Sanchez for Governor: I'm In, I'm Out, Maybe I'm Back In, Perhaps Not

Several thousand words into Mark Leibovich's 8,000-word New York Times Magazine piece titled "Who Can Possibly Govern California?" our own superstar Latina of Congress pops up briefly.

Recently I called Loretta Sanchez, the outspoken and increasingly visible Democratic congresswoman from Orange County, who had been mentioned as a possible candidate if [Los Angeles Mayor Antonio] Villaraigosa did not run. She described a "hypothetical" candidate who happened to sound a lot like Loretta Sanchez.

"I'm pretty sure you would agree," she told me, "that a person who is from the south, who is viewed as more moderate than Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom, who is a woman, and who might have an ethnicity, let's say, of Hispanic, probably would, on paper, be a very good candidate."

That sure sounds as if she has found a race to spend those dollars raised by People for Loretta 2010, the exploratory committee Sanchez opened in November 2005. Or maybe not. Just last month she indicated she will run for reelection, something some pundits figured she might avoid given the rise of Vietnamese-American Republican candidates in her Garden Grove-based district.

Not that Loretta is totally shutting the door to Sacramento.
 
After volunteering that her "phone has been ringing off the hook" with calls from donors since Villaraigosa announced his decision, Sanchez told me that there is about a 20 percent chance she will run, and then qualified even that by noting that "things can change."

Well, ain't she the coy one!