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

California Recall: More on Arnie and the Hitler Quote

To expand on my earlier post, I do not suggest that we judge Schwarzenegger primarily by some stupid comment he made 28 years ago. The quotation does seem to be well sourced, though Arnold denies having said it.

But in the decades following 1975, he willingly lent some of his Hollywood glitz to two of the most genuinely ugly figures in Austrian politics, former President Kurt Waldheim and the far-right leader and Hitler admirer Jörg Haider. In recent years, he distanced himself from Haider. And, to his credit, in 2000, when there was an international outcry over the inclusion of the Haider-led Freedom Party in Austria's national coalition government, he also criticized the inclusion of Haider's party. But given his vaguely defined political positions, people have reason to worry that Arnold, despite his "moderate Republican" posture, may have quite an authoritarian streak.

And at least according to the polls, that may be an issue of immediate practical concern to Californians soon. The Field Poll, which I understand has the best track record on California elections, is also showing the recall leading by 57%-39%, with Schwarzenegger the leading replacement candidate with a 36%-26% lead over Bustamonte.

Since the recall election is the first of its kind in California, the polling organizations face more uncertainty than usual. Also, the short campaign season compared to the year-long marathon in a normal gubernatorial election could mean that voters' decisions are more in flux than they would normally be this close to the vote. We'll see after the votes are counted which polls did the best measurements.

Tags: california politics, california recall, jörg haider, schwarzenegger

California Recall: Arnie and the Hitler Quote

The "money quote" will be all over the place by Friday morning. Here's ABC's version:

ABCNEWS obtained a copy of an unpublished book proposal with quotes from a verbatim transcript of an interview Schwarzenegger gave in 1975 while making the film Pumping Iron.

Asked who his heroes are, he answered, "I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it."

He is quoted as saying he wished he could have an experience, "like Hitler in the Nuremberg stadium. And have all those people scream at you and just being total agreement whatever you say."

I was surprised to see that two very partisan Democratic bloggers, Atrios and Hesiod, both kind of shrugged this off.

Come on, guys, this isn't something to fold on. Austrians may not typically have the more cosmopolitan perspective educated Germans might have. But they aren't morons. An Austrian who would say something like that in 1975 knew darn well what he was saying. In fact, if he had said something like that on Austrian television, there would at least be speculation on whether he had violated the country's anti-Nazi laws.

I have a photo from the 08/18/94 issue of Die Presse (Vienna) showing a smiling Schwarzenegger shaking hands with Austrian far-right leader Jörg Haider at the Austrian premiere of Arnold's film True Lies. The story is about the governor of Arnold's home province Styria making a deal with Haider's party over some hopelessly obscure office.

But it reminds me that Haider, notorious for his praise of the Third Reich, has never been publicly quoted as praising Hitler that explicitly. And Haider is a political pariah in most of the European Union for making less admiring comments about Hitler than that.

Austrian society tolerates anti-Semitism more than it should. But anybody that believes that was some harmless comment that any Austrian might have made in 1975 is way off base.

Tags: california politics, california recall, jörg haider, schwarzenegger

California and Non-Stop Elections

The delay of the California recall election is both good news and bad. It's good news because it's likely to increase the chance of the No-on-Recall vote. This recall is a frivolous use of the recall tool by the Republicans just because they didn't like the results of last year's Governor's election. A solid "No" vote would discourage repetitions of the tactic.

But a delay until March also means that the election campaign will go on for another six months. Permanent fund-raising is bad enough. Permanent elections are even worse.

California is famous for its initiative process. And the recall has reminded us dramatically of another "direct democracy" tool put in place by the Progressive movement a century ago. The problem is that democracy without responsibility can erode the general welfare as seriously as the corruption that the Progressives meant to combat - not least because the power of concentrated wealth can influence statewide initative votes just as it can legislative elections. As economist Laura Tyson points out:

The recall demonstrates that the toxic brew of money's influence in politics and the direct-democracy provisions of California's constitution have rendered the state ungovernable. As a result of several voter initaitives, about 70% of state spending is earmarked in advance, limiting the discretion necessary to make trade-offs in a crisis. In addition, California is one of only two states mandating a two-thirds supermajority of both legislative bodies to pass a budget. Even in normal times in a state as vast and diverse as California, the supermajority constraint gives an ideological minority effective veto power. Finally, compulsory six-to-eight-year term limits for California legislators - the result of another voter initiative - further undermine the budgetary process. Many legislators simply do not understand budgetary trade-offs and can esily fall prey to lobbyists.

In other words, we the people pass a lot of restrictions mandating how elected officials can govern. But when things go wrong, we don't blame ourselves, the public. We blame "the politicians" (as though it wasn't us that elect them!) and pass more restrictions. Tyson's conclusion: "California doesn't need a recall election. It doesn't need a celebrity governor. It needs an economic rebound and a new constitution."

Tags: california recall, laura tyson