Interesting political drama unfolding out in California. The Governor of California, last year elected to his third term (or is it second term?) is being subjected to a recall election in the fall. A millionaire governor wannabe named Darrell Issa funded a petition drive, supported by most all the republicans in the state, and a lot of zealous anti-tax groups, and collected over a million signatures to call for a recall election, and it has been now officially certified that it will take place. Pretty interesting that all these anti-tax groups organized to push for a recall election, which will cost the state many millions of dollars to hold (elections aren't cheap to put on) Guess you see who the real tax and spenders are. But the real issue is why overturn an election just held a year ago, unless Davis was guilty of a criminal act or being impeached. Davis was elected, and he was re-elected. I hope that those grexers in California vote against recalling Davis. An election happened, somebody won, and he has the right to serve out his term without a bunch of sore losers trying to oust him ahead of time. I understand Davis is unpopular in California now but he WAS elected. The deal with the recall will be, based on what I've read, a two part ballot with a recall question on Davis (yes/no) and if the nays win, a second part which would be a list of challengers whom you could choose to replace him with. Arnold Schwarzenegger is ored to run, and with a long list of candidates, the potential would be there-- if the Davis recall goes through-- for somebody to become governor with only a small percentage of the vote. Hopefully it won't come to that. Davis won his current term fair and square and he hasn't committed any criminal acts it wouldn't seem that would warrant his being replaced for the next regular election.264 responses total.
There are some allegations that Davis won his re-election based in part on false statements and pretenses and that he has reneged on campaign promises. I don't know how serious those allegations are, though.
Davis was pretty unpopular when reelected (to his second term), and generally appears to be pretty incompetent, but the opposition was worse. Davis didn't disclose the bad financial shape California was in when running for reelection (why would have have?), but presumably the Republicans would have had access to that information too, had they wanted to make use of it. This time, it appears the Republicans will put up Arnold Schwartzenegger as their main candidate, although qualifying for the replacement ballot is so easy it's likely that there will be a really large number of candidates. The recall election is structured such that there will be two questions on the same ballot: should the current governor be recalled? and if so, who should replace him? If the recall gets anything more than 50%, Davis is out, but then the replacement just has to get more votes than anybody else in what could be a very crowded field. It's therefore conceivable that 49% of the voters could support keeping Davis, while somebody else gets, say, 15%, and the one with 15% will be the new governor. I suspect, however, that the republicans will line up sufficiently behind one candidate that that the scenario won't be quite that dramatic, but it still seems unlikely that the winner will be elected with more votes than the current governor, if the recall passes. The scary part is that the Democrats are refusing to run anybody as a replacement, claiming they don't trust the voters to vote no on the recall if there's a palatable alternative. That may well be true, but it means that if the recall passes anyway, we're left with a Republican governor in a very Democratic state.
Can Davis add his name to the list of candidates trying to replace him? If he can, he should. So if 49% vote not to recall him and also vote that he should replace himself if recalled, then he'd probably still win, because nobody else would get more votes than him.
Will votes for a replacement governor be counted from those who vote not to recall him in the first place?
re resp:3: That would be pretty amusing! I hope the recall fails. I hate recalls. They seem invariably to be run by disgruntled losers. I'd have been happy if Gray Davis lost in the last election, but he didn't. He won. And so the office belongs to him until at least the next election. Sadly, the news stories I've seen about it make it sound like he will probably be recalled.
re 3:
Nope.
Yes, those of us who will vote not to recall him will then also be asked to
vote for a replacement. I just wish there were somebody worth voting for as
a fallback, but it doesn't look like there will be.
I doubt he will be recalled. The democrats will come to their senses when it comes down to the wire. The recall was instigated by only a tiny fraction of the electorate, so one can't draw significant conclusions from that.
They could institute something like what hapens in Germany, where Parliament can pass a vote of no-confidence in the Chancellor (=PM) but he is not kicked out unless the vote passes AND Parliament agrees on a successor candidate.
To understand this, you need to know some of the background. Gray Davis took a bad situation with regard to California's power grid, and made it worse. Rather than just fixing the problems with the deregulation-that-wasn't (retail electric prices weren't deregulated), he arrogated all the power to himself and negotiated power contracts on behalf of California, with the state's money behind them. And he got (the taxpayers) shafted. Last I heard, he was trying to terminate those contracts and get better ones. The voters put Davis back in office on the basis of incomplete or even false information, so why shouldn't they terminate *his* contract? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Then there is the fact that Davis only won the last election because he meddled with the Republican primary, pushing out Richard Riordan in favor of a much weaker candidate. Anyone who complains about the hardball tactics being used to get Davis out needs to explain why Davis's win by hardball tactics had any legitimacy to begin with. Last, a big part of California's budget crisis is due to the spending spree the legislature went on during the bubble. With a fiscal conservative in the governor's mansion, maybe some of that can be fixed; otherwise, California is going to be a basket case for a long time. Gray Davis isn't the person for that job.
russ is correct. All the states have budget deficits but Ca's is greater than the rest of the states...COMBINED. I am sick of goverment spending. I would think californians are too.
I'm certainly not going to attempt to defend Gray Davis, but he could hardly have meddled in the Republican primary without the cooperation of the Republicans. He had a probable Republican opponent who appeared at least as liberal as he was, and he spent a lot of money (probably accurately) painting the Republican front-runner as too liberal for the Republican party. It's certainly not something somebody who cared more about advancing his purported values than about advancing himself would have done, but the Republican primary voters responded by voting in droves for somebody who was well known to be a right wing extremist with no political experience. In the general election, given a choice between bad and worse, and knowing that Davis had made a big mess of things, we California voters chose Davis. While voting for Davis, I was very tempted to emulate the French and show up with a clothes pin on my nose. The Democratic manipulation of the Republican primary was limited to attacking the Republican frontrunner as a liberal. Unlike Michigan, California makes it difficult to cross party lines and vote in the other party's primary (you can't be registered as a Democrat and vote in the Republican primary, and until recently you couldn't vote in Democratic primaries without being registered as a Democrat, while in the strongly Democratic parts of the state the de-facto local elections are part of the Democratic primary, so those who vote in Republican primaries get no vote in local races), so there was no groundswell of Democrats showing up to vote for the weaker candidate in the Republican primary. Besides, California Democrats have enough trouble getting Democratic voters not not vote for Green Party candidates; they're certainly not getting their voters to vote for conservative Republicans. If the recall supporters were attempting to replay last fall's election with different sorts of candidates. It might seem like a reasonable thing to do. Instead, they're once again attempting to put up inexperienced right-wing Republicans, the sort of candidates the voters detested so much that they chose Davis instead of, in a forum where they don't need so many votes to win. I just wish the Democrats weren't so willing to play right along It appears to be what one non-Davis Democratic activist recently referred to as being "in a suicide pact with Gray Davis."
re: "#7 (rcurl): ... The democrats will come to their senses when it comes down to the wire. The recall was instigated by only a tiny fraction of the electorate, so one can't draw significant conclusions from that." (Assuming, that is, that they have senses. But we digress.) Nearly 7M votes were cast in the last election. The recall petitions were signed by 1.3M voters. 19% is not "a tiny fraction."
That only establishes that the minimum number that would vote no in the recall is 19%. That leaves a big gap to 51%.
In California, the government seems to be breaking down. The Republicans are still reeling from former governor Pete Wilson's a ttempt to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment; this understandably pushed the large Hispanic voting block into the Democratic column. Too bad a faction of the Republican party let its bigotry overtake its ability to count voters. (The Republican experience in California contrasts with Texas, where George W. Bush was open and welcoming to Hispanics -- it's one of the few things that I give Bush credit for, that he genuinely accepts people of diverse races and has not played to bigotry for political advantage.) So basically, the Republican party is so weak that it let Davis survive the last election, *after* the electric power debacle. Now a badly written law may let a GOP governor take office with 15-20% of the state supporting him. Well, tough tushie on California, I say. California has gotten too fat for years on the tax money from the rest of us -- water projects, military contractors. It's come to regard this largesse as a natural right, and the state has rewarded the Federal government which made it rich by incubating a vicious anti-government, anti-tax movement which, starting with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, made it almost politically impossible to talk responsibly about government finance. I'm content to (metaphorically) watch California burn. (Sorry, Steve! I appreciate your reports from the scene.)
