People who supported Schwarzenegger back in the recall should have known better.
There were a lot of them on this board. They argued that he was more "electable" than Tom McClintock, a true conservative with a solid track record.
I supported Tom McClintock. If Arnold hadn’t run history would be different.
B. S.
It was a no win situation.
It was him or Bustamante. Bustamante was a card carrying member of MechLa, a Brown Separatist organization.
As for McClintock, I would have loved for him to be the governor back then. He didn’t have the political clout to pull it off.
Republicans weren’t the only ones voting for Schwarzenegger.
When a guy trails by 10-15 points just a day or two before the election, you can’t expect him to pull it out. He didn’t.
If you pull votes off Schwarzenegger, you wind up with about a three way tie. You don’t wind up with McClintock walking away with it.
If you think Brown is bad, you’re not remembering Bustamante.
Schwarzenegger was intensely popular back then. The moment he declared on the Leno show, it was over.
Yeah, Arnie screwed us. Who didn’t know that might happen. We gave him a chance and his whizzed on us.
Do you really think Bustamante would have been better?
Man it was bad, but it could have been exponentially worse.
Here’s the vote totals from that election:
Recall Governor
Yes
4,976,274
55.4%
No
4,007,783
44.6%
Selection:
Arnold Schwarzenegger, REP
4,206,284
48.6%
Cruz M. Bustamante, DEM
2,724,874
31.5%
Tom McClintock, REP
1,161,287
13.5%
Even if we could have pulled 17% off Schwarzenegger’s total, a tough thing to do, that would have left us in a virtual dead heat.
Polls before the election made it very clear that wasn’t going to happen.
If Schwarzenegger had faltered and it looked close, he would have lost Democrat votes too. Then Bustamante would have done better.
How does McClintock win? With a little over 1 in every 8 votes going to McClintock, it’s clear he couldn’t have won if every FReeper swung to him and shouted from the mountain tops.