Day: October 26, 2006

Schwarzenegger Leads Angelides, 48% to 30%

Jon Ponder
Even in the Bay Area, the state’s most solidly Democratic stronghold, Schwarzenegger has pulled slightly ahead of his challenger.

California is about to make a huge mistake in reelecting Gov. Schwarzenegger. It’s like watching a train rushing headlong toward a bridge that has collapsed into a ravine:

State Treasurer Phil Angelides has failed to narrow Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s double-digit lead in the contest for governor, and Californians are leaning toward approval of all but one of the $43 billion in bond measures on the state’s Nov. 7 ballot, according to a poll released Wednesday…

In the race for governor, the poll found Schwarzenegger leading Angelides by 48 percent to 30 percent — statistically unchanged from the institute’s survey last month.

Angelides continues to suffer from lackluster support among Democrats despite his recent moves to spur enthusiasm among voters in his own party, according to the poll.

He has pledged to demand the return of California National Guard troops from the war in Iraq. He has hammered Schwarzenegger for supporting President Bush’s reelection in 2004. And he has run a TV ad telling viewers he was inspired to enter politics by the drive to dump another Republican president, Richard Nixon.

Yet the poll found that just 57 percent of Democrats back Angelides. Even in the Bay Area, the state’s most solidly Democratic stronghold, Schwarzenegger has pulled slightly ahead of his challenger.

By contrast, Schwarzenegger held 86 percent of the Republican vote. Independents, a crucial swing group, favored Schwarzenegger over Angelides by 43 percent to 24 percent.

NJ Supreme Court Issues Separate but Equal Ruling on Gay Marriage

Jon Ponder

Talk about a concept rendered quaint by the passage of time, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued a ruling yesterday that instructs the state legislature to create marriage-like legal arrangement for same sex couples. The ruling sounds suspiciously like an order to create a “separate but equal” class for gay Americans:

[The] court gives New Jersey lawmakers six months to create the necessary statutes for same-sex partnerships that are legally equivalent to marriage. Legislators may choose whether the partnerships are called “marriage” — or “civil unions,” as in Vermont.

“The Legislature has played a major role, along with the courts, in ushering marriage into the modern era,” [Justice Barry T.] Albin wrote. “The great engine for social change in this country has always been the democratic process. Although courts can ensure equal treatment, they cannot guarantee social acceptance, which must come through the evolving ethos of a maturing society.”

In 1896, the Supreme Court legalized racial segregation via Plessy vs. Ferguson, which ruled that states that were predominantly bigoted toward African-Americans could prohibit them from using public facilities but that “equal” facilities had to be provided for them. Over the next five decades, states that had been in, or were sympathetic to, the Confederacy had no problem dealing with the “separate” part of the ruling, but never even came close to mustering “equal” schools and other public facilities to blacks. Plessy was overturned, starting with Brown vs. the Board of Education in the 1950s and was put to rest legally with the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s.

Let’s hope it won’t take 50 years for Americans to get past their prejudice and fears on the issue of gay marriage.