Steve wrote in #11: >[Davis] had a probable Republican opponent who appeared at least as liberal >as he was, and he spent a lot of money (probably accurately) painting the >Republican front-runner as too liberal for the Republican party. That's one way to look at it, depending how you define the CRP. (Had Riordan won, he would have been the de facto head of the CRP and would have probably attracted many more centrist members.) On the other hand, it's indisputable that the budget that Riordan had for getting his message out in the primary was dwarfed by the war chest Davis had amassed. When Davis decided to meddle in the Republican primary race, he had the capacity to define the issues in the media. This was decidedly dirty pool. Democratic voters could probably have been pushed to nominate an unelectably-leftist candidate had the positions been reversed (this is something to watch out for this season; Bush's war chest is immense, and Karl Rove is always taking notes.) >If the recall supporters were attempting to replay last fall's election with >different sorts of candidates. It might seem like a reasonable thing to do. >Instead, they're once again attempting to put up inexperienced right-wing >Republicans... "They" in this case is primarily Daryl Issa, whose criminal record is bound to keep him from getting far even among people who like his voting record. I've not heard about Riordan deciding to run. It would be ironic if he got a bigger fraction of the vote in the recall than Davis got in the last election. Ken wrote (#14): >In California, the government seems to be breaking down. The >Republicans are still reeling from former governor Pete Wilson's >attempt to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment... It was anti-tax-monies-for-illegal-immigrants sentiment, but that's not how it was spun by the Democrats. >... the state has rewarded the Federal government which made it rich >by incubating a vicious anti-government, anti-tax movement... California incubates a lot of radical stuff, using the mechanism of the plebiscite; Proposition 13 is only the best-known example. (Prop 13, a "conservative" measure, was a response to a very real problem that the legislature failed to address. You can contrast this with some of the nutty stuff debated in various leftist city councils, from Berkeley to Ann Arbor.) I suppose you can look at it as one of the laboratories of democracy, and you check the results by doing autopsies on the rats. ;-)
To make it even more interesting both the Huffingtons are apparently in on that. Arianna is in and her former husband is apparently considering Aarianna is pissed at her former husband over his adultery with his male lover - he's got the SF vote fer shure. Arnold is apparently on the fence - apparently wifey didn't exactly appreciate really funny remark about "in sickness and in health" reference to her political affiliation. (governor, nookie, governor, nookie - hard choice) (One would think that California would be smart enough not to elect an actor as governor.)
Har har.
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My take is that if Davis is recalled, whichever party has fewer candidates on the ballot will win, provided that party's number of candidates is greater than zero.
Steve, do you expect Gray Davis to be recalled?
I don't know. His approval rating is around 20%, so I guess it depends on how many of the people who don't like him are willing to risk the alternatives. If polled, I would say I didn't approve of his performance, but I wouldn't vote for the recall.
Re #18: Considering that a large fraction of California does not have natural gas service and relies (stupidly) on electricity for not just A/C but also heat and domestic hot water, it's a bit more complicated than that. The accumulated mistakes of 30 years of infrastructure since the 1973 oil embargo can't be laid at the foot of this term's governor; his own mistakes are more than enough. Speaking of stupid infrastructure, I understand that insulation is so bad in much California construction that people get very chilly in weather that's still above freezing. On top of that, the solar water heater is an endangered species even in sunny California. San Diego was one of the few parts of the state which carried the wholesale price hikes through to retail, and one of the complaints which made it to the national media was that people couldn't afford to take hot showers. Isn't that absurd? (I can go to a camping store and get a black bag that you fill with water and stick out in the sun. Voila, hot shower. Works just fine off-grid.)
Did San Diego have brownouts and/or rolling blackouts?
I suspect part of the "why don't California houses have mid-western style insulation" answer is that insulation costs money. If it gets really cold every winter, insulation will pay for itself fast. When my heating bill for a 1200 square foot floor of a 1920s house has never been more than $40 per month, at current inflated energy prices, it's hard to imagine insulation being at all cost-effective. I suspect the complaints about not being able to afford to take hot showers were whining, rather than real serious complaints.
Maybe they didn't pay their electric bill?
Jim's heating bill for a 1000 square foot 1930s house in Ann Arbor, to which he added lots of insulation and weatherstripping, has never been over $40, with electric heat. Insulation is cheap - but it is a lot of work to add it once the house is built.
Here's what the Democrats could do-- look up and down the lists of registered democrats in the state. Find another one named Gray Davis. There's bound to be more than one. Pay off this other Gray Davis to run on the recall ballot. People could easily think it was the real Gray Davis, and think that by recalling the real Davis, they have sufficiently vented their anger at him, and thus be willing to vote him back in. The deal would be that if the other Gray Davis actually gets elected governor, he agrees beforehand to resign after taking the oath of office. Then the Lt. Governor (a Democrat right?) would become Governor, and act as a puppet for the real Gray Davis (Willie Brown did something similar when he was forced out as California House Speaker as I recall, found somebody willing to act as a puppet for him) But the real Davis shouldn't be recalled. A regular election was held already and Davis hasn't been convicted of a crime. What is the point of having regular elections if the electorate doesn't respect the results and let the winners serve their terms? California needs to overhaul its recall laws, otherwise every Democrat who gets elected from now on is going to face petition drives financed by millionaires and run by anti-tax zealots and there will be elections being held constantly. It seems to me that the recall vote has nothing to do with Davis whatsoever, and everything to do with voting to respect the electoral process
Sounds like a cheesy movie starring Eddie Murphy.
Some newspaper (SF Chronicle, probably) did a story recently in which they interviewed somebody named Gray Davis and somebody named Bill Simon, neither of whom were interested in running, but both of whom would have been quite elligible if they were willing to pay a few thousand dollars.
Re #23: I don't recall hearing about any, but I wasn't looking. Re #24: Insulation has other benefits, such as reducing noise. It also reduces air-conditioning expenses, starting with the size of the unit required. There is no reason not to have required R-15 walls or better in all construction since about 1980 (that's about 3 inches of pink foam; a 2x4 stud wall is 3-1/2" thick). Early on, Engler rejected building energy-efficiency standards. Now, after a building boom, we're facing steeply rising natural gas prices. How much is that penny-wise, pound-foolishness going to cost us over the lifespan of these spendthrift houses? How much is the economy going to suffer because of the money disappearing out of the state and out of the country? We could have kept it all here. <sigh>
There is actually some sentiment, from some of the stuff I've read, from Democrats to recall Davis. Not that they signed the petition or in general support the idea of recalling someone who just got elected and hasn't committed a crime. But face facts, next year is a Presidential election year. If Gray Davis continues to be as unpopular next year, the GOP will hang Davis around the neck of whoever the Democratic party nominee is. "A vote for Kerry is a vote for Gray Davis...end the Davis/Kerry regime" .etc Thats what might end up happening and the Democrats can't afford to lose California in the Presidential race, or even have it be so close that they have to pour millions into that race that they could be spending in Florida or Michigan. So there will be some Democrats who will think it better to swallow the bad medicine now and go ahead and recall Davis. Thats why one report I read today said Senator Dianne Feinstein and SF Mayor Willie Brown have been approached about running. It puts the California Democratic Party in a bind to be sure. If they are convinced Davis will lose the recall vote, maybe they go to him and ask him to resign first or something...
I suspect every Democratic politician in the state has been approached about
running. The question is whether any of them will.
To use a line from some newspaper columnist last time nobody in the Democratic
establishment was willing to challenge Davis, "where is Jerry Brown when we
need him?"
re 30:
Air conditioning?
There are parts of California that get cold in the winter and hot in the
summer. I suspect insulation probably gets used in those places. In places
where the temperature is usually in the 60s, and very rarely gets below 40
or above 80, air conditioning is far less of a pro-insulation argument than
heating is.
Re 31. If there is a serious chance of GWB carrying California in 2004, then the Democratic nominee might as well hang it up anyway. From the standpoint of a state party, how the state votes for president is interesting but not directly relevant. Holding the governorship is critical by comparison.
Now Larry Flynt is running for Governor.
o really? (wysskers) sent me a thing from vh1's news website saying that some punk singer (pre-Dead Kennedys punk) is going to run, but I can't remember either the man's name nor that of his band.
What will happen if Davis resigns before the election is held or certified? Will the lt. gov. ascend to the governorship, making the recall & election of a successor moot?
That (#35) would likely be Jello Biafra.
re 35,37: Actually, it was Jack Grisham, of T.S.O.L. http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1475053/20030730/tsol.jhtml
apparently to run for governor on the recall ballot, all you need is $3,500 and sixty signatures. Which means just about anyone who lives there could run. There could be two hundred candidates on the recall ballot and the winner might become governor with less than 10% Larry Flynt could win as well as anyone else, he's going to more more well known than most other names. Unless Arnold runs, which it doesn't look like he will. Heck, SCG maybe you oughta run. You could get sixty signatures just standing out on a street cornerin san francisco one afternoon, and with that and $3,500, you could boast for the rest of your life that one time you did in fact run for Governor of California. Your name would be on the ballot, and you could get your own framed copy for posterity! :)
Yes, but will it get you into Larry's Political Graveyard?
He'd have to die first, no?
