Schwarzenegger's Veto Message Appears to Have Gone Above and Beyond

Oct. 28--SACRAMENTO -- Tell us, governor, how you really feel.

In what's either a sly jab at a critic -- or just an improbably "weird coincidence" -- one of the scores of tart veto messages issued by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this month apparently contained an extra-special statement of rejection.

As in, a certain four-letter curse word, followed by its familiar friend "you."

The phrase leaps out when reading the first letter of each line in the printed veto message -- apparently the only one like it in the batch sent out Oct. 11. The hidden acrostic, first spotted by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, has since been splayed across the Internet and even on cable television. (You can check it out at gov.ca.gov/pdf/press/2009bills/AB1176_Ammiano_Veto_Message.pdf.)

"It's just a weird coincidence," Aaron McLear, the governor's spokesman, said Wednesday, doing his best to play it straight. "We do hundreds of vetoes every year, so something like this was bound to happen."

But almost as remarkable is to whom it happened. The lucky recipient was Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, who recently earned the governor's ire with some puerile remarks of his own.

At a Democratic fundraiser this month, where Schwarzenegger had popped in as a lark, a feisty Ammiano shouted at the governor to kiss the spot where he sits down.

Schwarzenegger

has rarely displayed a flair for the subtle when needling his legislative colleagues. During this year's budget grind, he sent sculpted bull testicles to the leader of the Senate. And of course, during another budget stalemate early in his tenure, Schwarzenegger called his legislative foes "girly men."

"I think it was a very creative way of exercising veto power," Ammiano, a former stand-up comic, told reporters Wednesday.

"I guess the governor is feeling his oats."

Contact Denis C. Theriault at 916-441-4651.

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