It's been said – perhaps most famously by the late, longtime House Speaker Tip O’Neill -- that "all politics is local."
But there are times when local politics also gets personal, with little love lost.
That apparently, is now the case with a State Senate race here in San Diego.
The dustup is between Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins and Senator Marty Block.
Both are Democrats, and intra-party rivalries like this are never welcome in Sacramento.
Fierce fussing and feuding already is under way.
Atkins says Block told her long ago he wouldn't run for re-election after his first term, a signal that his 39th District seat was hers to target in 2016.
He claims he never promised that.
"There was never any deal, no back-room deal,” Block told NBC 7 in an interview Monday. “We discussed in vague terms the fact that I may or may not retire after my first term."
But in a separate interview, Atkins recapped what’s become a series of disagreements over what transpired between them as follows: "He did come back to me and tell me 'Well, I meant it when I said it. I've change my mind, circumstances have changed.' He said that directly to me."
Atkins said she was "shocked, surprised and "disappointed" -- but determined to go ahead with plans to run for Block's seat anyway.
Her tenure as speaker is up in January; she'll be termed out of the Assembly late next year.
But Atkins told NBC 7 she wants to keep representing San Diego in Sacramento: “Now is the time that I should be able to do the work that I have done, the leadership that I’ve gained, to be successful for San Diego.”
Block takes the challenge as an affront to himself, their party and the Senate – and so do his backers in the upper house.
Atkins has accumulated $600,000 in political donations, more than five times what Block has in ready money.
Local
"Frankly, the people who gave to her thinking she was going to run in 2020 will probably be asking for their money back, many of them -- because this is kind of a bait-and-switch,” Block said. “They gave to her not thinking she was going to run against me. Many of them are my friends."
This response, from Atkins' campaign spokeswoman: "We haven't heard any such concerns from anyone other than Marty. If he's so concerned about Democrats running against Democrats, then perhaps he should keep his word and not run."
Either way, the campaign figures to be a costly, divisive bloodbath from now until the presidential election cycle is over in November 2016.