No. Live politicians are included in the political graveyard.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/08/04/davis.recall/index.html this story gets even more confusing. now according to above story, California Governor Gray Davis has filed suit, asking for the right to be on the recall ballot himself. So if Davis gets recalled, he could win the recall vote and be voted back in for another term. He'd become a four term governor. Davis's argument seems logical, that it isn't fair that he has to get more than 50% of the recall question to stay in office, but anyone on the recall ballot if he doesn't get over 50%, can then get elected governor with just a plurality, even less than 10%. Meaning that Davis could have more support than anyone else by a wide margin and still lose. He could get 49.9% support on the yes/no recall question, and lose, while somebody else could get elected with 10% or less. So he wants to be able to have his name on the recall ballot. So he could in theory replace himself as governor. Its convoluted, but he's got a valid argument in my opinion. Davis is also asking for the recall election to be postponed until next March, when March when it could be held at the same time as the presidential primary. That would save the state from having to pay for an extra election, and would benefit Davis since the Democrats will have a heavily contested presidential primary and the Republicans won't (Bush running unopposed obviously)
How would being selected to finish the remainder of his second term make Davis a four term governor?
whoops, my mistake, Davis is in his second term, not his third. But if he loses the recall vote, and is officially recalled, his second term legally ends. So if he were to lose the recall question, but then also appeared on the recall ballot and won, then he'd have been recalled and then voted back in. It would thus probably be considered a new term, not a continuance of the old one (unless of course he wins the recall question itself) Davis would probably have to get sworn back in again and everything. I expect that the GOP will oppose Davis being allowed to run as a potential replacement for himself, since there will be some voters who will think that voting to recall Davis is a sufficient venting of their anger at him, and they would then be willing to vote him back in rather than having anybody else coming in to serve out an incomplete term
Someone is confused. Last I heard, a successful recall leaves an office open until the next regular election; it does NOT start a new term. So if Davis is recalled, and then elected to fill the open seat, he still has only however many years were left on his current term. Just as any other candidate elected to fulfill his incomplete term will have however many years are left in Davis' current term. At the regular expiration of the current term, a new Governor will be elected.
re: "#43 (richard): . . . Its convoluted, but he's got a valid argument in my opinion. . . ." Unfortuantely for Mr. richard, doesn't a pesky little detail such as the recall statute get in the way??
Go, Ah-nuld, go! Total Recall.
Not only has Arnold Schwarzenegger declared his candidacy for governor of California, but so has former child star Gary Coleman, and Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. One report says there might be upwards of 500 people on the ballot. Of course there might not be a recall, as there are numerous challenges to its legality that have been filed in court by Gray Davis, and by advocacy groups (the aclu for one I think) Arnold might be an interesting candidate, but he should run in 2006, thats when there's supposed to be another election. Recalling Davis when he has committed no crime, and is perfectly capable of serving out the term to which he was legally and rightfully elected by the people, would be wrong.
http://www.larryflynt.com/national_prayer_day.html
Several times, you've said something like, "Recalling Davis when he has committed no crime, and is perfectly capable of serving out the term to which he was legally and rightfully elected by the people, would be wrong." Bluntly, you are _wrong_. Impeachment is the method of removing an incuimbent who has comitted a crime. Recall is the method of removing an incumbent who has lost the confidence of his constitutents. Apparently, Governor Davis has lost that confidence. An election is the right way to test that loss.
Go, Ah-nuld. If they could get another 540 million or so people on the ballot @ $65 each, then they'd wipe our the state's entire deficit. Diabolical.
Also heard on the radio news this morning that the Lt. Governor is now planning to run for guv as part of this would-be replacement vote.
There is no evidence that "Governor Davis has lost that confidence" (of his constituents). Only a tiny fraction of the electorate signed recall petitions, and polls are uncertain indicators.
every recall is based on a statistical belief that while x number signed the recall, that means that x times y actually believe it is necessary.
We see "evidence" aplenty. For example, this morning's Washington Journal on C-SPAN. The fact that Ah-nuld (go, Ah-nuld!) has, probably based on the counsel of well-connected politcal advisors, has decided to enter the replacement race. Also, the beginning stampede of California's other elected Democratic officials to get on the recall ballot.
Re: #57 Short of every possible voter in California swearing before witnesses & video cameras that he'd utterly lost confidence in Davis, is there anything that would qualify as evidence in your mind?
I think I'm with the conservatives on this one. The goal of requiring petition signatures to get something on the ballot is to establish that there's a reasonable likelyhood that something being put on the ballot might come close to passing. You don't need to require signatures from a majority of the voters, but from enough to see that a significant number of voters want something. My first thought on this was that the signature threshold has obviously been set too low, but ignoring whether recalling Davis is a good idea and looking only at Davis's approval ratings, perhaps the threshold was set correctly. So, as far as I can tell, the best known candidates on the replacement ballot are Arnold Schwarzenegger, Larry Flynt, Gary Coleman, and Arianna Huffington. given that choice, I suppose I'd vote for Arianna. I don't think she's remotely qualified, but I think she's cool, and that's more than I can say for the others. That doesn't mean I'm happy about having to choose between those four.
Gallagher is reportedly running as well. Just what they need, a hop head governor for a hop head state.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. - Cal Sup Ct shoots down all 5 challenges against the recall. CBS News reports that Davis has a job approval rating of 23%. LA Times reporter tells NPR that Davis "doesn't have a friend in the state" and that he's seen as a "money grubbing" politican. Go Ah-nuld.
Oh, now the leutenant governor is defying Davis and running. I don't know anything about him, but I suppose he's the logical choice.
And we heard a report that Nancy Pelosi is reconsidering. Go, Ah-nuld.
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(If I recall correctly, one of the five suits alleged that the recall should result in a vacancy filled in the usual manner rather than a vacancy to be filled by a concurrent special election. If that suit had proceeded and been decided for the plaintiff, the LtGov would have become Gov upon the successful recall of Gov Davis. Since the suit was dismissed, 'tis not so surprising that the LtGov decided to run.)
re: #51 gelinas, I think, and its only my opinion, that it would be wrong to recall Davis. Of course constituents have the right to remove someone from office if they have lost confidence in them. That is why there are regular elections, and the governor must be re-elected to stay in office after four years. This is about respecting traditions and respecting the process that has been set up. Elections are not held every single year for a high office like governor FOR A REASON. That reason is that the founding fathers did not want these government institutions overly politicized. There is a term of office so that people who get elected have a chance to serve before judgement is again passed on them. Gray Davis was elected again last year. He has the right to serve out his term, in my opinion, unless he's committed a crime. Voters losing confidence isn't good enough, you are frustrated with an elected official, you wait until the next scheduled election and you vote against him. So it would be wrong, IMO, to recall Davis. If this goes through every state in the country might end up having recall elections again and again. Fewer and fewer statesmen might be able to govern anymore without having to be constantly deal with politics and people trying to throw him out. Gelinas you can't possibly think recalling Davis is a good thing. You can't possibly think that unless he warrants being impeached, that he doesn't have the right to serve out his term...
While I disagree with richard about gelinas's potential thoughts, I agree with him that Gray Davis shouldn't be recalled. In particular, I hope he's not recalled under the extremely poorly thought out recall method being used in California. I can't imagine an improvement resulting from Davis being replaced by a pretty-face actor.
You mean Gary Coleman?
Arnold was quite amusing on the morning news shows today. When he
wasn't talking around a question ("I'll be studying dat issue in depth,
but remember dat de key to goot governing is having Vision."), he was
pretending he was having trouble with the audio feed (as when asked
whether he'd release his tax returns for the last few years).
Good Luck, California.
Can we stipulate that Richard is a pure Democratic partisan and just go on from here rather than trying to argue with him?
I've no opinion at all on whether Governor Davis should be recalled. I _do_ have an opinion on recall elections: They are part of the process. New York may not have them, and if it does, Richard may prefer they never be used. Other states do have, and use, recall elections. Welcome to the real world, Richard.
Re #66: Even if California's recall statute is badly thought out, Gray Davis is probably the ideal test case for it. If his political demise creates a movement to repeal it, GREAT! Two birds, one stone.
I'm all for it. It's the funniest thing in the news for months. Gary Coleman and Arnold Schwarenegger neck in neck for the governorship of California! Does it get any better than this?
Don't forget Larry Flynt.
Anyone see the naked picture of A.S. just posted at rotten.com yet? Personally, if I were from California, I'd vote for Coleman, he sounds more honest than the others.
haven't been followinfg gary's career very close lately, eh?
I want to have fun with the circus. I want to see the campaign between Schwarzenegger, Coleman, Huffington, and Flynt. I want to vote for Arianna Huffington, since I think that would be fun. But I think I have to vote for the leutenant governor, because he's an actual government official with actual experience, and governor doesn't strike me as an entry level job. I'm left wishing we had a system somewhat like that of the UK, with a cerimonial head of state (in their case, the queen), and somebody really in charge of the government (in their case the prime minister). I think it would be fun to have one of those celebrities in some important but entirely cerimonial role.
It seems a California alternative newspaper put up the $3500 to run Coleman for governor, and found him the 65 signatures he needed too. Coleman said: "I am probably the most unqualified person to run for governor, but I'm willing to do it as a goof if you are." He has previously talked about running for the senate, but never did.
Re 74: A recent interview with Coleman had him admitting that he was the least qualified. Sometimes honesty is cool. As I recall, I also remember he said that he was going to vote for the other Arnold in the election.
re75: she certainly is more intelligent than the rest of the candidates.
Ah, that was my most local alternative newspaper, the East Bay Express. I've been too busy with out of town visitors to have seen the article. http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2003-08-06/recall.html/1/index.html
I love it.
Yeah, I really like Arianna Huffington. Actually Schwarzenegger isnt really all that bad either. But of course, I agree with scg that the primary problem with either of them is that they dont have any experience. If I were in California, I would probably vote NO to the recall and then vote for Bustamante as the replacement.
Has it been determined that a person who votes against the recall may vote for a replacement candidate? The statue had disallowed this, to our recollection.
A person who votes against the recall is still allowed to vote for a replacement candidate.
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I don't think Davis has done anything that justifies a recall, although of course valid justification is not required to mount a recall. It is obvious that the opposition *party* primarily supports the recall, which means it is a partisan action, which is a poor reason for a recall: the elections are where partisan issues should be operable.
