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Daniel Weintraub reminds us of what it's all about. Quotable:

Davis had become the modern-day equivalent of the California pols who did the railroads' bidding. He raised and spent a record $70 million clinging to office in 2002, including $10 million to help defeat a moderate Republican, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, in that party's primary. Capitol lobbyists groused privately that it took $100,000 in contributions just to secure a meeting with the governor, and the president of the California Teachers' Association complained that Davis hit him up for $1 million while they discussed education policy in the governor's office.

Much of the governor's war chest came from the state's public employee unions, and he rewarded them handsomely. While most rank-and-file government workers got decent raises and a modest pension boost, Davis gave his biggest donors favored treatment. The prison guards got a 30-percent-plus raise over five years and a promise of pensions that would let them retire with 90 percent of their salary at age 50. Within weeks after the contract was signed, the correctional officers' union, which had spent $2.3 million helping Davis get elected, dropped another $250,000 into his campaign kitty.