In February 2003, I was approached by at least one group that was promoting the recall and asked to run for Governor should the recall get on the ballot.  I said no, I wasn’t ready for Governor, but I would do everything in my power to make sure the recall succeeded.

About three days later, I was one of two elected officials to speak at the first recall rally (Tom McClintock was the other), and spoke of the disaster that was created by Gray Davis in our state government.  As soon as I was done speaking, I went to an appointment I had with Darrell Issa, who was, I thought, thinking about running for U.S. Senate against Barbara Boxer in 2004.  Since I wanted to go to Congress at that time, and Congressman Issa’s seat covered my district, I thought it important to talk to him about his future plans.  We spoke, and he asked me what I thought about the recall.  I told him I thought it a good idea, but it would never qualify for the ballot.  We had strong grass roots support, but no money, and nothing like this would succeed without money.

He asked me if I thought that people would support him if he financed the recall.  I told him I believed McClintock would never back out, since Tom was now in with both feet in a run for Governor, but I told Congressman Issa most people would support Issa for Governor, if he paid for qualifying the recall.  I said I would definitely support him, and try to persuade others to do the same.  When I left, Issa was interested, but noncommittal.

Issa soon decided he would go for it, and put up the money, and what happened next was pure music.  Everything worked just like it should, and the recall qualified.  Issa was the key factor in making it happened, but the grass roots activists fell in behind, and everything worked like clockwork.

On several occasions during the qualification process, I spoke with Issa’s operatives to see if anyone knew what was happening with Arnold Schwarzenegger.  I had heard he was interested but I was assured he was not going to run,  Terminator 3 was coming out, and he was contractually bound to promote the movie.  Schwarzenegger definitely wasn’t running.  When Schwarzenegger joined the race, and Issa dropped out, I have to admit, I was very disappointed.  I still think Congressman Issa would have made a great governor.  It was not to be, however.

Issa was out, and Schwarzenegger and McClintock were in.  Bustamante joined in, and as an early supporter of the recall, I faced a dilemma.  I was closer to McClintock in philosophy, but believed he could not win, and thought he would pull just enough votes out of Schwarzenegger for a Bustamante win.  I believed that would destroy conservatism in California.  We would have won the recall, but guaranteed another eight years of a Democrat governor.  Moderates in the Republican party would use that fact to attempt to destroy conservatives in the party.  Since McClintock was pulling out, and seemed unconcerned about the potential harm to the movement a Bustamante governorship might have, I felt I had little choice.  Supporting Schwarzenegger would (and did) hurt me politically, but it would preserve the conservative movement.

I met with Schwarzenegger to talk about what he would do as Governor, especially on the issues of guns, babies and taxes.  He told me he was pro-choice, but that most of the issues on life were issues decided by the courts.  He said "I would like the judges he appointed" implying these judges would be strict constructionist type judges.  On guns, he said he was a gunowner, so he understood their issues, and he would not sign any more laws banning any more guns.  On taxes, he said he would control spending, and he "would never raise taxes."  Based on those promises, I supported him.

I was wrong.

Schwarzenegger started out great.  In his first year in office, he was doing great.  He submitted the best budget of any governor I had seen since my time in the legislature.  It was the smallest increase in spending in four decades, and promised a secure future.

Then it all started going downhill.  The first thing he did, at the end of his first year in office, was sign a bill that banned 50 caliber guns.  It was a direct breach of his promise to me.  He then came back with his initiative proposals.  While the idea of governing by initiatives was not a bad one, his consultants came up with four mediocre proposals, and one good one.  The mediocre proposals inspired no voters to support them, and the one good one generated millions in opposition.  The result?  Schwarzenegger’s consultants made lots of money, but he lost at the ballot box.  That was the end of the good times with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Soon after that campaign, Schwarzenegger hired Susan Kennedy to be his chief of staff.  Kennedy, a key Gray Davis staffer, was hired because Schwarzenegger said "she could make the trains run on time."  (That, of course, was the same thing they said about the fascist Mussolini when he ran Italy.  In politics, it is not always good to have the trains run on time, if they are going to the wrong station, which is where Kennedy was sure to take them).  I told Schwarzenegger hiring Kennedy was a huge mistake (thereby assuring that I would never get an appointment from the Governor, despite my early support of him), and that all he was doing was making sure he would be the second and third term of the Davis administration.  I told him I was sorry I supported the recall because of that.  The Governor defended his choice.

It turned out I was right.  From the time he hired Kennedy to the day he left office, his time as Governor became a disaster.  No one could distinguish him from Gray Davis.  He increased spending, increased regulation, increased taxes, and ultimately left unpopular and ineffective.  He specifically chose to ignore the advice of many of us who were his supporters in the recall, thinking he knew more about government than we did.  I was never a part of his inner circle, but tried to tell his people he was going down the wrong road.  His advisers were increasingly more liberal, and more big government, and ultimately he left the state in worse shape than when he arrived.  He broke all of his promises to me, but more important, he broke faith with the voters who supported him in the recall.  He did not clean up Sacramento as he had promised.  He just became a buff Gray Davis.

Worse than all of that, however, is that Republicans got the blame for his breach of faith.  He was, after all, one of us, or so the voters thought.  Republicans had gotten what they wanted, they asked voters to get rid of Gray Davis, and the voters trusted them, and trusted the choice Republicans had promoted as the replacement for Davis.  That replacement turned out to be a warmed over Gray Davis political clone.  When Jerry Brown attacked Meg Whitman for being a Schwarzenegger clone, it was the ultimate insult to the recall, and the principles the recall sought to promote.  Schwarzenegger had forgotten why he was elected, and, in the end, Republicans got the blame for it.

That is the disappointment of the recall.  In retrospect, it would have been better if we had left Gray Davis in place.  Davis would have destroyed the state, and Democrats would have gotten the blame, and then, maybe, a decent Republican could have replaced him, and tried to fix it.  Instead, Republicans, quite properly, got the blame for the current mess, because we promoted Schwarzenegger, and he turned out to be faithless.

The only good news is that the Democrats got what they wanted.  Most of the problems in this state were created by Jerry Brown when he was Governor, now he has to clean them up.  He won’t be able to, because his Democrat colleagues in the Legislature won’t let him.  By the time they are done, the Democrats in Sacramento will single handedly revive the California Republican Party.  The only question will be whether Republicans will have learned the lesson of the recall, and when they have the chance, whether they will allow a candidate who can really change Sacramento to become the party nominee.  Schwarzenegger taught us a difficult lesson.  The only question that remains is if we will learn anything from it. 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 5th, 2011 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.