I like the suggestion in resp:75 very much. A ceremonial Hollywood governor for California sounds like a fine idea. I think it'd be a good thing for the United States, too. I'm not positive we don't have one and call the position the "presidency".
Well, my brother who lives in Norway thinks their implementation of a king works pretty well. The royals are hereditary, but pretty much only for ceremony. The real work of the govt. is done by elected legislators, so the king/queen are there to handle more social events. Gives the public somebody to rally behind without giving them a dictator.
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Being against the recall has nothing to do with partisan politics. A number of well known conservatives have come out against recalling Davis, including George Will, Robert Novak, Bill Maher and others. The issue is that of respecting traditions, and holding elections when the law says they are regularly supposed to be held. If Davis gets recalled, whats going to happen next year? Another recall petition, this time from the Democratic side-- turnabout's fair play right?-- and Arnold will get recalled. The petition requirements are low enough in california to force a recall that the vast majority of those who signed the petition hadn't voted for Davis in the first place. Didn't want him in the first place. So for most who signed the petition, it wasn't about Davis doing anything wrong, as it was about having a chance to do the election over so they can vote against him AGAIN. So California, in a dire fiscal crisis, will spend $60 million on a special election, recall the governor, and then next year some rich Democrat will fund another recall petition. It will become an ongoing cycle not just in California but in every state. Many states have recall petition laws, but they've seldom been used. But the rules are changing. So If people don't vote against recall elections, they will start happening everywhere and there won't be any governor in any state capable of governing effectively because he/she will have to be constantly campaigning, worried every month and every year about staying in office. The point of terms is to give lawmakers time to be in office and do their jobs, before voters throw them back out. Don't be suckered in by this beauty contest and the chance to vote for movie stars. It is a bad precedent!
BS. So California's recall law is poorly written. That's up to the California legislature to correct. And they likely will, if another recall looms. Recalls in other states are matters for their legislatures. From what I've seen here in Michigan, they aren't likely. (This past few years, there have been three attempts that I know of: two for local township boards, which went went through, but I don't recall the results, and one for the school board, which was dropped as more trouble than it was worth.)
Governor Pataki here in New York was up for re-election last year. He got re-elected and now the state is in a dire fiscal crisis that Pataki totally downplayed the possibility of during his re-election. Pataki is guilty of just as much as Gray Davis, when it comes to fiscal mismanagement and not owning up to such during an election. A lot of people here are enraged at Pataki now. His popularity is at an all time low. But I wouldn't sign a recall petition to undo the last election, even though he was a republican and I didn't vote for him. I wouldn't consider it the right thing to do. The election was held, he won and thats it-- surely its better to have the governor concentrating on his job and trying to fix the budget mess, than concentrating on facing another *special* election to undo the previous election. You don't get anywhere if you don't allow those elected to have the time to govern. Also when you have too many elections, this is when an electorate can get frustrated and you end up with fringe candidates getting elected. In Germany in the late twenties and thirties, the electorate was divided and there elections called and more elections called, and it got to the point where national elections were happening again and again. Because nobody gave the elected leaders the chance to govern. So what happened? Hitler got elected and promptly did away with further elections. His rise to power might never have happened had there not been so many elections held that people got so frustrated and burned out that they were willing to consider some one that radical. This is a pivotal moment in California's history. A vote against recalling Davis is a vote for respect of electoral traditions, and a vote against re-doing elections unless the elected official has become unable to govern. Davis is a capable governor. Letting him serve out the last three years of his term won't kill anyone.
whoops, correction. Hitler didn't really "do away with further elections" at first, he just did away with further elections where anybody but him was on the ballot. But the point is there, which is you CAN burn people out on the electoral process via having too many elections. Why risk setting a bad precedent?
Sounds like Pataki _should_ be recalled. On the other hand, y'all could probably have figured out that a fiscal crises was coming, had y'all bothered to look. You got what you deserved, I guess.
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Whatever arguments there are for or against the recall, the recall does seem consistent with the California constitution. My opinion is that the replacement process, at least, should be changed, but what's going on now appears consistent with the law. I'm not sure I buy the argument that the recall getting on the ballot shows the signature requirement to be too low. Signature requirements aren't to prevent people from voting on things, but rather to prevent people from having to vote on lots of stuff that only the proposer wants. Given that most polls in California now show the recall passing, this doesn't seem like a case of a low signature requirement thwarting the will of the voters.
I do hope California doesn't face an endless string of recalls following this one. I agree with richard that that seems possible. If the recall succeeds, I hope a politician gets elected, rather than Arnold Schwarzenegger or Gary Coleman or some other person with no experience in government. California has too many people, and it's economy is too important to the United States and the world, for me to be happy to see this recall and the vast amount of turmoil surrounding it. I can't say I really understand the implications very well, but the situation looks ugly to me.
Go, Ah-nuld.
It may not be a crime, but gross misrepresentation of the State's fiscal situation and/or a candidate's intensions (once elected) strike me as a good reason to recall him/her from office. Fear of recall might even get a politician to tell the truth or keep a promise once in a while. If i got to play King Solomon, both Davis & Pataki would be working bottom-rung jobs in an Iraqi water-treatment plant. Nah, make that a sewage-treatment plant. Good election laws, etc. can discourage it a bit, but democracy really does not have any way to handle sustained disfunctional behavior by the voters or politicians. If you have a monarch, however, you can have a "democracy strikes out" rule in the constitution - if the voters & folks they elect are failing badly enough, then politicians are canned, all elections cancelled, and the king/queen is awarded all power previously held by the politicians. If the threat of this hasn't sobered the elected folks up enough to prevent the event, then it's pretty likely that the monarch will be no worse at governing (and there will at least be some stability). If the king really is worse, there's a keep-the-king-in- charge-or-not? election after a few years, and by then a bad king will have thinned the ranks of the politicians considerably while giving the voters good reason to take elections more seriously.
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Re #22: Enron gaming the system (while Ken Lay, with a straight face, said they weren't, and Bush backed him up) didn't help either. Gray Davis did a bad job handling the electricity deregulation situation, but Republican interests helped set him up. After that evidence of how easy it is to manipulate electrical markets, I'm amazed that other states are going ahead with deregulation plans. Re #98: "It may not be a crime, but gross misrepresentation of the State's fiscal situation and/or a candidate's intensions (once elected) strike me as a good reason to recall him/her from office." So we should recall Bush, then? --- I'm having a hard time taking Arnold's bid for governor seriously. After all these years you'd think he'd have at least grasped the English language. He has no campaign planks except "bringing business back to California." His speeches consist of bumper sticker slogans. If he's elected, it'll prove to me that Californians really have lost track of the dividing line between reality and the movies. I've suspected it for a while now.
Wow, some commentary from Richard that doesn't come across as pure partisan advocacy. What took you so long to get insightful? I like the idea (#98) of holding pols to their campaign promises. If their election could be annulled on the basis that they made misrepresentations, it would force everyone to be more honest. (Imagine George O'Brien being tossed out of the mayor's office in Boston for campaigning against a subway fare increase and changing his mind! There'd be one less folk song in the repetoire.) I think that it also might be a good idea to force pols to recuse themselves on votes on matters concerning persons or groups from which they obtain significant amounts of campaign money. I doubt that California will face endless recalls. Either the legislature will fix the problem, or abuse of the process will create a push culminating in an initiative to fix it. If nothing else, I'd expect a reform to to limit ballot access to one candidate per party represented in the previous race for the office.
I don't think the legislature in California has the power to prevent recalls. The voters would have to fix the problem. It seems to me that the existence of the recall process is probably reasonable. The replacement election being on the same ballot leads to all kinds of strategy games that would probably be better avoided by having a separate, later, replacement election (or letting the Leutenant Governor take over if he/she hadn't also been recalled). The system whereby anybody can get on the replacement ballot simply by paying the filing fee has to go. Schwartzenegger's answer to every question about his positions on issues seems to be something along the lines of "I'll let you know when I'm ready." I suspect his popularity will drop considerably if he's ever forced to answer thsoe questions (or if the voters notice he's refusing to answer), since no matter what his answers are they're bound to anger somebody.
Re #100: The California deregulation law passed a legislature completely dominated by Democrats. When the problems began to appear, the utilities pleaded to be allowed to make long-term contracts to buy electricity instead of being forced to buy on the spot market. Gray Davis instead decided to gamble with the taxpayer's money, and lost big time. He deserves his comeuppance. The deregulation law's problems shouldn't have gotten very far, but did so because California's legislature is apparently full of ideologues of various stripes but nobody with much analytical ability. You may be right that the electorate has lost the distinction between reality and story-telling; in any case they have gotten what they elected, and thus what they deserve. To fix this, they have to stop nominating (mostly the Democrats) candidates who have no experience or record of substantive thought, but only mouth the politically-correct slogans of the day. Then the voters have to punish the parties for allowing insubstantial candidates to be nominated. As if that'll happen.
Re #103: But would the spot market have climbed so high if not for Enron's strategies to drive it upwards? They were creating artificial shortages. *This* is why electrical deregulation is a bad idea, really. There isn't enough competition to prevent one or two companies from manipulating the market. It amazes me that anyone thought this wouldn't happen. The only way to deal with a natural monopoly industry like this is government regulation.
don't you think they should have been smart enough to see that and taken action to avert it? Arnold is at least his own man. He doesn't depend on anyone else to make his decisions. You may see that as either bad or good, but at least it will be different. If he doesn't understand a problem, maybe he is at least smart enough to find the people who do understand and can help.
