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Posted on 08/24/2003 2:12:29 PM PDT by Mark
Los Angeles Daily News
Statute should be junked after vote
By Joseph Honig
In a matter of weeks it will be over; placards and position papers will be burned or recycled or stuffed in file cabinets with political memorabilia of years gone by. There will be a governor. Maybe a new face. Maybe an old one.
If California's post-recall chief executive is brave and wise, he or she will ask legislators to make sure our electoral circus never again comes to town.
For after the Oct. 7 vote, the gubernatorial recall mechanism should be tossed on the electoral scrap heap. Money, pandering and pop culture have darkened and twisted its intent and purpose. We are all victims.
Long ago, California politics were owned, part and parcel, by the great rail interests. They bought and sold governors and legislation like iron and steel. They decided where people would live and where towns would spring up.
Early trust-busting and antimonopoly forces helped blunt rail baron influence. Then vintage California populists enacted a terribly simple recall statute. As historians recall, it was meant to help ordinary souls strike back at rich and powerful plutocrats.
Recently, an astonishingly wealthy car-alarm mogul, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, spent some $2 million to trigger our populist safeguard. Without Issa's serious money, without paid canvassers and operatives, we probably wouldn't be voting in October.
And did Republican Issa open his wallet unselfishly? For everyone's greater good? For years he dreamed of being governor. You be the judge.
To their credit, Issa's advisers are not stupid. They were smart enough to exploit widespread discontent to their boss's advantage. And Gov. Gray Davis simply made bad decisions in bad times.
However, Issa's $2 million fanned flames that otherwise might have slowly simmered until Davis finished a second term. Arguably, big money, not a grass-roots groundswell, kept the recall ball in play.
It was all the spontaneous dissent millions of dollars could buy. As the late Jesse Unruh, legendary Assembly speaker, was fond of saying, "Money is the mother's milk" of government.
In our recall election, it is the skeleton and spine of the body politic.
Some populism.
So now there will be a vote. Hammered by reporters and higher-profile opponents, Issa is no longer a candidate. So who's coming to the dance? Will our recall law, as intended, allow Californians without power and influence to take control in Sacramento?
Hardly.
Because if you set aside Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante's candidacy of default -- and state. Sen. Tom McClintock's struggling, ill-financed campaign -- you are left with four major candidates whose collective net worth may be $1 billion or more. Far more. Even the rail barons didn't have personal fortunes like these. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Simon, Peter Ueberroth and Arianna Huffington are our latest self-appointed citizen saviors.
Rank-and-file Californians taking back their state from arrogant business interests? Who's kidding whom?
Leading candidates to replace Gov. Davis are, in short, taking opportunistic advantage of an antique law whose time has passed. Should a governor prove to be a liar, knave, felon or worse, there is always impeachment. In our fiscally perilous era, the recall statute simply makes it possible for multimillionaires and movie stars to transform anger into high office.
Make no mistake about it. There is a limitless supply of bored, wealthy aristocrats who can -- and do -- buy their ways into politics. Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., paid $60 million for his desk in the Capitol.
Former Democratic mogul Michael Bloomberg switched parties in a heartbeat, then spent a similar amount to win New York City's mayoralty. If they lived here and wanted to be governor, both Corzine and Bloomberg might not even have to wait for an election year. California shows us that money guides political frustration -- always with us to some degree -- into recall elections.
Our governor -- Gray Davis or his replacement -- should come out swinging against this terrible, outdated recall statute. It makes disappointed voters feel temporarily better but demeans the electoral process. And future politicians with convictions, leaders taking unpopular positions for the greater good, might eventually need some term insurance.
Joseph Honig writes for television in Los Angeles.
Of course! Our Dem legislature would easily impeach their Dem Governor.(/lib)
'Nuff said.
The reason this recall succeeded is that the campaign strategy of going nastily negative in order to drive down turnout bit them on the rear by allowing the signature threshold to be met. If turnout were generally higher, the signature threshold would be practically unattainable and there would be no recall. We would not see "retaliatory recalls" because the threshold would be too high to reach.
Now, if they want to change something, it should be to index the candidate qualifying signatures and filing cost to today's numbers. I'm sure that back in 1917, 65 signatures and $3,500 seemed like a lot, but not today. Those limits should be more restricting to serious candidates.
-PJ
I have a better idea...junk the democRAT party.
Experience leads me to believe that this will only happen once. If the productive folks in California are frustrated again by the results of this process, the next solution will not have been provided by Hiram Johnson.
Even if it's only 20 years until the next recall, as an outsider, I'd say it's working as it should.
It would be an improvement over what we have in California now.
And a populace that's thoroughly ticked off.
Nobody's going to make the effort if the recall doesn't have a chance of succeeding. They'd just be flushing the money down the toilet.
What makes you think that the next Gov of Calif. will be the gov for very long. I'm afraid that Calif is about to become the US's Italy. they will have a different government every 12-18 months if this keeps up. Imagine the world 5th largest economy changing governments every year or so- this is a mess.
We're not idiots here in California. What's making this recall possible is Davis' record-low approval rating. People see the state going down the tubes while Davis shows himself incapable of action, so we're going to fire the CEO and get another one. We won't be anxious to go through this again on a whim. Some partisan might gather enough signatures for another recall, but Californians aren't going to vote in favor unless Davis' replacement is as hated as Davis, and getting to that stage takes time and plenty of screwups.
And Honig's objections seem to boil down to "the little people are getting uppity"...
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