Golden Pig award

Amid a term-limits battle at the Capitol, the top national advocacy group for term limits awarded state Senate leader Don Perata a "Golden Pig" award on Tuesday for using more than $1 million in campaign funds on "lavish" hotels, restaurants, parties, travel and gifts, Steve Geisenger from the Media News Sacramento bureau reports in today's Oakland Tribune.

U.S. Term Limits announced it had created the jab for California politicians who "remind us of the necessity for term limits."

Perata, an Oakland Democrat, declined to say much in response to the award, sometimes discounting the group with questions of his own, such as, "(U.S.) Term Limits? Who's that?"

Tim Hodson, director of the Center for California Studies at California State University, Sacramento, said U.S. Term Limits "is a well-funded, out-of-state organization that vilifies anyone and any group that regard term limits as flawed or even suggest changes in existing term-limit laws."