I want to see the Schwarzenegger / Coleman debate. Might be worth getting TV for.
I'm too lazy to research this: How did Jessie "The Body" Ventura's background and experience before being elected governor of Minnesota compare to Arnold's?
Ventura had been mayor of some Minneapolis suburb. The paralel to somebody with no political record, but a famous name and a politically connected family becoming governor of a state significantly bigger than Minnesota but significantly smaller than California would be George W. Bush. I do love the bit about Schwarzenegger being a "self made man." He shows that even a movie star who marries a Kennedy can get rich if he really works at it. ;) It seemed to me a few years ago that the political demands being placed on Davis at the time were to get the power situation under control regardless of the cost. Now that power is under control, people are upset about the cost. I suspect if there were still frequent blackouts, it wouldn't be the cost that people were complaining about. The real question there, of course, is what could Davis have done to more cheaply stop the blackouts.
Re #105: Probably, but the pressure from the "free markets uber alles" types to deregulate was pretty strong. It's also hard to fight a company that has strong allies in the White House.
re107: seal training. :)
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re105: actually, he apparently didn't decide whether or not to run until his wife told him he could.
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There was an article in the New York Times earlier this week on how crazy the California recall process is. Basically, with hundreds of candidates on the ballot, it would be logical to list everybody running alpabetically by last name, so you'd know where to find your candidate on the ballot. But thats not what they are doing. They actually held a LOTTERY style drawing where they picked letters of the alphabet out of a hat or something randomly, and the first letter chosen determined the first person on the ballot. So that if the first letter was "G" and alphabetically, somebody named George Gaaronson was the first person with the last name G whose name comes up, he'd get listed first on the ballot. But then the second person who appears on the ballot WOULDN'T be the second name listed alphabetically under G, it would be the first person listed under the second letter of the alphabet that comes up in the drawing. Or something like that. Totally absurd. So what you'll have is several hundred people on the ballot, with the names all scrambled and in no logical order, so you'll have to look long and hard to find your candidate's name. This probably means LONG lines on election day. Also there are stories that there are right wing groups gearing up to go hard negative on Arnold. Arnold is a Republican, but he is a moderate, and even worse for some conservatives, is pro-choice and an environmentalist. Those folks would rather have a DEMOCRAT as governor than a pro-choice tree hugger! One article said they may use in ads outtakes from Arnold's "Pumping Iron" movie, the documentary about Arnold's bodybuilding days in the seventies, which show a young Arnold smoking a marijuana joint, exhaling and laughing. Yep, this campaign could get nasty! I mean unlike Clinton, Arnold couldn't even at least deny he inhaled, because its on tape! :)
And another point. Shouldn't California's recall laws stipulate that a runoff be held if no candidate in a recall election gets 50%? How can anyone who gets elected with ten percent or less of the vote possibly claim to have a mandate? It seems to be that this sets up whoever gets elected to be ineffective from the start. If noone on the recall vote gets fifty percent, and its highly unlikely anyone will, they should have a runoff between the top two vote getters. And if the second place person got only 4%, and there were 48% of voters voting against recalling the Governor, it could be argued that the Governor is in essence the first or second place vote getter and he should be in the runoff against whoever won the recall ballot.
California's *general election* laws don't generally require greater than 50% to win, nor do the general election laws in most parts of the US. You just need a plurality. The difference here is that in most such elections, getting on the ballot is difficult. Still, I suspect we'll see somebody come out of this with reasonably broad support. Perhaps not 50%, but enough to win a three way general election at least.
Not only is the name order for the ballots in a district determined by a randomization of the alphabet (as mentioned above), but the order will be permuted for each of all the voting districts, so that the name at the "top" of each ballot will be different in each district. This is all quite a topic of (cynical) discussion here in California.
According to foxnews.com, the order of the names is not rotated by "voting district," but by state assembly district: "The state also has a process to rotate the names in subsequent assembly districts. If "Robinson" were the first name on the 1st Assembly district, it would drop to the bottom of the Rs in the 2nd Assembly District, and the second name that starts with R would go to the top of the sequence. When the R's are finished, the first name that starts with W will lead the ballot and all the R's would be on the bottom. There are 80 Assembly Districts in the state and 131 certified names by Wednesday morning, so many candidates' names will never lead the list. California implemented this system after studies showed that the traditional A, B, C method disproportionately favors candidates with last names that placed them higher on the ballot."
School ballots here also rotate, with every precinct having a different ballot.
Klg is correct, but loses credibility points for quoting Fox News. ;)
Part of the reason they scramble the names on the ballot for each district is because having your name at the top of the ballot gives you an advantage. With so many names on the ballot, lazy voters may just mark the first name they see or someone near the top of the ballot.
Yes, something like a 5% boost for being top of the ticket. Some fella sued the state a while back for this reason, and so now they do the lottery thing.
The Daily Show had fun with this last night.
We are, Mr. scg, fair and balanced.
Careful, klg. You might get sued for saying that registered phrase.
We don't think there is a danger of being sued unless we have realized a commercial gain. So, please send us a check for $1,000. (On second thought, from you we'd prefer cash.)
I'll forward your request to Mr. O'Reilly.
I agree with richard, resp:115, that a runoff would be sensible with so many on the ballot. I disagree with richard, resp:114, that the random order on the ballots is senseless. There's enough of an advantage for being at the top of the ballot that I'd expect the alphabetically first name to be a shoo in. However, I'll admit it didn't occur to me just how inconvenient it will be for the voters to have the names appear randomly with so many on the ballot.
They are not exactly "random". The say alphabetical order originally drawn is maintained, but permuted only by shifting the first name to the last name place for each different assembly district. Therefore, if you have the original fixed alphabetical order, you can find whoever you want. However people with the same initial and subsequent letters in their names are not permuted, so many candidates will not have their name in first place anywhere.
also, there is some fear about well known names drawing votes away from lesser known candidates. Robert Dole is running as a republican Micheal Jackson is running as an independent Of course it isn't the mfamous people we all know. just local businessmen.
I think it would have been better to keep the 'conventional' alphabetical order, but randomly stick a start point for each district and treat the list as circular. That way you would randomize the person at the top of the ballot without completely scrambling this list, and names would be easier to find. That's just a band-aid, though. The root of the problem is that it's completely ridiculous to have 135 candidates on the ballot for a single position.
s/stick/pick/
stick was better.
I heard on the news that the Lt. Gov. essentially made a plea for voters to oust Davis and elect him. This marks the onset of "every man for himself" among the Democrats. "Et tu, Cruz?" -- Gray Davis
His message all along has been "vote no, but vote for me," so he's been talking out of both sides of his mouth for a while now.
Not really. I mean he might want all the folks who vote no to the recall to vote for him just in case the recall passes. What is he supposed to say "vote no but vote for Arnold?"
Yes. Go, Ah-nuld.
#135..the lt. governor is a democrat and is pushing the democrats current strategy. He is encouraging everyone to vote no on the recall, but on the recall ballot to vote for him JUST IN CASE. He's in a no lose situation because he'll either end up governor or will dramatically increase his name recognition/exposure in advance of the next regular election for governor, when he'd presumably be the leading candidate or one of them. There are now polls showing this vote no/vote yes strategy might work, schwarzenegger's numbers are slipping and I guess the lt. governor is well known enough that he's seen as a safe alternative in the event the recall goes through. I predict here and now that the recall will fail, because voters will realize that the only way to discourage the possibility of another recall vote next year and the year after and every year going forward, is to nip this one in the bud. This recall petition effort was succesful because one candidate, Issa, is a multi millionaire and pumped several million of his own money into heavy advertising. Which was more than enough to get most of the people who voted AGAINST Davis last time to sign petitions. I mean they'd have to figure why not, they didn't vote for him in the first place. So now that the formula for a succesful petition drive is in place, it'll happen again and again. Unless voters express their solid preferance at the polls for having elections every four years. This special recall election will cost this state, in an economic crisis, $60-75 million to put on. Surely voters will realize that no matter how much they dislike Davis now, it isn't worth setting the precedent and spending the money, not just this year but in years to come. And make no mistake, if Davis is recalled, and replaced by a Republican, there will be Democrats more than willing to spend millions of dollars on another massive recall petition next year. Because turnabout is fair play. The only sensible move is to stop this now.
Ah-nold is pro-choice and otherwise socially liberal. His election in California would all but certainly spell the end of the radical right's lock on the party there. One wonders why klg is rooting for him, when he'd be such a disaster for much of klg's agenda. Re #138: $70 million is less than 1% of California's projected deficit. It's idiocy to quibble about it without addressing the big-ticket items, and that's one thing that hasn't been done under Gray Davis.
Yeah, the hard right is starting to back away from Ahnold in California.
We think that practically any electable Republican is preferable to a Democrat. Ah-nuld seems to realize the key to putting the state back on its feet is to improve the business climate by reducing tax and regulatory burdens. How can the state government pursue that policy without reducing government give-aways?
The current federal govt. seems to have no philosophical problem with give-aways. Oh, you mean give-aways to non-rich people! How silly of me.
...and give-aways to industry. I don't think klg is opposed to those. I wonder why, though: is he an industral magnate? I think that any electable Democrat is preferable to any Republican. Then there would be more attention to human and enviromental issues, and less to enriching a few industrialists.
