Did Bob Mulholland proxies drive Maria Shriver out of Watsonville?

Maria Shriver appeared at a fair in Watsonville, CA on Friday to promote California's capacious welfare state. After about an hour of pressing the flesh, she was shouted down by about a dozen Brown Berets. She shortly left the event on the advice of her security contingent, with the mayor following her to the airport to apologize for the welcome.

Bob Mulholland - senior strategist for Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger's opponent - has no comment. Another Angelides helper - Steve Maviglio - decried the incident, calling it "tragic and totally inappropriate." The latter is on loan from Fabian Nunez' office.

From this:

The incident was strikingly similar to a notorious event during the 2003 recall. Then a group of labor protesters, orchestrated by then state Democratic Party honcho Bob Mulholland, disrupted and shut down Shriver's very first campaign event on behalf of her husband, now Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

There's absolutely no evidence that Mulholland or anyone else from the Angelides campaign is involved in this. However, based on the oppressive atmosphere of sleaze surrounding the California Democratic Party and their campaigns that is certainly something worth looking into.

UPDATE: This article informs us that the BBs are not contrite, that they say the protest was reasonable, and that Councilman Manuel Bersamin is an "ally" of the BBs:

Work prevented [Bersamin] from attending Friday's event. But he said maybe Shriver will carry a message back to her husband about the anger among young Latinos in Watsonville, and that will prompt some thinking about cuts to college outreach programs, to university funding, to the crisis in health care among the poor.

Alternatively, maybe she'll realize that having an open borders policy is only going to make the situation worse and end up bankrupting the state. Then, she'll talk to her uncle-in-law about that. Youbetcha.

California · Sun, 07/23/2006 - 19:44 · · Importance: 1