

But the iconic man who ran for president and co-authored the national Endangered Species Act is not optimistic that Democrats will keep their sheen.

“(The Democrats) will be corrupted by power eventually,” McCloskey says, reached by phone at his Rumsey farm and ranch. “I just hope it doesn’t happen quick.”

McCloskey recalled the dozens of Democrat elected leaders who were indicted while he served as a member of the minority party in Congress.

“No one would bother bribing a Republican,” he says. “We didn’t have any power.”

In the meantime, McCloskey intends to throw his support behind Democratic presidential candidate and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

He will also keep up the work of The Revolt of the Elders, a political group he founded 2 1/2 years ago with Lew Butler, friend and an assistant secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Nixon administration, to fight ethical lapses in Congress. The organization will lobby to abolish term limits, establish public financing of campaigns and put an end to the production of nuclear weapons.

But don’t expect him to go easy on his new friends in the Democratic Party.

“I’m going to be just as hard on Democrats as I was the Republicans,” McCloskey says.

How many of us can point to a big agendas such as this? And McCloskey turns 80 years old on Sept. 29.

San Ramon Mayor Abram Wilson will announce his plans to seek the Republican nomination in Assembly District 15 at a June 18 fundraiser. He hopes to succeed Assemblyman Guy Houston, R-San Ramon, who terms out next year.

Wilson will also be running his re-election campaign for mayor, which will take place in November of this year, and join the growing numbers of candidates who are seeking more than one office at the same time.

The multi-race phenomenon has surfaced due to an initiative on the February 2008 presidential primary ballot that would loosen term limits and allow incumbents who were scheduled to term out next year to seek re-election.

There’s no telling if it will pass. Opponents have already filed a lawsuit challenging its language, although they lost the first court round today after a judge declared the summary and title legal. U.S. Term Limits spokesman Kevin Spillane says his organization will appeal the decision.

But the uncertainty has left incumbents and would-be challengers with a conundrum.

Houston has said he will seek re-election to his Assembly seat if the voters allow it. In the meantime, he’s contemplating a run for congressional District 11.

Sen. Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch, has said he will run for his senate seat, too. But if that doesn’t happen, he’ll run for his old Assembly District 11 seat (he only served two of the three terms allowed) and he’s raising money for his 2010 bid for state superintendent of schools.

The incumbent in District 11, Mark DeSaulnier of Concord, will run for Torlakson’s senate seat, unless, of course, his friend decides to keep it. In that case, DeSaulnier will run for re-election in the Assembly.

Got that all down?

Abrams is the 10th candidate to enter the AD15 contest but most view him as the frontrunner among the Republicans due to his political experience and higher name recognition. Click here for a link to the Secretary of State’s web page for the full candidate list.

But he’s getting a late start despite the fact that the election is still a year away. Republicans Judy Biviano Lloyd, Scott Kamena and Robert Rao have been working the race for months.

“I had hoped to wait until after February but my supporters have been asking me to declare one way or the other because they are under pressure from my opponents,” Wilson said late Friday.

He may be running two campaigns but Wilson says he’s 200 percent committed to both the city and the Assembly.

He said he would work hard to ensure that critical city programs, such as the new city hall, are well under way before he potentially leaves for Sacramento in January 2009. That’s a year before his mayoral term ends, if he’s re-elected in November.

The Republican Party slammed Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton, for his vote Thursday, along with the rest of the Bay Area delegation, against the $120 billion Iraq War supplemental funding bill.

The GOP called it a vote against the troops and again described McNerney as out-of-touch with his constituents in District 11, a Republican-leaning district that straddles the East Bay and the San Joaquin Valley.

“The fact that Jerry McNerney cannot bring himself to vote for a bi-partisan troop-funding bill that sets benchmarks for the Iraqi people just goes to show how out of step he is with the values of his district,” said NRCC spokesman Ken Spain. “Every member of the Democrat leadership voted for funding the troops except for Nancy Pelosi and apparently Jerry McNerney was willing to follow her lead once again. This should not come as a surprise since Jerry McNerney has voted with the San Francisco speaker 99 percent of the time.”

