On paper, the Culinary Union Local 226 would be a perfect fit with the gubernatorial candidacy of state Sen. Dina Titus. She’s a huge labor supporter, she’s lining up labor endorsements and she’s sympathetic to most every issue the Culinary cares about.

Then again, on paper, former state Sen. Joe Neal was a perfect fit for the Culinary, too. But when he ran for governor against incumbent Kenny Guinn in 2002, the union found a way to endorse Guinn.

As the Las Vegas Sun noted on Friday, the union is pragmatic. It wants — no, it needs to back a winner. And you can tell from the fact that it hasn’t endorsed Titus that it doesn’t think she’s that winner.

Culinary Union Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor is too polite to say so, of course. He simply says the union has “other priorities,” like passing the minimum wage initiative. But that’s like saying the Department of Defense isn’t going to fight in Iraq because it has “other priorities,” like armored cavalry exercises in the California desert.

If the union thought Titus was a dead-bang winner, they’d be with her. And while she leads her only real Democratic opponent, Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson in every poll done on the race, she still has to face Republican Jim Gibbons in the general election.

Could the Culinary Union endorse … Gibbons? Guinn was one thing; most people think the moderate governor is in the wrong party anyway, with his support for tax increases. But Gibbons, whose only recent sop to labor — support for collective bargaining — was quickly modified to mean support for collective bargaining only for state prison guards, not all employees?

It may yet happen.

The temptation when learning about awful political realities like this is to rail against the union for its pragmatism. Where are the principles? Where are the union campaigners who say, damn the odds, we’re going to work to get the person who has stood with us into office? Where are the people to say that Republicans and pseudo-Republicans who have no use for organized labor in general don’t deserve the union nod?

Forget all that, folks: The job of the union isn’t really to get pro-union candidates into office. The job of the union is to represent its members’ interests as best it can, and that means backing winners. How receptive would a Gov. Jim Gibbons be to a union that did everything it could to keep him out of office? Not very. So if Jim Gibbons is going to win, the Culinary wants to be on his side.

We at Various Things & Stuff don’t think the race is over yet. In fact, we’re still confident Titus is the best union candidate, and that she can be competitive with Gibbons in a general election. But that’s the key: She has to prove to the union that she’s not only with them on the issues, but that she’s got a real shot at taking the Governor’s Mansion come Election Day.

Otherwise, you may see the union stay neutral or, if you can believe this, endorse a Republican.

Ah, politics. It’s the same thing that led our friend (and Boston liberal!) Dan Hart to sign onto the campaign of conservative Democrat Jim Gibson, after Hart found himself on the receiving end of Titus’ legendary temper. Hart is an asset to any campaign he works on, and the Titus camp can’t be happy to see him laboring for the enemy.

How about some Quick Hits to wash that bad taste out of your mouth? Here we go!

• District Court Judge Bill Maddox up in Carson City has approved a re-written 200-word description of the Tax and Spending Control initiative, which means the measure can now be circulated to voters. But here’s the thing: It may still be wrong.

A lawsuit by the Nevada AFL-CIO charges that the initiative is written to apply its tax limitations to the state and all local governments “chartered” by the state. Since counties are not chartered by the state (nor are school districts or special improvement districts) the tax limits may not apply to them. The newly written description says “cities and counties chartered by the state,” which is akin to saying “animals including zebras and unicorns.” One of those things just doesn’t exist.

TASC Master (and state Sen.) Bob Beers says there’s a catchall line in the initiative that says the interpretation most restrictive on government spending is the intent of its framers, but to our way of thinking, that doesn’t cut it. The problem is, Beers doesn’t have time to go back and let a competent lawyer re-write the thing and still have time to gather the 85,000-plus signatures required to get it on the ballot in November.

The whole debate could end up back in Maddox’s court, or, even worse, the Nevada Supreme Court. And you never know what that wacky bunch could come up with. (Guinn v. Legislature, anyone? After our high court gets done with it, we could end up with a state income tax!)

