Mike Gatto is so new to the Legislature he still has that new-Assemblyman smell. He's still getting used to being trashed on the Internet, as we can tell from the cease and desist letter his attorneys sent the Mayor Sam blog this week.

The offending blog posts were taken down, because blogger Michael Higby didn't want a legal fight. Also, at least one of them was wrong. Today, the blog issued the following retraction.

Upon further review with my sources, it has been concluded that the “Mike Gatto” mentioned in the post, is not the current Assemblyman Mike Gatto. For that, I apologize for my mistake.

Whoops.

Nobody's covering themselves in glory on this one. Gatto's decision to send out a lawyer letter was pretty heavy-handed behavior for a public official. How about a phone call first?

On the plus side, the sledgehammer approach got Mayor Sam and Gatto on the front page of the L.A. Daily News. So if you believe there's no such thing as bad attention, it worked for both of them.

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