Spain’s statement is not entirely true. Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, voted against the funding and he’s chairman of the House Democrats’ policy committee.

Whether or not the supplemental bill helps or hurts the troops is a matter of debate. Clearly, the troops need funds to run a war but if they weren’t in Iraq, they wouldn’t need the money.

But is McNerney out of sync with his district on the war?

Yes and no.

A New York Times/CBS poll released today says that opposition to the war has reached a historic high. (Click here for story in Contra Costa Times today.)

According to the story, six in 10 Americans say the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq and three in four say things are going badly there.

But the majority of Americans, the New York Times writes, support continuing to the fund the war as long as the Iraqi government meets specific goals.

Only 13 percent of respondents want Congress to block all funding, while 69 percent — including 62 percent of Republicans — say Congress should condition funding on progress in Iraq.

(Added on June 1: A commenter accurately points out the results of a national poll may not accurately reflect the opinions of voters in congressional District 11. While it’s true that national polls can vary from region to region, this is the latest poll on the subject and the closest measurement available about voters’ views on the subject. It’s far from perfect but sometimes you use what you have.)

The heart of the dispute is on what those conditions should contain. Democrats, including McNerney, have argued in favor of a timeline, a restriction that President Bush and Republicans have steadfastly opposed. The legislation does contain benchmarks, a far less restrictive environment that Democrats and anti-war activists dislike.

McNerney sent out a press release explaining why he voted no. Here’s what he said:

“I have been steadfast in my commitment to use the most responsible and effective strategy to bring about a close to the violence in Iraq.

“I have the utmost respect for our men and women in uniform. They have done everything asked of them and have done so admirably. Our strategy in Iraq must match the commitment with which our military men and women have served.

“The spending plan the House voted on today provided the President a blank check and I could not support it.”

McNerney also said he voted against it because it did not include a “reasonable timeline for redeploying troops from Iraq, enforceable benchmarks, or the Pentagon’s requirements for providing the training and equipment our men and women in uniform.”

“Supporting our troops means providing our men and women in uniform all of the means necessary to carry out their mission and bring a responsible close to the conflict in Iraq,” McNerney said. “This bill did not do that and I could not support it.”

ADDENDUM:
For an interesting read on why McNerney’s neighbor, Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, voted in favor of the bill, (he was one of 82 Democrats who defied their colleagues and voted yes) check out Stockton Record reporter Hank Shaw’s blog.

Piedmont lawyer Jeffrey Bleich and his wife, Becky, will host a June 2 fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

Bleich has been helping Obama raise money and woo voters in the East Bay, including the organization of the candidate’s recent public rally in Oakland. The Illinois senator is one of several candidates who have ventured out of the traditional Democratic fundraising worlds of San Francisco, Marin and Peninsula residents.

This time, Obama will appear at a far smaller affair, a two-hour luncheon intended to allow donors to meet and talk with the candidate personally.

Alice Waters will cater the lunch, which will be held at the home of Quinn Delaney and Wayne Jordan.

The event is one of a handful of fundraisers Obama will hold in the Bay Area during the weekend, including several in the Silicon Valley.

Other hosts include Dean Chris Edley, Jon Streeter, Rita and Ian Isaacs, Berit Ashla and Aron Cramer, Tim and Cam McCalmont, Dana Welch, Scott Adams, Steve Holtzmann, John Burris and Tony West.

The price of admission is a $2,300 contribution to Obama’s campaign, the maximum allowed per person under federal campaign finance laws.

If you have the bucks and the interest, Bleich says he may be able to squeeze in a few more bodies on the floorboards. Click here for a link to the RSVP form.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is scheduled to speak June 2 at the commencement ceremony for Moraga-based St. Mary’s College’s School of Extended Education but the school probably isn’t a model the governor will promote.

It’s the school’s last graduation ceremony. The college is shutting it down after suffering a series of financial setbacks brought on by too few students. School leaders voted in 2005 to stop admitting new students to the program after its faculty objected to the subsidies from other programs required to keep it going.

