California recall: A footnote from Georgy

Georgy Russell's Weblog has a cute story about her late-campaign encounter with Cruz Bustamonte in the Castro district of San Francisco:

one funny story from the campaign trail involves my encounter with cruz bustamante. during the campaign finale, cruz came up with the brilliant idea of doing "polaroid photostops" around town. the idea was that cruz would cruise around, pop into shops and ask random people if they wanted to pose for a polaroid with him, because he is just so, well, dashing!
(i mean really, at least use a camera phone. polaroids are super 80's.)

Read the whole thing. It's good.

Former Nixon speechwriter turned conservative columnist William Safire said on Friday's PBS Newshour about the recall: "Big interesting thing is the Hispanic vote. The Republicans got over 42 percent of the Spanish, the Hispanic vote against a Hispanic who was running. Now that augers very well for Republicans all over."

Get a clue, Safire. Latino voters don't just say, "Gol-lee, this guy's got a Latin-sounding name, we better vote for him." Bustamonte was a corporate-centrist clone, who was known for being tight with the big growers who rely on truckloads of illegal Latino laborers but oppose every measure to protect their rights as people or as workers. Bustamonte was never particularly popular among Latino voters, and probably couldn't win a Democratic gubernatorial primary. Especially not now, after his campaign was so weak.

Bustamonte won a big Latino vote because he was the Democratic replacement alternative to Schwarzenegger. If anything, Schwarzenegger's embrace of the anti-immigrant Pete Wilson's team and his opposition to the driver's license bill reminded Latino voters about why so many of them tend to vote Democratic.

Tags: california politics, california recall, cruz bustamonte, georgy russell, recall election