Winner of Bitter Bay Area Political Fight Takes His Place in State Senate

"Congratulations," said state Sen. Hannah Beth Jackson to her new colleague, Steve Glazer, as he arrived in the back of the Senate chamber on Thursday morning.

"Or maybe," she added, "it's condolences."

It seemed like a lighthearted moment, an ice breaker of sorts after Glazer's bitter political fight with his fellow Democrats that ended with his victory in a special election on May 19.

Gov. Jerry Brown, who Glazer served as a top political adviser for years, administered the oath of office in a brief ceremony. Minutes later, the Orinda Democrat cast his first vote on a piece of legislation to applause from his fellow senators.

While legislators taking office in special elections have become fairly commonplace in California, Glazer's arrival in the Legislature is far from that. Labor unions and the state Democratic Party worked hard to defeat Glazer in his runoff against Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla (D-Concord).

In all, some $9 million was spent on the special election by the campaigns and outside groups. On election night, the executive director of the California Democratic Party issued a statement that Glazer "claimed to be a Democrat" and had run a "cynical campaign."

If those wounds are still raw, no one let them show as the 57-year-old Democrat delivered a brief thank-you speech to the Senate Thursday morning in which he called Brown a "hero" and chronicled his working-class roots growing up in the capital city.

"I am here today, humbled and honored, to serve with some old and some new friends in the state Senate," said Glazer.

He will have to resign a seat on the CSU Board of Trustees to which Brown appointed him in 2011. And by virtue of winning a special election, he is eligible for as many as 13 years in the state Senate -- one more than the 12-year term limit established by voters in 2012.

But the East Bay Democrat also must run for re-election in 2016, the normal four-year cycle for his Senate seat. Whether Democrats challenge his campaign next year, or whether the centrist Glazer and his more liberal party members mend fences before then, remains to be seen.