“Questionnaires can force future policymakers into a position before they know all the facts and options. That is a recipe for gridlock, not problem solving,” Glazer told me. “They are used by powerful narrow interests to browbeat and capture the souls of politically ambitious people. Worse yet, many of these blood promises are kept secret from voters.”

Steve Glazer, state Assembly candidate: The Orinda councilman and former adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown is running for an open state Assembly seat in the East Bay on a hot-button issue in the aftermath of the BART strikes: a ban on public transit walkouts. It will say a lot about the state of organized labor and California politics if traditionally liberal Bay Area voters send Glazer, 56, to Sacramento. [...]

In many metropolitan areas, a prohibition on strikes by transit workers - similar to the constraints on police and firefighters - might seem excessive and unfair. After all, a transit strike in some cities can be a manageable inconvenience for most people and businesses. 

It's different in the Bay Area.

Public policy made it so.

Should transit employees in California be barred from walking off the job?

Orinda City Councilman Steve Glazer thinks so. He launched a petition late last month to push for legislation that does exactly that. 

With the BART strike — once again — snarling Bay Area traffic and inconveniencing hundreds of thousands of people, Glazer, who is running for a state Assembly seat and is a longtime adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown, said rider support for the proposal has soared in recent days as the threat of a strike loomed and then began today. Since union leaders announced the strike on Thursday afternoon, the petition has gained about 4,000 new signatures, Glazer said.

What do you call waiting for the end of a partial government shutdown while waiting to see if Congress raises the debt limit while waiting to see if BART workers strike and AC Transit workers join them? Waiting for the apocalypses? Or: Bargaining bad.

In Washington, a rump group of Republicans preferred a grudge match over governing - and incurred the public's wrath. In the Bay Area, transit unions have made a similar mistake. By threatening to strike and ruin the commute for 400,000 BART riders, labor leaders have led the public to believe that BART workers think that riders work for BART labor, not the other way around.

Steve Glazer has spent decades in California politics, most of it in jobs that didn't generate headlines - as a political strategist, longtime adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown and, most recently, city councilman in the prosperous East Bay suburb of Orinda. 

Now that he's running for an East Bay Assembly seat, however, Glazer is inviting the spotlight by pushing a cause no other serious Democratic politician has touched - a ban on transit worker strikes.

The wrenching negotiations over a BART contract have prompted calls from some Republicans in Sacramento to legally bar transit workers from walking off the job. Such proposals probably will go nowhere in a Legislature controlled by Democrats who rely on labor money and manpower to win elections. 

Changes in how Californians elect their legislators, however - and, Glazer insists, changes in voters' attitudes toward both parties - have the 56-year-old councilman confident he's on to something.

At the Commonwealth Club last night, I asked the audience which side the audience would support in a BART strike. The answer was management by about nine to one. There was little love for the BART unions.

I have sympathy for any group of workers whose pay has stagnated. We are all in the same boat. But the public does not like being held hostage to a public transportation system which it generously funds.

Steve Glazer has seen politics up close as a veteran campaign consultant, most notably as the manager of Jerry Brown’s comeback election as governor three years ago.

That familiarity, one might think, would breed contempt, but instead, Glazer yearns to join the ranks of the elected. He’s already an Orinda city councilman and wants to serve in the state Assembly.

The countdown to a BART strike started at months, then went to weeks, and then to days. As Jodi Hernandez reports it is now down to hours.

You may have seen Steve Glazer at the Walnut Creek BART Station. Or it could have been at the station in Lafayette. He's also made appearances at the Dublin and Pleasanton stations and had plans to visit Rockridge.

For the past 12 days, the Orinda councilman has waged a one-man campaign against a threatened strike by BART workers, handing out fliers and securing signatures for a petition that makes clear its intentions in the first sentence: "We, the undersigned, support state legislation to prohibit public transit workers, including BART, from striking ..."