Reed drops pension attack after unfavorable ruling

As expected, a Sacramento Superior Court judge adopted a tentative ruling on Friday shutting down San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed's frivolous lawsuit against Attorney General Kamala Harris. Reed then formally announced that he was withdrawing his Constitution-altering pension attack, from which several of his fellow mayors had already distanced themselves.

Though the California Constitution establishes the Attorney General as the sole person responsible for preparing ballot intitiative titles and summaries, Mayor Reed's attorney - Jim Sutton - argued that the court should instruct the Attorney General to change the wording of her official summary.

Sutton stated that Mayor Reed and his campaign favored the word "remove" instead of the word "eliminate" in the first sentence of Harris' summary.

When pressed by Judge Allen Sumner, Sutton admitted that he was unable to find precedent for the court intervening in the ballot initiative summary process.

Mayor Reed's camp also argued that the public was "unlikely to understand" what pensions are.

Judge Sumner closed the proceedings by officially adopting his tentatve ruling, stating that "just because the word 'remove' polls better" he could not justify the court "injecting itself" into ballot language.