Recall California!
ELLMERS, GLENN
Recall California! Land of the Progressives' bad ideas. BY GLENN ELLMERS CALIFORNIA, it appears, is on the verge of staging its first ever recall vote on a sitting governor. If the requisite...
...During last year's gubernatorial campaign, Republican nominee Bill Simon warned that the state was likely facing a $20 billion deficit...
...So should the direct democracy measures that make California politics so volatile be blamed...
...Hence it is the unions, led by the firefighters, that are spearheading the anti-recall effort...
...Thus] it seems strictly consonant to the republican theory to recur to the same original authority" whenever they wish to rearrange the principles or powers of the government...
...In a large enough field, the winner might have as little as 10 percent...
...Purely to confuse the public and confound the pro-recall petitioners, they are employing their own signature-gatherers...
...The people would change both men and measures—and amend the state constitution—not only when they were feeling Grumpy (as now), but also when they were Bashful (see California's successful 2002 Defense of Marriage Initiative), or even Dopey (the 1996 legalization of the medical use of marijuana...
...It is noteworthy that today's liberals, the ideological heirs of the Progressives, aren't always pleased with direct democracy in action...
...Given the systemic dysfunction of California's government, the initiative process, and perhaps even the recall, may actually be constructive...
...The U.S...
...This could be an opportunity for a tough-minded conservative...
...Now the public employees' unions are closing ranks around their most precious asset: a don't-rock-the-boat, liberal establishment in Sacramento...
...Conservative critics of the recall have pointed to the possibility of "blowback...
...Yet the constant recourse to direct democracy may undermine a healthy, representative 3 constitutionalism...
...Given the overwhelming liberal majorities in Sacramento—no Republican holds statewide office, and Democrats control close to two-thirds of the legislature—it's easy to see why the recall has gained momentum...
...The recall is one of the Progressives' sharpest instruments...
...This is the spirit that animated Hiram Johnson, and its results can be seen in the California constitution, a bloated, incoherent hodge-podge stretching more than 130 pages and covering such vital subjects as horse-racing, fruit and nut trees, and assessment rates for golf courses...
...People's reasons for wanting Davis out are as varied as the Golden State itself...
...Once the nuclear weapon of recall is used, it could become a regular tool of both parties...
...When the Progressives created the recall, they were looking for a mechanism to check the influence of newly emergent corporate powers...
...The recall is a legacy of the Progressive revamping of the California constitution instigated by governor Hiram Johnson in 1911...
...But the casus belli is Davis's squandering of the $8 billion budget surplus he inherited and his racking up in its place a $38 billion deficit...
...The backers of the recall hope the voters will replace Davis before he can do more damage...
...Once the recall petitions are certified by the secretary of state, ensuring that a vote will take place within 60 to 80 days, the free-for-all to replace Davis will begin...
...Senator Dianne Feinstein and Arnold Schwarzenegger are expected to be among them...
...Davis's aides and the media scoffed, even though Davis had demonstrated his profligacy in his first term...
...preempting the recognition of same-sex marriage...
...The Federalist Papers takes up the question in Federalist 49 in discussing the idea of regular alterations to the Constitution...
...spotlight...
...A Republican like Simon or McClintock who used it vigorously to restore the state's fiscal health could find himself in the national Glenn Ellmers is director of research at the Claremont Institute...
...Today, it is the special interests within the government that have the most debilitating influence in our politics...
...California has the line-item veto...
...The governor gave the prison —guards a stunning three-year pay raise of 33.7 percent last year (and a few months later received a quarter-million-dollar campaign contribution from the corrections officers' union...
...Voters will decide whether Democratic governor Gray Davis should pack his bags and if so who should replace him...
...On the same ballot as the recall, voters will pick his replacement from a list of candidates who have plunked down 60 signatures and $3,500 to get into the race...
...There is, in fact, a conservative defense of this populism...
...Some initiatives have been noble in purpose and effect: Proposition 209 (repealing racial quotas) restored the principle of colorblind equality before the law to the largest state in the Union...
...The most divisive and decisive ballot initiatives in California have been championed by conservatives: eliminating affirmative action, government largesse to illegal aliens, and bilingual education...
...Whoever gets the most votes, however small the plurality, wins...
...What the Progressives didn't reckon on was how all this would make us Sleepy—when confronted with a 50-page "California Voter Information Guide and Ballot Pamphlet" to explain the bewildering array of propositions...
...By turning its edge against the liberal establishment at its most spendthrift, the present recall effort could have the paradoxical effect of prompting new debate about the purpose and limits of government...
...Republicans—but also many Democrats—dislike Davis's antibusiness agenda, including an onerous family-leave law, a worker's compensation system that bankrupts some small businesses, and one of the highest sales tax rates in the country...
...and—granddaddy of them all, Proposition 13—capping property taxes, to change California politics ever since...
...It is no accident that Davis's diehard supporters are the unions of public employees, who have benefited greatly under Davis...
...But no one knows who Davis's successor would be...
...Constitution, by contrast, has a brevity and has enjoyed a stability that reflect the Founders' belief that direct appeals to the people ought to be reserved "for certain great and extraordinary occasions...
...Notwithstanding the Progressives' pretension to originality, direct democracy was well known to the Founding Fathers...
...No one, of course, venerates the government of California or, for that matter, reads the state constitution...
...If the requisite nearly 900,000 signatures are gathered, as now seems imminent, and the recall petitions qualify in July, a special election will be held in the fall...
...Publius warns against using this expedient often or capriciously: "[A]s every appeal to the people would carry an implication of some defect in the government, frequent appeals would, in great measure, deprive the government of that veneration which time bestows on everything, and without which perhaps the wisest and freest governments would not possess the requisite stability...
...Publius notes (but will later qualify) that "the people are the only legitimate fountain of power...
...More important, they have muscled a pledge out of every Democratic statewide officeholder to stay off the ballot, in a risky calculation that if the voters are given a choice between Davis and a Republican, the recall can be defeated...
...At the very least, it should remind voters that elections matter...
...For many Californians, anything that unsettles the status quo must have some merit...
...Davis may not be as liberal as some Democrats would like, but he has kept the public trough filled...
...State senator Tom McClin-tock—who lost the race for controller by a whisker—points out that California's spending has grown much faster than warranted by either population growth or inflation...
...Along with the initiative and the referendum, the recall was intended to allow the voters to circumvent regular elec-tions—and even the principle of representation—in favor of direct democracy...
Vol. 8 • July 2003 • No. 42