I think it's amusing to see the same people endorsing Arnold who complain when other celebrities involve themselves in politics.
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re: #141..klg, this idea that ANY republican is preferable to any democrat is contrary to the complexity of american politics. Here in New York City, our current mayor Mike Bloomberg, and former Mayor Rudy Guiliani were both lifelong Democrats who only switched parties when they ran for Mayor because it allowed them to sidestep the Democratic party machine. They are flaming moderates. Pro choice, environmentalists. Bloomberg is actually pretty liberal, he supports legalizing gay marriages among other things. Pataki, our governor, is a pro choice moderate. There are also Democrats in office who are more conservative than them (New Jersey Governor McGreevey for instance) In fact both parties are populated with people who are centerists, and when that happens the differences aren't that great. The party IDs become just labels. When Nixon ran against JFK in 1960, a lot of people complained that there really wasn't much of a choice because they AGREED on most things. Nixon was a moderate, and so was JFK. Arnold appears to be, as Nixon was, the kind of politician that the right wing of the GOP hates even more than Democrats-- A Rockefeller Republican. Arnold doesn't appear to be a Republican because of deeply held religious beliefs or political ideology, but because he supports big business and is fiscally conservative. But he is also socially liberal or appears to be. That means he could easily have run as a Democrat. But then, even if he was the same man with the same views, you wouldn't find him acceptable? Remember too that if Arnold gets elected, he has a wife who is an outspoken liberal Democrat from a family of political junkies, Maria Shriver, and she says she'll be a hands on first lady. You know that Arnold's wife and his cousin, the senior Senator from Massachusetts, will have his ear if he gets elected. They'll keep Arnold in line :)
We think that Mr. richard needs to go back and read #141 before lecturing us on the complexity of American politics based on what he thinks #141 says.
In Richard's last paragraph, is he saying that Ted Kennedy is Arnold's cousin, or that Arnold's wife is a he? (anyhow, Ted Kennedy is Maria Shriver's uncle, not cousin). Isn't Richard also the same person who has repeatedly lectured us in the past about the importance of voting for Democrats, since you're electing not just a person but a party? Given the amount of appointments the governor gets to make, that's probably pretty accurate in this case. When Al Gore ran against George W. Bush in 2000, a lot of people complained that there wasn't much of a choice because they agreed on most things. Wow, did that turn out to be wrong.
resp:143 "I think that any electable Democrat is preferable to any Republican. Then there would be more attention to human and enviromental issues, and less to enriching a few industrialists." I was *so* waiting for a gem like this. More bipartisan CRAP. On the one side, you have claims of pumping money into big business. On the other side, you have claims of pumping money into big government. Maybe both extremes are wasting money. You insult an Independent like me, Spock. I'll vote any damn party I please because I'm sorry, I'm not going to stoop to such broad, sweeping generalizations. I don't vote platform, I vote individual-- when I do vote. Unfortunately, the country is so likely divided that most politicans doubletalk everything just to get their votes and then do whatever business they were doing as usual. Sheesh...
You missed that my #143 gem was mocking klg's #141.
(Or perhaps not.)
Oh was it THAT biting? Oh, now I'm so depressed... it's not fair... I gotta pick on both sides somehow; extreme lefties don't come up often enough ;) Oh well. Will you just chalk it up to a straw man that I had fun burning? Because I had SO much fun. Moderates *should* have balls.
not to mention centrists.
just call me Dr. McCoy, Spock ;)
It's hard to find moderates who are capable of getting worked up about it. :>
The Daily Show last night had a spoof about 2 candidates, dressed up in "mascot" costumes, one a penis, the other a colored-over-red raising kind of get up. :-)
resp:155 shame, isn't it?
Arnold seems to be tryign to run for Governor without having to take any stands other than general ones, and without stating at all any specifics of what he'd do. The article I read today said he's promising only to have a sixty day audit of the state's financial records and then, and only then, say what he'll do, where he stands, what he'll cut and what he won't cut. Its risky to vote for a candidate who has never held political office, has never had to be answerable to any constituency and has never had to explain what he stands for. How can you be sure what you are getting? A few years back, when Ross Perot was running for President, I had some friends who thought he was like the ideal candidate. One friend was a republican ( yes I do have republican friends) who thought Perot was going to be this great conservative President. Another friend thought Perot was going to be an independent liberal, basically Bill Clinton without the partisan packaging. They were probably both wrong, and had Perot been elected, one or both of them was going to end up very upset because Perot chose not to define himself or take a great many political stances. And now Arnold, like Perot, also seems to think he doesn't need to. That he is above politics as usual, and you should vote for him because he's ARNOLD and not because of anything he stands for. Voters IMO deserve to know what they are getting, they deserve to have candidates who define themselves and run on understandable platforms. You know what you get if Arnold is elected and defines himself after the fact, and upsets people who assumed he was more liberal or more conservative than he really is? Yep, a bunch of irate voters and yet another recall petition.
Yes, well, it's not like the other candidates are rushing forth with plans that would eliminate a $38B deficit, either. It's a matter of raising taxes and/or cutting popular programs, and the first person to propose that is the first person effectively eliminated from the race. Arnold ruled out tax increases and cuts to education, which puts him in the position of having to cut every other single bit of state spending to balance the budget.
There are going to be tax increases in California. There's no way around it, and everyone knows it. Any candidate who claims they'll balance the budget without raising taxes is a liar.
Dave - over the past five years of the Davis administration and thorough democrat control of the state, the population has increased some 23%, tax revenues increased 25% thanks to all the highly productive dot-commers, but... ... spending by the state increased by 40%. We already pay 9.3% in the top income tax bracket, and an 8.25% sales tax, plus fairly substantial property taxes (though not as high as Ann Arbor's, I gather). Add to that the recent significant increase in corporate workers' comp taxes to support paid leaves-of-absence out of the state's coffers (which was undoubtedly one of the factors prompting 3Com to pull up stakes and relocate their Santa Clara headquarters...) It's not too hard to see that "low taxes" were not the reason a $10 billion surplus was transformed into a $38 billion deficit over the past five years. Did you know that the budget that was finally passed (after the Democrat's scheming to delay it for maximum political advantage was exposed) spends more this year than they did last year? If you're in a hole, isn't the first step to stop digging? Apparently that little bit of folk wisdom is lost on the Democrat-controlled legislature of California.
> If you're in a hole, isn't the first step to stop digging? Apparently that > little bit of folk wisdom is lost on the Democrat-controlled legislature of > California. Digs at the Democrats aside, it's not as if they hold a monopoly on that particular failing. The current Republican approach seems to be if you find yourself in a hole, hire Haliburton to speed up drilling..
Yes, I noticed the extreme hypocrasy of #161 which applies "in spades" more to our current nationial administration than to California - who are transforming a budget surplus to the largest budget deficit in history.
Re #161: That argument is easy to make if you look at government spending in isolation, pretending that all that money gets poured into a hole somewhere and buried. But the fact is all of it gets spent on services, all of which benefit *someone*, and cutting those services is always politically painful. People hate taxes, but they also love government services. Unfortunately both the California government and the Bush administration seem to be telling people that they can keep the current level of service without paying more in taxes, and with the economy in the toilet that's just not true.
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Sometimes I wonder why he thinks he's a Republican. ;>
i hope he wins. and later becomes president. how fitting to have the TERMINATOR as the leader of the USofA.
You would need to change some laws for Arnie to be President of the USA...
Sorry, Arnold can never be *elected* president, since he's not a US citizen by birth. I'm not sure if he could even run as vice president, for the same reason. The only way he could become president is to hold a high office (e.g. Sec. of State) and then terminate the others ahead of him in line of succession. :-)
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Or Secretary of State, as a person with a vaguely similar accent once was.
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Re 172: The new (as of GW Bush) way to send email to the President involves several web pages of questions. And the first question boils down to "friend or enemy?". Eep!
Wash all hands.
My understanding is that certain foreign-born Secretaries of State were excluded from the "just in case" line to the Oval Office because of their foreign birth.....yep, the Constitution specifies (II.1.5) that *only* natural born Citizens are eligible to be President.
Help.
Schwarzenegger didn't exactly say he was against gay marriage. He said he thinks gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.
Next thing you know greeks are going to claim the right to marry their sheep - and texans their heiffers...
Re #164:
>That argument is easy to make if you look at government spending in
>isolation, pretending that all that money gets poured into a hole >somewhere
and buried.
Government spending can be very destructive, if it chokes out more
efficient ways of providing the same thing. For instance, you could
"eliminate" unemployment by paying one half of the unemployed people
to dig holes, and the other half to fill them in again. The problem
is that the supply of goods and services demanded by those make-workers
wouldn't be increased in the slightest by the make-work, and everyone
else (the taxpaying public) gets poorer by the combination of higher
taxes and demand-pull inflation. If you can get the unemployed into
real jobs making desired goods and services, the public benefits.
>But the fact is all of it gets spent on services, all of which benefit
>*someone*, and cutting those services is always politically painful.
