NEWS

Opponents of Recall Misled Californians

By Steve Sexton
October 10, 2003

It may be too early to determine whether Tuesday’s landslide victory for Arnold Schwarzenegger marks a GOP realignment in California. But what is certain is that during the short two-month recall campaign, Democrats gave Californians ample reason to doubt their allegiance to the party of Gray Davis.

Everything Gray Davis and Cruz Bustamante and state party Chairman Art Torres told us this recall would be, it wasn’t. They said it was a right-wing attack on Davis, but it wasn’t. It was a popular uprising against a historically unpopular governor. One in four members of Davis’ own party voted to get rid of him and 53 percent of independent voters did the same.

They said the hastily called election would disenfranchise voters. Too few polling places, too confusing ballots, too little time. But they were wrong. Tuesday’s election produced record-high voter turnout—the highest turnout, in fact, in more than 20 years. Sixty percent of registered voters made it to the polls that the Democrats told us were too far away. That is 19 percent more than turned out to vote Gray Davis into his second term. And the Secretary of State’s office has said the election ran the smoothest of any in recent time.

They told us the recall was unfair and undemocratic. They scared us by telling us it would produce a new governor who would win only 20 percent of the vote. He would get fewer votes than Davis and yet take Davis’ job. But that’s not what happened at all. Arnold Schwarzenegger took a near majority of votes in a 132 candidate race. His 49 percent of the vote exceeds not only the 45 percent who voted to keep Davis in office on Tuesday, but also the 47 percent who re-elected him last November. Two-hundred thousand more people voted for Arnold in the recall election than voted for Davis in his re-election bid.

Democratic opposition to the recall was predictable. But the lengths to which Davis and Democratic hacks went to subvert the will of the people are telling. Thirteen times they went to court to try and stop the recall, which 55 percent of voters approved Tuesday.

In their defense of Davis and their opposition to the recall, Democrats have sounded outright undemocratic. It was Davis who quipped on the campaign trail that Schwarzenegger shouldn’t be allowed to be governor because he pronounces California as Caleeeforneeea.

On Wednesday, lamenting Schwarzenegger’s victory, Califonia Congresswoman and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called Tuesday a sad day for our state. “It shouldn't be that public officials have to watch their backs every moment for fear of recall,” she said.

But that’s exactly what we want: politicians watching their backs, not straying from the will of the people. We want accountability in governance and the recall gives us just that. Pelosi’s vision of a government that isn’t accountable to the people, should scare us all. That Davis thinks an accent is a greater disqualification for governor than five years of failed leadership should anger us all.

In the past weeks, they misled us. They tried to scare us. They tried to stop us.

And of course, as they are prone to do, they gave us another dose of puke politics. Failing to formulate a vision they could sell to Californians, they resorted to the politics of personal destruction. This time, though, they went up against a man too big, too strong to be brought down.

On Tuesday, voters said the greatest state in the country deserves a great governor.

Arnold Schwarzenegger may be the man to lead a realignment in California, much as another movie-actor turned politician did 30 years ago. Together with Tom McClintock, Arnold and the Republicans garnered 62 percent of the vote on Tuesday—a sign that California will make room for a California Republican Party that makes room for moderate Republicans like our governor-elect.

Copyright 2003, California Patriot Foundation