GOV. DAVIS STRIKES BACK WITH A VETO

Pumped and pompadoured in a uniform dripping with embroidery, the figure
standing ramrod straight at the door, pen in hand, could have been Warden
Duffy, Dan Lungren or Gray Davis.

Remembering that Duffy had been called to the big Big House in the sky some
time ago and pretty sure that Lungren was working as an altar boy somewhere,
I concluded the visitor had to be Davis, the law-and-order chief executive
of the state.

"Whaddaya think of that?" he snarled, jabbing the pen sharply into my solar
plexus.

Nice, I said. Mont Blanc or Tiffany?

His eyes narrowed, and for an instant, I thought he would slap on the cuffs
and take me downtown. "No, you idiot. My veto."

Congratulations, I said. Nice name for a newborn, Vito.

"Listen, you oaf, I'm talking about veto, like my veto of Three Strikes. "

The news struck me like brass knuckles across the chops. Instinctively, I
reached out and hugged him. He had vetoed Three Strikes. I can't believe it,
I told him.

"No, lardhead, and get your slimy soft-hearted, knee-jerk hands off me," he
said. "I vetoed that lame-brained idea to study Three Strikes."

Couldn't blame him, I said. Wasn't working anyway, from all you hear.

"Whaddaya mean? It's the best thing that's happened for me since Dan Lungren."

So what was it exactly that he vetoed? I wanted to know.

"Some sucker's wrong-headed bill to study Three Strikes and You're Out and
take the guts out of it to suit the bleeding hearts," he said. "Just what
all the crooks would like, study Three Strikes to death. You have any idea
what that could do?"

Probably let some head-case pot-smokers doing hard time out, I suggested, or
maybe some poor sucker who got caught heisting a pizza or a tricycle.

He seized my lapels and yanked me off the floor. "Exactly," he said. "A
doper here and a hubcap snatcher there let out on the streets, and pretty
quick all the joints that Duke and brother Pete spent millions building
would be emptier than the skulls of some folks in the Legislature."

His logic was beginning to make sense.

"Not only that, empty the prisons and what do you do with all those fine,
upstanding guards? Put them out on the streets, too? For your information,
they're what's standing between civilization and anarchy."

Not to mention that they're standing up for Gov. Gray Davis, moneywise and
otherwise, I mused.

He ignored me. "You do the crime, you do the time," he said. "Three strikes
and you're in for a lifetime, or longer."

All of a sudden he was beginning to sound a lot like Bill Jones, I suggested.

"Who?" he asked, clicking his heels and pocketing his pen.

Bill Jones, secretary of state, author of Three Strikes, possible, if not
probable, Republican candidate for governor next time.

"You don't say. Wrote Three Strikes, did he? Well, you can tell Mr. Jones it
just so happens that it's me and my pen that keeps 'em in the pen."

By his action, I surmised, he has left little doubt that he wants to be
re-elected governor.

The governor squared his shoulders and set his jaw. "In," he said, "the
worst way."

Eli Setencich is a Bee columnist. E-mail him at eli@fresnobee.com