From Capitol Hill... to the race for the White House... and today, to cooling his heels for more than 90 minutes waiting to tesify before the California Senate's Transportation & Housing Committee.

Yep, that was Richard Gephardt.

Gephardt, the longtime congressman from Missouri, former House majority leader, and two-time candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination now works in the private sector for investment banking giant Goldman Sachs. Today marked his second trip to Sacramento in recent days, to discuss possible public-private partnerships when it comes to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's transportation proposal-- namely, the idea of launching such ventures for new toll roads to help unclog traffic jams.

It had been a testy hearing for the 90 minutes that Gephardt quietly sat in the front row of the audience section, with commitee members grilling the governor's top transportation officials about the proposal.

But when the 65-year-old ex-politco came forward, something seemed to change. And Gephardt, whose company would no doubt like to be involved in any kind of public-private financing plans in the Golden State, sounded very much the elder statesman.

One early exchange between Gephardt and Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) focused on whether the governor should have what some think would amount to carte blanche to enter into these kinds of agreements.

McClintock criticized that kind of scenario, and the man from Missouri seemed to sympathize. "Maybe you need to think about the way it's written," Gephardt said, "so [legislators] have more oversight."

But Gephardt also encouraged the legislators to consider the possibilities. "This may be a way," he said, "to solve a problem that we couldn't solve otherwise."