BUSTAMANTE IS CRUISING TOWARD LOSS.

Byline: JILL STEWART

FAR be it from me to make meaningless predictions before Election Day, but if any statewide candidate in California is begging for a loss on Nov. 7, it's our dopey Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante.

Bustamante shouldn't be in political trouble in California, where Democrats have a big advantage over Republicans in voter registration. Elected as lieutenant governor in 1998 -- the first Latino statewide politician in more than 120 years -- he's a well-known Democrat against a lesser-known Republican, Silicon Valley's moderate multimillionaire Steve Poizner.

But Bustamante, who made a fool of himself in the 2003 recall, is at it again in his bid for the wonky but powerful job of insurance commissioner.

Instead of focusing on specific issues involving the vast auto, health and workers' compensation industries, he spent months on a personal weight-loss crusade, with a Web site exhorting us to ``Get active. Side effects include more energy, decreased stress, increased confidence, more compliments.''

Who is Bustamante emulating? Fergie?

Now, in an about-face that left me cold, Bustamante has suddenly realized he's in a real race. He told The Sacramento Bee he wants vast regulatory powers over workers' compensation insurers and HMOs -- powers long held by departments answerable to whoever is governor -- shifted from the executive branch over to him.

There's a scary thought.

In almost every way, Bustamante displays bad judgment. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle last March, this year he took more than $100,000 from captains of the insurance industry -- folks he'd regulate or otherwise oversee as commissioner.

Under pressure, Bustamante promised to return the money, and his aide Ryan Rauzon tells me ``all of it has been returned,'' amounting to $125,000.

Poizner, who won't take any insurance money for the race, says you needn't be rich (like Poizner) to run an above-board campaign. He points to current Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, who is not wealthy yet refuses dough from insurers.

With the race tight in polls, Bustamante's camp recently tried to claim that Poizner also took scads of money from insurers -- such an absurd claim the media largely ignored it. The money in question was raised by a committee trying to pass Proposition 77 in 2005, which Poizner, to his credit, chaired and worked on with gusto. (Proposition 77, although sadly rejected by California voters, would have ended gerrymandering by the Legislature.)

The only person in this race with ethical problems is Bustamante. In 2004, he paid $263,000, the largest fine ever assessed by the Fair Political Practices Commission. That was for his ``purposeful effort to evade'' the law against transferring cash from one campaign committee to another, stemming from his wrongful movement of a small fortune during the 2003 recall.

If only Bustamante, at one time a rising Latino political star, had spent as much effort on pressing societal issues as he has spent being sneaky. Instead, he's been the laziest lieutenant governor in memory.

As California Republican Party officials pointed out recently, since early 2005, Bustamante failed to show up for all but five of the 41 meetings of the University of California Board of Regents, one of his few real duties. After people started to notice, he attended a few recent meetings.

Bustamante is also a virtual no-show on the CSU Trustee board overseeing the California State University system. There, he attended only eight of 51 meetings, where trustees grapple with issues such as ``remedial'' reading and math programs for high-school grads who enter college unable to read at better than an eighth-grade level.

``I don't know what to tell you,'' Poizner told me recently. ``He's just not engaged in his duties. And he's not using the position of lieutenant governor to accomplish anything. He is working on losing weight.''

How pathetic that the Democratic Party decided long ago to underwrite Bustamante for insurance commissioner. They should have recruited a talented but termed-out Democratic legislator. To name just two: Marin County's Joe Nation, a sharp economist, or the East Bay's Joseph Canciamilla, a toughie against special interests.

Bustamante needs to stop running for CEO of Weight Watchers. That, however, means long, wonky days on the campaign path -- a path littered with fatty snack foods, sugary sodas and real issues.

He's chosen a far different path this election season. Now it's up to voters to choose theirs.