This week’s story concerning an investigation into honorary badges issued by a Democratic legislator just got a little more strange… and more heated.

Assemblymember Mervyn Dymally (D-LA) has come under fire for handing out law enforcement-looking badges that identify the carrier as an “Assembly Commissioner.” There is no such post, and as the Los Angeles Times has been reporting, the badges have drawn criticism from prosecutors in L.A.

Now, the Assembly Rules Committee is investigating the use of the badges– a committee led by Assemblymber Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate).

Today, in an e-mail exchange with the Capitol Television News Service, Dymally reportedly said the entire controversy was started by De La Torre, and that his fellow Democrat is a racist.

“Assemblyman De La Torre is the most racist legislator I have encountered in over 40 years,” reads a transcript of the email exchange between CTNS and Dymally. “De La Torre has a reputation of racial antagonism towards African Americans,” says Dymally later in the email.

De La Torre said that his committee’s investigation “isn’t specific to any [Assembly] member.” In fact, he was asked to begin the investigation by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-LA), according to a letter Nunez’s office distributed to reporters earlier this week.

Dymally, 80, is a longtime fixture in California politics, having served as lieutenant governor in the 1970s and as a member of Congress after that. He is also the incoming chair of the Assembly Health Committee, which is expected to be one of the battlegrounds for the 2007 debate over health care reform.

A bitter and personal intra-party squabble is likely the last thing that Democrats want as they head into the new year.