Let’s hope voters understand that signing poorly written initiatives is not the way to go about governing, before they plunge Nevada headlong into chaos. Because if you think the skirmish over wording was bad, wait until you see the state government run under TASC. If may get bad enough to make you want to move to Colorado, where a similar law was recently suspended for five years by voters sick of unintended — but easily anticipated — consequences.

• The Bush administration is cracking down on leakers! FBI agents are searching for the sources of two recent leaks — secret CIA prisons and warantless wiretapping — even as the CIA polygraphs its employees. The Justice Department is sending letters to FBI, CIA and its own employees telling them not to speak about even unclassified matters. And Main Justice is warning journalists they can be prosecuted under the World War I-era Espionage Act for publishing secrets.

And this is on top of the fact that the Bush administration is one of the most secretive in history —it essentially told government offices to find any reason to deny Freedom of Information Act requests, went to the U.S. Supreme Court to keep secret the names of energy industry leaders who formulated public policy and is currently reclassifying documents that had been public for years.

“But it’s a pretty fair statement to say you haven’t seen this kind of crackdown since the [Richard M.] Nixon administration,” says Rutgers University Professor David Greenberg, in a story published in the Review-Journal.

At least Nixon had the dignity to resign after he broke the law. Bush looks like he’ll stick around until his term is up.

• Las Vegas Sun Editor and President Brian Greenspun fired back at Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith this weekend, after Smith finally got around to critiquing the Sun’s “independent report” on the Bill Walters/Royal Links land deal published Feb. 19.

Smith rightly lampooned the Sun’s study, which concluded the Walters deal was actually good for city taxpayers and bad for Walters, who is a business partner with the Greenspun family’s American Nevada Corp. in a Henderson land deal. Although Greenspun blamed the R-J for negative press on the matter, Smith rightly notes that the newspaper merely reported on a Metro Police report that casts the deal in a very negative light. (And by “very negative light,” we mean potentially criminal acts.)

But in the process of bashing Smith — and implying that Smith’s late mother would be disappointed in his coverage of the matter — Greenspun misses a few facts. We, of course, are more than happy to point those out to you, as a reader service.

Missed Fact No. 1: “The central question we wanted answered — because it formed the basis for the attorney general’s decision to bypass the sheriff and district attorney of Clark County — was whether or not the terms of the [Walters] deal were reasonable.”

The Truth: Attorney General George Chanos launched his investigation not to see if the Walters deal was reasonable, but to investigate possible criminal wrongdoing on the part of the city and its officials. To be sure, investigators hired by Chanos appear to be zeroing in on potential violations of the “public purpose doctrine,” which holds that public property must be administered for the benefit of the public.

And guess what? Internal city memos show key city officials believe the deal was bad for taxpayers. Newspaper reporters have found the deal was bad for taxpayers. About the only report that says differently is the one commissioned by Walters’ business partner, Brian Greenspun. And that study is rife with questionable assumptions and ignored facts, which have been noted in both CityLife and the R-J.

Oh, one other thing: Chanos didn’t “bypass” anybody; the sheriff and district attorney said there was nothing they could do, since the statute of limitations on any potential criminal acts had lapsed. Chanos launched an open-ended review, which may be more comprehensive than the Metro Police/DA probe of the case.

Missed Fact No. 2: “Whatever questions it [the R-J has asked about the independent study have been answered — and there has been no material change in the results. The deal was good for taxpayers.”

The Truth: The fact is, the questions raised by the R-J have not been answered. And the questions raised by us at Various Things & Stuff (we’ve archived them here for your reading pleasure) have most certainly not been answered.

Repeating “the deal is good! the deal is good!” while stamping one’s sockless, Ferragamo-clad foot on the floor doesn’t make it so. And we’re absolutely sure our mother wouldn’t be disappointed in us for saying that.