The Joy of Recalls
EDITORIAL The Joy of Recalls California owes a colossal debt to a Republican reformer named Hiram Johnson. He was the governor who put a recall provision in the state constitution in 1911. The...
...He won despite deteriorating conditions in the state, despite a glaring lack of leadership, and despite a richly deserved reputation for dunning a large campaign contribution out of anyone seeking access to the governor's office...
...The New York Times huffily editorialized against "muscle beach politics...
...A new governor will have plenty of time to master details and make decisions...
...Maybe the bar (and the $3,500 fee) for getting on the ballot should be raised...
...California has been stereotyped for years as an oasis of weirdos...
...The normal budget process in California lasts from October to January...
...Wrong...
...They show up in most elections (though usually there are fewer than 135 candidates) and voters find their way to the major candidates with little trouble...
...It's not about personalities...
...In all, there are 135 candidates on the ballot to replace Davis...
...This would be just fine with the liberals, Democrats, and elitists who passionately oppose this reckoning at the polls...
...But wherever they went, lines of eager Republicans, Democrats, and independents formed instantly...
...And Davis won while dismissing the budget deficit as insignificant...
...The California deficit is now larger than the deficits of the other 49 states combined...
...He hung on by a thread, winning with less than a majority over a weak Republican opponent...
...The recall will answer the three most important questions about California...
...And Californians have Hiram Johnson to thank for the opportunity to help their state...
...This time, voters leaped at the opportunity to sign petitions mandating a recall election...
...Let's be clear what the recall is about...
...In California, the special interests include Indian tribes and labor unions and state employees and trial lawyers...
...And they own Gray Davis and state government...
...Although it might be difficult, the status quo could be uprooted...
...Since there's no runoff, it could happen...
...If Davis survives, the answers will be no, no, and no...
...Is that too many in a democratic election...
...But pity a new governor thrown into a dizzying budget battle with little preparation...
...And it is as relevant and necessary today as it was in 1911...
...Campaigns have a way of winnowing out the marginal candidates, including ones like Arianna Huffington who enter in a blaze of media attention...
...True, Republican congressman Darrell Issa paid signature-gatherers...
...Will the decline of California be reversed...
...But if he's removed from office and the political class is humbled, the answers might all be yes, and California might begin to recover...
...These are the folks who prompted Davis and company to boost state spending 37 percent in his first two years as governor and then to continue spending lavishly, even as a recession loomed in 2001 and a gigantic budget deficit grew...
...But ballots with multiple candidates are hardly rare...
...California is in crisis...
...And, yes, there's much to make fun of in the election: Comics, porn actresses, has-been actors, and numerous eccentrics are on the ballot...
...The national media have played along with the critics by portraying the recall as a "circus" or "carnival" or "madness...
...Of course, it's liberal Democratic elitists who tax, spend, regulate, and constitute the ruling political class in California...
...By Labor Day, the contest may come down to two candidates, Bustamante the Democrat and Schwarzenegger the Barbari—oops, the Republican...
...Its economy, its entrepreneurial spirit, its schools, its roads— nearly everything is declining...
...Millions more could easily have been obtained...
...In Sacramento, they call it "pay to play...
...It's not ultimately about political parties...
...Roughly 1.6 million signatures were turned in, far more than the required 897,158 (12 percent of the voters in 2002...
...Indeed he should, partly because of the nature of his reelection...
...Cruz Bustamante, Schwarzenegger, State Sen...
...It's not dignified or pretty," wrote Stanford law professor Richard Thompson Ford...
...The recall became a mass movement...
...These words appear in the headlines of the latest issue of Newsweek with Schwarzenegger on the cover...
...And it has nothing to do with President Bush and his prospects in the 2004 presidential election...
...That's time enough...
...Should he be forced to face voters again so soon...
...With no recall at all, California would continue to stagnate...
...The idea was to allow voters to oust state officials who'd become wholly-owned subsidiaries of special interests...
...One of their complaints—that the recall will cost too much, roughly $70 million—is frivolous and hypocritical...
...Californians don't recall a governor lightly...
...Will the unresponsive political class that rules in Sacramento be brought down...
...Right...
...The special interests have changed, but the nature of the problem hasn't...
...They have a lot to lose...
...A more serious objection is that the recall is, in the words of Democrat Leon Panetta, "democracy run amok...
...Last winter, when the deficit reached $38 billion, the thread snapped...
...Efforts to recall Democratic governor Jerry Brown and Republicans Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson fizzled...
...Recall opponents profess to be outraged by the possibility that a new governor might be elected with far less than a majority...
...Will the budget mess be fixed...
...Its significance goes well beyond the fate of Davis and the political future of Arnold Schwarzenegger...
...And the political class in Sacramento, with Democratic governor Gray Davis at the top, is a large part of the problem...
...Along with the right to enact or nullify laws through the initiative and referendum processes, recall was an advance in democratic accountability and grass-roots political participation...
...To this, the recall election on October 7 is an appropriate and legal response...
...There are four serious candidates at the moment—Lt...
...But it's not likely...
...In Hiram Johnson's day, the Southern Pacific Railroad and banks were dominant...
...Voters are not stupid...
...Johnson's cure—the recall—was based on the idea that while special interests themselves couldn't be driven into exile, the politicians subservient to them could...
...Tom McClintock, and Bill Simon—and none seems worried voters won't spot his name on the ballot...
...After all, Davis was just reelected to a second term nine months ago...
...They've never done it before...
...A new governor will have weeks to decide on budget and policy priorities before getting an estimate of 2004 revenues in late November, then another six weeks to draft a State of the State speech and present a new budget to a cowed legislature...
...Fred Barnes, for the Editors...
...It's about one thing: special interest liberalism...
...But it is democracy in its pure unadulterated form...
...Today there may be no other means but the recall to revive California...
Vol. 8 • August 2003 • No. 47