Was that intended to refute the idea that government money isn't as
good as poured into a hole? If so, it's a faulty argument. The
hole-diggers and hole-fillers will militate to keep their arrangement
intact because their senecure is at stake, while the taxpayers have
other concerns. This does not mean that the hole-diggers and hole-fillers
should not be pink-slipped at the earliest opportunity. Employing ten
thousand government workers to provide a given service when one thousand
will do IS money down the rathole; the public could otherwise enjoy the
services as well as more money in their pockets from lower taxes.
This is one example where the interests of public "servants" and their
unions are directly opposed to those of the people being "served".
"We do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Reforming government might be harder than going to the Moon, but it is also
more worthwhile.
Re #166: I think that the problem is California. It's so screwy that
a few niggling PC transgressions get you thrown out of the Democrats,
and the Republican party is the only real game left.
Re #178: not likely if consent is required.
#179 is such an obvious straw-man argument I'm not sure it's worth responding to. It's obvious that a hole-digging/hole-filling project has no benefits to society at large, but real-life government programs are never that clearly useless.
"Star Wars" was (is).
Really? _Nothing_ was learned from that venture? (NB: I didn't expect a working missile shield from "Star Wars", but I'm very surprised that nothing new was discovered/invented/worked out.)
Star wars was not useless. Even if the shield isn't 100% effective, there were major discoveries.
Such as? (Besides, that it wouldn't work, which was known before millions of $$$ were spent.)
thank you.
I'm sure there were at least *some* technological spin-offs.
Perhaps, but at much greater cost than if such more useful objectives were the original goal.
Re #181:
>It's obvious that a hole-digging/hole-filling project has no benefits
>to society at large, but real-life government programs are never
>that clearly useless.
Consider ethanol subsidies which (at least in some analyses) consume more fuel
in the form of diesel for cultivation and pesticides, and then natural gas for
nitrogen fertilizers and distillation, than the ethanol yields. (Then there is
the siltation and other environmental damage...) And that's just one little
part of agricultural subsidies, which is just one little part of government.
The bigger and more complex government gets, the more likely (some would
say inevitable) it is that parts work at cross-purposes to worthwhile
goals and even each other. Say what you will about private enterprise,
at least it goes out of business if it can't support itself. Government
has no such reality check, and anything it does beyond maintaining the
level playing field for everyone else requires heavy scrutiny.
There have been a number of developments in laser technology related to star wars, there has been advancenment in radar programs, adn advance in booster programs, all coming out of Star Wars. Teh Clinton administration set up to deploy a working ABM system, but delayed it for the incoming president. The ABM system is out there and is workable to some extent, including the phased array and x band radars.
Re #189:
I contend that the playing-field-leveling activities of government require
heavy scrutiny as well.
Re #189: Ethanol is added to fuel as an oxygenating agent. The other alternative is to add MTBE, which is very toxic and has caused groundwater contamination in places that use it.
It is much more complicated than that. Even the agricultural lobby makes the main claims for ethanol that it reduces dependence on foreign oil imports, creates jobs, helps farmers by creating a more stable market and - yes - reduces some vehicle emissions. There are details at http://platts.com/features/altfuelvehicle/ethanol.shtml.
Re #192: I understand that the replacement of the vehicle fleet and improvements in refining have eliminated the need for oxygenated fuels to cut cold-start emissions; I have even seen claims that they are actually counterproductive with the current vehicle mix, and only going to become more so. If so, there is no air-quality argument for either MTBE or ethanol in fuel. It is purely a sop to the farm lobby. .
I hadn't heard that. I'd be interested in seeing an article about it, though.
Is ethanol cheaper per gallon of actual volume than gasoline? (I know it's more expensive per gallon-equivalent.)
It varies from state to state, depending on how heavily it's subsidized.
Figures I recall for the actual cost of ethanol is about $2/gallon. Ethanol has about 75% of the energy of gasoline, per unit volume. .
Compared to the actual cost of gasoline? (Think taxes)
Re #199: Ethanol is subsidized to the tune of about $2/gallon, because a 10% ethanol mix is exempt from the Federal motor-fuel tax (currently about 20 cents a gallon, if memory serves). If ethanol actually had to pay its own way as a fuel additive, nobody would want to buy it.
I don't want to buy it as it is - not without a substantial discount which overwhelms the BTU loss at least, which I never see.
I'd rather have it than MTBE, that's for sure.
From cnn.com, presidential candidate Howard Dean campaigns with Gray Davis in California: "LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Presidential candidate Howard Dean Saturday urged Californians to vote against the effort to oust Gov. Gray Davis, calling it part of a plan by right-wing Republicans to subvert democracy. "I think this is the fourth attempt to undermine democracy in this country by the right wing of the Republican Party since the 2000 elections," said Dean. Other examples, he said, were the refusal by the "conservative- dominated United States Supreme Court" to order a recount of the votes in Florida during the 2000 presidential election and separate GOP-led redistricting efforts in Colorado and Texas that could result in a loss of seats currently held by Democrats. "I believe the right wing of the Republican Party is deliberately undermining the democratic underpinnings of this country," Dean told a news conference. "I believe they do not care what Americans think and they do not accept the legitimacy of our elections and have now, for the fourth time in the fourth state, attempted to do what they can to remove democracy from America." Davis expressed optimism that the voters would allow him to serve out his term. "This recall is nothing more than an attempt by Republicans financed by the right wing to steal an election they could not win. They lost fair and square and, I believe, at the end of the day, voters will do the right thing." Although Davis expressed gratitude for Dean's support, he did not reciprocate when asked whether he would support Dean's bid for the Democratic nomination for president. "I'm taking one election at a time," he said. Only after the October 7 recall vote will he decide whom to support for the Democratic presidential nomination, Davis said. But, he added about the former Vermont governor, "he has precisely the right experience to be president." The recall effort picked up steam when, shortly after he was elected to a second term as governor last year, Californians were told they faced a $38 billion deficit. Dean said it would be unfair to hold Davis wholly responsible for the state's budget deficit, which has since been pared to $8 billion. "The deficit that was incurred last year is directly traceable to the president of the United States' extraordinary financial policy in which he managed to turn the largest surplus in the history of America into the largest deficit in the history of America in only two-and-a-half years," he said. Davis said that since George W. Bush became president, the country has lost 3.3 million jobs, equivalent to 3,500 jobs per day. (Full story) Asked whether his presidential bid might be adversely affected by his support for Davis, Dean responded, "I don't care. My trademark is I say what I think, for better or for worse." He added, "I'm tired of having this country run by the right wing. That is not where most people are in this country, and I think we ought not to put up with this anymore." Asked whether he believed the White House was involved in the effort to unseat Davis, Dean said, "Absolutely. I think [Bush chief political adviser] Karl Rove and George Bush have their hand in this." The White House has said it is not involved in the race. Although Dean is the first of the nine Democratic presidential candidates to stump for Davis, all have signed a letter opposing the recall effort and others will soon follow Dean's lead, Davis predicted" Now you can start to understand why Dean is gaining such support among Democratic party activists. Will the other presidential candidates stand up and be counted? I'm waiting to see Kerry, Gephardt and Leiberman come out to California and stand next to Davis and call things the way they are!
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Yes. Apparently in California more voting = less democracy..
We owe thanks to Dr. Dean for providing the comic relief.
i dunno, ah-null is pretty funny.
Yes. You "dunno."
you're right...he is not funny at all.
He's funny in the sense that it says a lot about California that he's considered a serious candidate at all. He's not really funny in the "ha-ha" sense of the word.
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OH HELL YES!
"A vast right-wing conspiracy."
Actually, it's only half-vast.
I am surprised no one has made a film short called "Total Gubernatorial Recall" starring Arnold Schwartzenegger.
Good one! :-)
Such a film couldn't be shown on TV at the moment due to equal time provisions, but there have certainly been lots of "total recall" jokes here.
I got my sample ballot in the mail today. Listed right above Cruz Bustamonte, the Democratic Leutenant Governor, is "John Christopher Burton, Civil Rights Lawyer." A different John Burton is a powerful and well known state senator. Other famous names on the ballot include Edward Kennedy, a "businessman/educator;" Robert Dole, a "small business owner;" and Michael Jackson, a "satellite project manager." An engineer named S. Issa is also listed. Darrel Issa was the guy who organized the recall but dropped out of the replacement race. Also on the similar but not matching a famous name list are Dan Feinstein and Diana Foss, the only two candidates who don't list occupations. Porn star Mary Carey is listed as "Mary 'Mary Carey' Cook." Since all the candidates with names beginning with C are grouped together, and aren't in alphabetical order, that may not actually make it hard for her supporters (if she has any) to find her. Much press attention a month ago, and a few of the lawsuits trying to delay the recall, were centered around the consolodation of polling places to save preparation time. Indeed, while my usual polling place is a local elementary school, my polling place for the recall is listed as the garage of 1515 Francisco Street.
I've heard support for the recall is waning. Heh. Gray Davis will cite it as a mandate of support for his policies if it fails. I don't care; that would be better than the aftermath if the recall succeeds.
Gray Davis is a lousy governor. I'm just not sure any of the alternatives are less lousy. I heard on the radio yesterday that some Michigan legislators are suggesting amending the recall rules to only allow recall elections as part of a regularly scheduled election. This seems to be a move to prevent frivilous recalls from costing the state money.
