As billion-dollar projects go, the Golden State Warriors' push for quick approval of their 17,000-seat waterfront arena has been one of the best-scripted political plays City Hall has seen in some time.

From the touting of early polls showing citywide support to the promise of "no public money" to the rallying cry of "jobs, jobs, jobs," the Warriors' political team of former mayoral spokesmen P.J. Johnston and Nate Ballard has done a masterful job of drowning out potential opposition before it finds its voice.

The next move comes Monday. That's when the politically powerful and progressive Local 2 restaurant and hotel workers union is expected to join the more conservative building trade unions to urge the Board of Supervisors to approve the deal.

The hotel workers like the union jobs that would be created at a 14-story hotel that the Warriors plan to build across the Embarcadero from the "aqua dome," as some have dubbed the arena.

The union's backing adds to the pressure on progressive supervisors to sign on. Last week, the Warriors said one-fourth of the construction workers at the arena - and half the apprentices - would be San Francisco residents, the kind of promise that progressives like to exact from developers.

Specifically, it was a nod to progressive Supervisor John Avalos, who wrote a local hire law.

But wait, said Mayor Ed Lee, there's more. "We are also going to accommodate returning veterans from our wars to be part of this effort," he said.

Like we said - smooth.

Top cut: Not sure what is more newsworthy - the incoming chancellor of the cash-strapped California State University volunteering to take a pay cut, or that some of the trustees weren't happy about it.

Timothy White, who takes over at year's end, asked the Board of Trustees last week to cut the state-funded portion of his $421,500 salary by 10 percent. (He gets an additional $30,000 from the CSU Foundation.)

Believe it or not, while they approved the cut, three of the trustees - Bill Hauck, Debra Farar and Henry Mendoza - said the CSU chancellor was already underpaid compared with counterparts in other states, and that cutting his salary was a step in the wrong direction.

China-bound: Oakland Mayor Jean Quan heads off for a four-day jaunt to China just after Thanksgiving. First stop, Hong Kong, where she will hook up with a delegation from the Bay Area Council business group. Then it's on to Guangzhou before winding up in Shanghai.

Cost: $3,700.

Who's paying? The city. The Bay Area Council had hoped San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee would join them. But when he recently put off his China trip until next spring, the business folks moved quickly to get Quan on board.

Pelosi update: So what's next for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi?

"In the best writing of the history book, she wins the House in 2014 and rides off into the sunset as speaker in (President Obama's) last two years," said daughter Christine Pelosi.

But the younger Pelosi predicts much of her mom's script, as well as the president's, will be written over the next six months - and hinges on Democratic successes on the budget, tax reform and immigration.

As for state Sens. Mark Leno and Leland Yee, both rumored to be looking enviously at Pelosi's seat, Christine has some advice - stay busy.

"If you are spending your time fetishing a particular job and don't get it," she said, "you are wasting your life."

And finally: Some 2,200 middle and high school students got an eyeful the other day during a field trip to the San Francisco Opera.

As luck would have it, the students were lining up to get into San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House for a performance of "Tosca" just as a protest by nudists was getting under way across the street at City Hall.

A group of the nudies - who had marched around City Hall to Van Ness Avenue - beelined across the street and right past the students, leaving teachers and chaperones shrieking at their young charges to turn around.

It was "right before we opened the doors," said Dolores DeStefano of the Opera's education office. "So the kids got a good look at them."

Welcome to the show.