Take even a cursory look at next month’s ballot and it is clear
the recall election of 2003 is not really over. Up and down the
ballot, in races for statewide office and initiative campaigns, the
people and issues central to the recall are back again.
Take even a cursory look at next month’s ballot and it is clear the recall election of 2003 is not really over. Up and down the ballot, in races for statewide office and initiative campaigns, the people and issues central to the recall are back again.
The most obvious is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose frequent Democrat-like utterances might make victory in a contested Republican primary impossible. He didn’t have to worry about a primary in 2003, when candidates of all stripes were listed together and all it took to win was a plurality. And he had no primary contest this year, like most incumbent governors. His entire political career is a creation of the recall. (Disclosure: the recall was first proposed in this column’s edition of Nov. 29, 2002.)
Then there’s the run for lieutenant governor, pitting Democratic Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi against termed-out Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock.
Had Garamendi not waffled with an off-again, on-again, off-again recall candidacy for governor, he might have had the stature to seek and win the Democratic nomination for governor this year, even if he’d lost in the recall. For sure, the 6’7″ Garamendi, a onetime all-American football tackle at Cal, is likely the only Democrat in California politics with a physical presence to match that of former muscleman actor Schwarzenegger. He’s also got a solid record.
McClintock, meanwhile, set himself up for this year’s run by making a credible effort in 2003, refusing to drop out of that race even when pressured by Schwarzenegger backers. His stances then were solidly conservative, as they are now.
Chances are the contest for lieutenant governor would look very different today had there been no recall.
Then there’s the run to replace Garamendi as insurance commissioner. This one pits moderate Republican entrepreneur Steve Poizner against Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamente, the former state Assembly speaker who ran second to Schwarzenegger in the recall.
Polls show this race is one of the two or three closest this fall, and that’s likely because of the recall. During that campaign, Bustamante first pledged not to be a candidate to replace fellow Democrat Gray Davis as governor. When he saw no other major Democrats in the field, the opportunistic Bustamante jumped in.
There followed questionable financial manipulations and a disastrous performance in the only recall-season debate joined by Schwarzenegger. Bustamante’s stock dropped precipitously in every voter category, even among Democrats who previously admired him. There’s little question Bustamante would have had an easier time raising money this fall without that background.
And it’s highly unlikely that without Bustamante’s recall performance a virtual unknown like Poizner, whose only previous venture into politics was a losing run for a San Francisco Peninsula seat in the Assembly, could be giving a sitting lieutenant governor much of tussle.
Then there are issues. Many who sought the recall (including this column) did so because they felt needed changes in legislative and congressional reapportionment and in campaign financing could never occur so long as Davis was governor.
True, those changes have not occurred under Schwarzenegger, either.
But at least Schwarzenegger did back an initiative to improve redistricting last year and he endorsed one plan for such change earlier this year.
And a solid plan to reduce the influence of large campaign donors on public policy will be before the voters next month, in the form of Proposition 89.
All of which means the issues that spurred the recall are still very much alive in California, as are the politicians who either entered that race or strongly considered it. It was a unique historic phenomenon, and no one knows how long it will affect public life in California.
Tom Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated second edition. His email address is td*****@ao*.com