The extended education school was designed to allow working professionals to pursue degrees while keeping their day jobs, a formula that commercial organizations such as the University of Phoenix later marketed to far greater success than St. Mary’s College.

UPDATE:
OK, now it all makes sense. Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, is graduating from the School of Extended Education on June 2, hence the reason for her boss’ appearance at its commencement ceremony. One did wonder why the governor would show up to celebrate the graduation of a school on its last leg.

Under the category of, “Oh Lord, this is going to be a long election,” the National Republican Congressional Committee today launched a series of robocalls and a one-week radio buy targeting Rep. Jerry McNerney, the Pleasanton Democrat that GOP leaders hope to defeat next year.

The GOP also expanded its anti-Democratic web site, www.TheRealDemocratStory.com.

“We are hitting the airwaves and the phone lines, making sure the people in California’s 11th congressional district know how Washington has changed Jerry McNerney,” said NRCC communications chief Jessica Boulanger. “With his growing list of broken promises, McNerney will have to answer to his voters why he is marching in lock-step with Nancy Pelosi, and out-of-step with the views and values he was elected to represent.”

Anyone want to start a pool on how much money will be spent in District 11 on the 2008 election?

Pittsburg Councilwoman Nancy Parent and Gary Darling, general Manager of Delta Diablo Sanitation District in Antioch, will testify in Washington, D.C., Thursday at a congressional hearing before a subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee.

The pair will lobby for passage of a bill by Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, that will would provide a federal partner for seven Bay Area water recycling projects including one in Pittsburg and Antioch.

Parent and Darling will be joined by Larry Wilson, a director of the Santa Clara Valley Water District.

Miller introduced the bill in March and was joined by other Bay Area lawmakers, including reps. Anna Eshoo, D- Atherton, Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton, Tom Lantos, D- San Mateo, Mike Honda, D- San Jose, Zoe Lofgrenm, D- San Jose, and Pete Stark D-Fremont.

In addition to Pittsburg, according to Miller’s office, the bill would help Antioch, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Pacifica, South Santa Clara County, Redwood City, and San Jose.

The bill is H.R. 1526, “The Bay Area Regional Water Recycling Program Authorization Act of 2007.” The hearing begins at 10 am. EST on Thursday in the Longworth House office building.

Less than an hour after House Democrats averted a vote on a resolution that would have reprimanded one of their own, the GOP issued a press release panning Democrat Rep. Jerry McNerney’s support of his party’s decision.

Angela Kouters, McNerney’s chief of staff, called the criticism unwarranted.

What? McNerney and the GOP in disagreement? Shocking, just shocking.

Here’s what happened.

The House tabled earlier today a resolution offered by Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., that would have censured Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., for allegedly threatening to withhold earmarks from the Michigan lawmaker during an angry exchange. (Click here for the full New York Times story.)

“Jerry McNerney was faced with an opportunity to stand up to unethical behavior in Congress and instead he balked and fell in line with Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat leadership,” said Ken Spain, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “His vote to kill a resolution calling for the reprimand of an ethically challenged member of Congress is unconscionable and it is a vote that he will come to regret.”

Kouters called the resolution a conviction without a trial, pointing to its language that said, “Resolved, That the Member from Pennsylvania, Mr. Murtha has been guilty of a violation of the Code of Official Conduct and merits the reprimand of the House for the same.”

“When the House votes to reprimand someone, it is almost always based on an investigation by the ethics committee,” Kouters said. “We would support sending the matter to the ethics committee.”

This exchange may seem like petty partisan bickering leading up to a hotly contested election, and it is.

But watch for ethics to become a central theme in the upcoming election as the Republicans try to deflate one of the driving reasons that voters elected McNerney in November and replaced seven-term incumbent Richard Pombo.

In the last election, Democrats, environmentalists and other critics of Pombo successfully painted the incumbent with GOP ethical lapses in Washington. The GOP will now try to turn the table on the Democrats and accuse them, as the majority party, of failing to hold members of their own party accountable.