I hope that effort fails. Recall is a way of removing someone -before- their term expires. Waiting for a regularly scheduled election may be fine for someone serving a four or six year term, but it's useless for someone on a two-year term.
re: "#220 (gull): . . .I heard on the radio yesterday that some Michigan legislators are suggesting amending the recall rules to only allow recall elections as part of a regularly scheduled election. This seems to be a move to prevent frivilous recalls from costing the state money." If you are implying that the CA recall vote is not being conducted in conjunction with a previously scheduled election, then we believe you are incorrect.
I don't have any problem with a recall vote ("election") being held as soon
as feasible. The part I find insane is holding a simultaneous "successor
election". I hope that Michigan has no such arrangement.
i believe that the whole recall effort is a rich republican GAME.
Re #223: I don't think that concept is bad, necessarily. Why wait? I do think that California set the bar for getting on the ballot a bit low. Ideally you'd want only serious candidates, not the ridiculous number that are on there now.
re 222:
The California recall vote is indeed a special election created just
for the recall. There are a couple of other ballot proposals on the ballot,
but they would have waited until later were it not for the recall election.
I hope Michigan's replacement-after-recall procedure is more sensible, too. I hope it takes more than -- what, 66? - signatures to get on the ballot, for example. I hope the replacement election takes place after the recall is complete. Better yet, I hope that there's a succession procedure where the lieutenant governor, House or Senate leader, 2nd leading vote getter from the previous election, or *someone* provides for an immediate replacement. I'm indifferent to whether there's a new election after that replacement slides into the job. I hope Michigan's recall procedure requires at least as much support as does electing the governor in the first place. You ought to have to be pretty awful to get recalled.
From: <BreakingNews@MAIL.CNN.COM> Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2003 13:20:05 -0400 Subject: CNN Breaking News -- Federal appeals court delays California gubernatorial recall election.
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That would only apply to North Carolina. ;-)
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I thought Georgia was heavy in goobers.
(Yeah, but, Goober and his brother Gomer lived in North Carolina.)
Might anyone know the amount of time that would elapse between the certification of the CA election results & the assumption of power by the newly elected governor - assuming Davis were to be recalled?
It's supposed to be immediate, but I don't know whether that means the next day, or the next minute, or what.
It would have to wait for the results to be certified, probably by a board of canvassers. We can expect the necessary people to be present at that meeting.
It's starting to look likely that the legal case over the use of punchcard systems in the recall election will reach the Supreme Court. This case uses reasoning from Bush v. Gore; it will be interesting to see if the Supreme Court upholds the same logic when the shoe is on the other foot, politically. If they vote to allow this election we'll know once and for all that the Bush v. Gore decision was a political, instead of a legal, decision.
Not so fast, please, Mr. gull: Thanks to Best of the Web, Opinionjournal.com: Disunity on the Angry Left By ordering the cancellation of next month's California election, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has gone too far even for some members of the Angry Left. Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law School has an op- ed in today's New York Times that distinguishes the case from Bush v. Gore, which the Ninth Circuiters mischievously cited as their chief precedent. "The present decision attacks states' rights at their very core," Ackerman writes. "The short election period is central to California's political integrity. Its constitution places a limit of six months on this extraordinary process. By extending the election beyond this period, the court condemns the state to an extended period of political paralysis." Ackerman even argues that the ruling is an infringement on political speech: [It] disrupts the core First Amendment freedom to present a coherent political message to voters. Worse yet, the decision disrupts the First Amendment interests of the millions of Californians who have participated in the recall effort. State law promised them a quick election if they completed their petitions by an August deadline. Now their effort will have to compete in March with the candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. A campaign focused on California issues may be swamped by national politics. What makes this extraordinary is that Ackerman is one of academia's shrillest critics of Bush v. Gore; as we noted in April 2001, he went so far as to liken that ruling to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. His willingness to rise above partisanship stands in stark contrast with the New York Times editorial page . . . .
While everyone gets all excited about this, my impression is that the decision is, in effect, getting an automatic appeal to a higher court, and the judges who made it knew very well that that would happen. Also that California was blowing off a *prior* binding agreement with the Feds by rushing this election through with the old chadware system. "It'll be appealed either way, Bob, so just flip a coin." Is there any real reason (beyond judicial aversion to grubby details) why they can't hustle in some less flakey voting hardware and run an election fairly soon?
the cost and logistics of training people to use a new system?
Lead time may be an issue, too. I doubt voting machines are mass produced in large quantities. They're probably built on demand.
Re: #240/241 Since the Chad-o-Matic voting stuff is in it's last days anyway, they'll have to train folks on the new stuff soon regardless. Getting the Office of the Undersecretary of the Department of Red Tape to speed up is often pretty easy when you can apply a lot of heat and light. Voting machines spend 'most all their lives in storage, waiting for an election day. I'd bet that stuff could be borrowed if really needed. Yes, getting a move on will cost more somewhere. But how high is the cost to California's economy of having the uncertainty hanging over everyone's heads for several extra months? Probably vastly more.
Why is there any cost of California's economy from "uncertainty"? The legislature and governor are still doing their jobs.
Why, yes. There most certainly would be. Risk averse capitalists will avoid establishing/expanding their CA businesses pending the outcome of the recall. (The problem, Mr. rcurl, has been due to the fact the the legislator and governor have not been "doing their jobs." Had they been, there would most certainly not have been a recall movement!)
Democracy is not alone run by "Risk averse capitalists". This was a contrived recall paid for by a right-winger. It's primary effect may be another recall if Davis is recalled and a Republican is elected. The recall cannot be good for California, economically or politically. California is now the laughing-stock of the nation. You think this is a good environment for investment?
California spends a lot of time being the butt of the nation's jokes, particularly where politics is concerned. I doubt they care about the affront to their dignity. And the recall campaign may have been begun by Darrell Issa but no matter how wealthy he happened to be there's no way one man could have moved the recall effort this far along without substantial public dissatisfaction with Gray Davis and the job he's done.
(Apparently, in CA only the communists should be able to exercise their consitutional rights.)
"Substantial public dissatisfaction" for causing a recall amounts to only 18% of the electorate. I didn't say the recall is unconstitutional, only that it did not have a substantial basis for being initiated, even though it met the legal requirement.
If you're right that only 18% of the electorate supports Davis' recall then he has hardly anything to worry about, wouldn't you agree?
Isn't that approximately the same percentage of the vote George Bush got in 2000 (and look what happened)?
Don't recent polls show that likely voters are split about 50/50 on whether to sack Davis? That strikes me as pretty substantial.
The 18% I quoted is the fraction of the electorate that signed the petition to create the recall. The fact alone that the recall was initiated should not be put forward as strong support for the recall. In fact, probably a significant fraction of that 18% voted to initiate the recall on the grounds that popular political action should be supported, whether one agrees with the objective or not. In addition, the approx 50% poll support favoring recalling the governor is how it looks now, but this is in the heat of expression of some dissatisfaction with the governor. It might shift if more people come to their senses.
I have signed for some initiative, for the right to vote on it, while not being in favor of the initiative.
With a threshold of only 18%, I expect all future California governors to be the subject of recall campaigns.
(After this . . . experience . . . I expect voters to be much more reluctant to sign recall petitions. I also expect the legislature to modify the enabling legislation, *especially* if a Republican ends up in the Governor's mansion: The folks in control won't want the same tool used against them.)
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 12:02:04 -0400 From: CNN Breaking News <BreakingNews@MAIL.CNN.COM> Subject: CNN Breaking News -- Federal appeals court rules that California recall election will proceed as scheduled on October 7.
Given the support shown in polls for the recall, it doesn't seem to me that the recall's existence shows that the number of valid petition signatures required was too low. Petition requrements are to keep things off the ballot that don't have a chance of passing. This clearly wasn't that. The replacement procedure is, however, a mess. Incidentally Darrel Issa (the guy who funded the recall petition drive with the intention of running for Governor, but then dropped out of the replacement race) gave a speech yesterday urging people to vote against the recall.
18% of California's population sounds like a lot of people to get signatures from. Was this the requirement, or was it something less?
> Incidentally Darrel Issa (the guy who funded the recall petition drive with > the intention of running for Governor, but then dropped out of the replacement > race) gave a speech yesterday urging people to vote against the recall. Heh.. You've gotta love it when something like this blows up in the instigator's face. It gives hope that there's still room for the public will to overcome the tremendous political influence of private money. It seems patently clear that when Issa began this process he thought he had a pretty reasonable chance of buying himself the governorship. Unfortunately for him his money didn't buy him as much control over the proces as he must have imagined it would.
HA HA!
re: "#257 (scg): . . . Incidentally Darrel Issa . . . gave a speech yesterday urging people to vote against the recall." According to report we heard, Mr. scg, this is a gross mischaracterization. Mr. Issa, we believe, stated that were the two primary Republican candidates remain in the race and split the vote, it would likely result in the recall succeeding, but election of Senor Bustamente as governor. For whatever his reasons, Issa prefers Davis to Bustamente (but certainly not to a Republican).
Yes, and for that reason he urged a no vote on the recall.
I think Issa has been deeply disappointed with the whole thing. He clearly thought that he would be the natural choice for governor if the recall succeeded. Since it became clear this won't be a way for him to buy his way into becoming governor, he's been having second thoughts.
No. This is incorrect. He is suggesting that either Ah-nold or Mr. McClintock bow out in order to elect a Republican. In the event that neither does so, he, apparently, prefers Mr. Davis over Senor Bustamente.
You have several choices: