Tag: California

House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas announced his retirement today, after 14 terms representing Bakersfield, California, in the Congress. Thomas is leaving one of the most powerful positions in Congress to spend time with his family, which has given rise to speculation that he may be at the center of a scandal that is about to break.

Known for being dictatorial and foul tempereed, his signature moment was an altercation with Democratic Rep. Pete Stark in July 2003:

[Chairman Thomas] was in classic form when he presented Democrats a last-minute substitute bill they had not seen. When Democrats walked out to an adjoining room to plot strategy, Thomas ordered them out of that room. When they refused to leave, Thomas, in high pique, summoned the [Capitol Police to have them evicted].

Stark was likewise in full character when, as the lone Democrat remaining in the full committee to stall for time, he made a snide comment about Thomas’s intellect. When another Republican took issue, Stark dared him to fight and then called him a “fruitcake” and a “wimp,” repeating those terms frequently even as he apologized later for using them.

Bakersfield is about as Red State as it gets in Calfornia, and Kevin McCarthy, Republican leader in the California Assembly, has already announced that he will run for the seat.

“Believe me, I expected it to go faster. In a way this is an on-the-job training. I mean I did not go to school to become a governor.”

— Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, addressing California Republican state convention

In Washington, a “gaffe” is when someone accidentally speaks the truth. Gov. Schwarzenegger uttered this gaffe in front of a crowd of key constituents: the California Republican Party, at the statewide annual convention earlier this month.

Tim Russert replayed it when Schwarzenegger appeared on Meet the Press yesterday. When asked about the quote, Schwarzenegger appeared to dig his hole a bit deeper:

“[No one] can prepare for the job of being a governor until you’re there. And that’s when you all of a sudden see the kind of complexities.”

No one? Schwarzenegger’s principal advisor (and probably the source of volumes of bad advice) during the Recall campaign and his first year in office was former California governor Pete Wilson, a Republican who had spent a lifetime in public service, starting in the state Assembly, then as mayor of San Diego and as a U.S. Senator, before becoming governor.

As governor, Wilson led his party over a cliff by successfully using immigration as a wedge issue. He put the infamous Proposition 187 on the ballot to drive up rightwing votes in order to win reelection in 1994. It worked for Wilson, giving him another term in office but it moved millions of Latino voters into the Democratic Party, giving the Dems a decisive majority in the state and sending the California GOP into the wilderness.

As bad as Wilson was, his time in office now looks almost successful compared by the utter failure of his protege.

Or take the resume of Schwarzenegger’s immediate predecessor, Democrat Gray Davis: He served in the state Assembly, as chief of staff to Gov. Jerry Brown, as lieutenant governor under Wilson and then as governor.

Davis, who was also a Marine, proved to have wooden political instincts when it mattered — when he was under fire — and he was easily outgunned by Schwarzenegger’s end run around the state’s political system during the Recall campaign by limiting his interviews to national outlets like Entertainment Tonight and Oprah, where he was only asked softball questions.

After criticizing every action taken or proposed by Davis, once in office, Schwarzenegger’s approach to solving the state’s problems was fundamentally the same course Davis had charted.

Even with all their accumulated wisdom, California’s previous two governors were both left office with their reputations in tatters. Leave it to a movie star to think that he could do better than they did just by pretending to know what he’s doing.

Coming at you: California politics is experiencing another slow-mo earthquake that could upend the status quo of both political parties and send aftershocks across the country. The last seismic political trend out of California was the Reagan Revolution which began here in the 1960s. The rise of liberal-leaning independent voters could have a similarly dramatic effect on national politics, but this time it will be the leftwing that undergoes reinvention — and repackaging.

Recent voter registration trends in California show that such large numbers of voters are choosing no party affiliation — especially among younger voters — that over the next two decades, “none” could become the largest party in the state:

California voters are shedding their identification with the two major political parties so rapidly that if current trends continue, independent voters could outnumber Democrats and Republicans in the Golden State by 2025…

[…]

Name recognition: If you have never heard of Phil Angelides or Steve Westly, you are not alone — even if you live here in Calfornia, where both men are Democrats running for governor against … what’s his name? Oh yeah, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

According to a new poll, Angelides, a comparative no-name, is beating Gov. Schwarzenegger by one point:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) is in a virtual tie with State Treasurer Phil Angelides (D) in California’s 2006 gubernatorial election, according to a new Rasmussen Reports poll.

Angelides received the support of 41 percent of respondents and Schwarzenegger came in at 40 percent. This is “the third straight poll showing the gap between Angelides and Schwarzenegger as smaller than the survey margin of sampling error.”

In the other possible matchup, Schwarzenegger leads State Comptroller Steve Westly (D) 39 percent to 34 percent.

It isn’t as if Angelides and Westly are complete unknowns. They were both elected to high office in a state that only has a half dozen or so statewide positions. Still, they both have some work to do:

[A Los Angeles] Times poll last month showed that both Angelides and Westly are pretty obscure.

Asked their impression of Angelides, 72 percent of surveyed voters had none. And 82 percent had no impression of Westly.

It is too early to know but as things sit right now, the contest is Angelides to lose. Schwarzenegger has made some progress since his disastrous performance last year but every step he takes to appease the left alienates the 33 percent of hard rightwingers in the state.

What makes Angelides the frontrunner by a nose now is that he has something that neither of his opponents has: the endorsement of Sen. Dianne Feinstein — and he can take that to the bank.

How now, Mr. Prosecutor:

Lawyers for a death row inmate, including former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr, sent fake letters from jurors asking California’s governor to spare the man’s life, prosecutors said Friday.

The jurors denied they thought Michael Morales deserved clemency because some of the testimony at his trial may have been fabricated, said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

“We showed each person the declaration on their behalf and they all said they didn’t say that,” Barankin said.

San Joaquin County prosecutor Charles Schultz also said the letters sent to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week were “untrue” and “pure fiction.”

…On Friday, the San Joaquin District Attorney’s office sent Schwarzenegger a new batch of sworn statements from five of those jurors saying they not only still supported capital punishment for Morales, but had never spoken with the defense investigator who claimed to have secured their signatures…

Morales is scheduled to be executed Feb. 21 for the rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl in San Joaquin County 25 years ago.

A news fantasy: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested that he might reconsider legalizing gay marriage, if he had assurance that gay Californians would vote for him in his reelection bid this year.

The topic of gay marriage came up during a brief question-and-answer session with reporters Friday. Asked for his reaction to news earlier in the day that a Maryland judge had declared her state’s ban on gay marriage unconstitutional, the governor said he agreed with the decision — and added that he has now come to “regret” his veto of the California gay marriage law last year.

“At the time, I thought it was better for my political career to veto it,” Schwarzenegger said. “I regret that now because I could use every vote I can get. If the legislature sends me the bill again, I definitely would sign if if I thought gays would give me their vote. A lot of gay men worship my body. I want to be the governor for all the people.”

Asked what triggered his re-thinking, the governor said, “I saw ‘Brokeback Mountain.’ It haunted me for days.”

As bodybuilders go, Arnold Schwarzenegger was an okay actor. As actors go, Gov. Schwarzenegger is a terrible politician.

In fact, if you look at his record since he’s been in office, you might surmise that in his former career he was gymnast or sideshow contortionist.

On Monday, when he delivered his annual “State of the State” address, Schwarzenegger unveiled his latest trick: the 180 degree backflip. In this trick, the governor announced a plan to spend $222 billion on the state’s infrastructure over the next decade.

During the 2003 election to recall Gov. Gray Davis, the defining tenet of Schwarzenegger’s campaign for governor was fiscal responsibility in light of the state’s staggering $14 billion debt. In particular, he lambasted Davis’ plan to borrow money to solve this problem. Among other things, he also promised to fix California’s broken education system.

Once in office, not only did Schwarzenegger borrow money to resolve the debt – basically enacting Davis’ plan – he also to $2 billion out of the education budget which he has yet to pay back.

So now he’s proposing a spending spree. Granted, after 30 years of Republican governors, the California infrastructure is in terrible shape. But, as the Los Angeles Times reports today, the governor’s plan would create a mountain of debt as high as the Sierras:

Brad Williams, director of fiscal forecasting in the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, said that is the kind of ongoing spending — with no new revenue to pay for it — that can lead to budget problems when the economy falters.

“We are concerned about what these proposals will do to the state’s [deficit] problem,” he said.

“We had been making progress in bringing the budget into balance. Big spending increases and ongoing commitments would reverse some of that.”

[…]

Rough sledding ahead : Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is probably happy to see 2005 coming to an end. But after the trouncing his initiatives received in November’s special election, he enters 2006 in a much weakened position. The question now is, will the Democrats who control the Legislature step up to the plate:

“The power has shifted back to the Legislature,” said Assembly Majority Leader Dario Frommer (D-Glendale). “I think the Democrats are in the driver’s seat.”

Much of the core of the Democratic Party is disinclined to give the Republican governor any political victories that might help get him reelected next year, lawmakers and lobbyists say.

Labor unions, which have substantial influence over the Democratic majorities in the Assembly and Senate, are still furious with the governor for trying to weaken their benefits and political influence. Emboldened by their success in leading the fight against Schwarzenegger’s four initiatives last month, they are expected to adopt an even more aggressive posture when lawmakers return to Sacramento on Jan. 3.

“There’s going to be a lot of pressure not to do anything with the guy,” Frommer said. “You have a Legislature that, quite frankly, is not too happy with him. And you’ve got a Democratic Party and a lot of the constituencies that are pushing hard to keep the governor on the mat in order to set the stage for whomever the Democratic nominee is next year.”

He’s not too popular in his party, either. And this does not bode well:

Most GOP lawmakers are more conservative than Schwarzenegger, but he needs their support because two-thirds of the Legislature is required to pass the state budget and to put measures on the statewide ballot.

“The reality is, nothing gets done unless Arnold Schwarzenegger can persuade at least six Republicans in the Assembly and two in the Senate to go along,” said Tim Hodson, director of the Center for California Studies at Cal State Sacramento.

Assembly Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield said his members “think they will have a bigger say than they have had in the past, because the bigger issues that are going to hit this year are all two-thirds votes.”

If this stalemate plays out, leaving Arnold hamstrung and unable to get his way, it’s hard to see why he would chose to follow through on his run for re-election next year. After all, being a movie star is a whole lot easier and more fun than politics – not to mention a lot more lucrative.