The Sacramento Bee’s Capitol Alert had the scoop this morning that Santa Monica City Councilman Bobby Shriver – brother of California first lady Maria Shriver and nephew of U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy and the late President John F. Kennedy – is mulling a 2010 run for California Attorney General.

If he’s in, Shriver would join a crowded Democratic primary field including San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, who has been busy raising money from many of the same people with whom she rubbed elbows in the Obama campaign last year; Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, D-Newark, who entered the race with the biggest pot of money already in the bank; Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, who might’ve gained some valuable experience while taking a drubbing from Jerry Brown in the 2006 primary; Assemblyman Ted Lieu, D-Torrance; and Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara.

If someone can clearly break from the pack as a front-runner in the next few months, he or she could benefit from having so many others split what’s left of the pie.

“We expect there are going to be more people who will be entering this race,” Torrico campaign consultant Phil Giarrizzo told me today – they’d expected Shriver, he said, and they still think Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly will jump in, too.

As for Shriver, with whom Giarrizzo said he has worked on environmental issues, “he’s a talented, bright, articulate person, but we’ve seen many times, in the sense that ‘he’s a Kennedy,’ that people look to accomplishment, they look to a record,” Giarrizzo said. Primary voters tend to be very discerning, he noted, and “it doesn’t work that you can just pass along a family name; he will have to run on his own merits … a level of experience he’ll have to communicate. I don’t think we look at him as ‘a Kennedy’ – I think we look at him as Bobby Shriver, an activist and city councilman.”

“Politics is a debate of ideas and we’ll see as we go forward what his ideas are,” he said.

Harris campaign manager Ace Smith said Friday that “As the only career prosecutor in the race, District Attorney Harris looks forward to having a spirited debate about all the issues of law enforcement.”

Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico says he’ll formally announce Monday his candidacy for state Attorney General in 2010.

“As Majority Leader I’ve been involved with the budget more than ever before… and in these last few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about where the state is,” Torrico, D-Newark, told me a few minutes ago. “Our state is clearly going in the wrong direction, we’ve got some challenges ahead of us, were going to spend more on prisons than on higher education in two years.”

“We need to have a new conversation in California about what our priorities are, and the Attorney General is an office that should impact law enforcement… and also a wide range of other issues I’m passionate about,” from civil rights to consumer rights and beyond, he said.

Torrico joins a 2010 Democratic primary field for AG already consisting of San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris – already hard at work raising money from many of the same deep-pocketed donors with whom she rubbed elbows during the Obama campaign – and Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo (who ran against Jerry Brown in the 2006 primary).

Other Assembly Democrats reportedly considering runs for AG in 2010 include Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, and Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara.

Torrico said he has a “broad vision for the direction the state needs to go in,” having been not only a legislative champion of law enforcement and public safety but also of creating middle class jobs; the Attorney General, he notes, has a big impact on California’s business climate.

And from a political standpoint, he said, he enters the race with $650,000 cash on hand – a sum far in excess of any of the other contenders, and a good down payment on a race that could cost $5 million or more. “If you look at the reports over the past four years, you see I have the track record of being able to raise the money,” he said.

More after the jump…
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I was just taking a spin through recent campaign finance filings in the Secretary of State’s database, and my, hasn’t San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris been busy raising money for a 2010 bid for state Attorney General?

Among the larger ($5,000 and up) contributions she has banked in the past month or so are:

Most of these people were friends of Barack Obama’s campaign either as signficant donors (Anderson, Cabraser, Weinstein, Lorre) or as fundraisers (Delaney, Jordan, Waldman) — a campaign of which Harris was an active supporter, and her brother-in-law, Tony West, was a state finance co-chairman (and is now a high-ranking Justice Department appointee). This is quite a deep-pocketed network Harris is starting to tap…

Former state Assemblyman and one-time Contra Costa supervisor Joe Canciamilla will spend the next six months exploring a possible statewide run for attorney general in 2010.

Canciamilla, a Pittsburg man who dropped out of a potentially contentious state Senate Democratic primary in June, has formed an attorney general exploratory committee and will make use of the roughly $400,000 left in his aborted Senate campaign.

“It’s one of the few down-ticket races, other than governor, that actually has some authority,” said Canciamilla, reached via cell phone earlier today. “Most of the other statewide seats (controller, treasurer, insurance commissioner) have very little ability to do anything or they are used only as political stepping stones for other offices.”

Of course, Canciamilla’s prospects depend heavily on a decision by the state’s current one-term Attorney General Jerry Brown,who is widely believed to be considering a run for governor in 2010. Under term limits, Brown could alternatively seek a second, four-year term as attorney general.

“I’m not crazy,” Canciamilla said. “I won’t run against Jerry. But I can’t afford to wait until Jerry makes a decision. I have to be ready to move.”

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