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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 10/12/2003 9:32:22 PM PDT by ravinson
Marin woman dubbed 'mother of the recall'
Her San Francisco radio show ignited move to oust former Gov. Davis
By Con Garretson
It was the conversation heard around the state.
The chairman of California's Republican Party was being interviewed on a KSFO talk radio show last January about the state's economic ills. Asked what could be done, he suggested an idea that had been bandied about privately among political insiders: attempt a recall of Gov. Gray Davis.
Radio personality Melanie Morgan, who was working without her regular co-host that day, immediately lent her support to the idea and made it a daily issue on the top-rated morning drive-time radio talk show in the Bay Area.
"I knew instantly the idea was going to work," Morgan said in an interview at her Greenbrae home last week. "I knew that there was such a deep feeling of resentment toward Gov. Davis and the state Legislature that a recall would go, it would work. There was no question in my mind."
A week after the broadcast, the Web site www.recallgraydavis.com was on the Internet and recall petitions began circulating. Other conservative radio personalities picked up the cause, and support for the effort mushroomed.
Less than nine months after the impromptu on-air exchange, Davis was voted out of office.
The recall effort took on the momentum of an avalanche and many involved in the process credit Morgan for giving the political snowball its initial public shove.
Some have even dubbed her the "mother of the recall."
"It's a title that's certainly been given to me," she said. "It feels kind of weird when I see it and hear it, but there's no question this will be the thing I'm most proud of having accomplished being an activist and conservative in California."
Shawn Steel, a Los Angeles attorney who was in the final weeks of his state Republican Party chairmanship at the time, insists that the recall suggestion he made Jan. 20 on KSFO's "Rodgers and Morgan Show" was not a trial balloon and was instead an off-the-cuff remark.
"Melanie asked me, 'What are we going to do?' and I told her that some people had been talking about a recall," Steel said. "There was then three seconds of radio silence, and dead air is deadly in radio, but she was absorbing the idea and thinking about it and suddenly she came alive and was invigorated and said, 'We can do this!' The phone lines started flashing and the faxes started coming in."
Morgan's support for the recall went beyond the broadcast booth. She made several public appearances in support of the recall, but none in Marin - where more than two-thirds of voters opposed the recall.
"It would have been a waste of our resources," she said, adding that her 11-year-old son, C.J., collected 50 petition signatures in their neighborhood.
Morgan, who endorsed state Sen. Tom McClintock's candidacy early on, has never heard from Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger or anyone from his campaign. She chalks that up to on-air "spats" she has had with some of his top advisers, whom she said come from "the country club wing of the Republican Party."
"I always felt the whole thing was to recall Gray Davis and the candidates would sort themselves out," she said. "My point was my dog Bobo would make a better governor than Gray Davis."
Morgan, 47, said she was born into a liberal household but underwent a political conversion as an adult. She frequently clashes with her husband, Jack Swanson, a registered Democrat and member of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Although she lives in a county that shunned the recall, Morgan said she has a feel for the political pulse of the state that her neighbors lack.
"The voter tallies show that Marin voted two-to-one against the recall," she said. "It just shows me that Marin County is so disconnected from the rest of California. Values here are so different from those of ordinary people. Maybe it's the affluence. Maybe it's the self-absorption. ... It just strikes me that there is a huge disconnect."
Morgan said she has endured "nasty, ugly comments" and single-finger salutes around her home county in reaction to the pro-recall bumper sticker on her SUV, but she just shrugged off those reactions.
"That just shows how out of step people in Marin are," Steel said. "I'm sure that didn't bother Melanie. She's a warrior, and a good- looking one at that."
Morgan said she has no political aspirations of her own and intends to keep her bully pulpit behind a microphone.
"Everybody keeps asking me to do it (run for public office), but no, it's not my thing," she said. "My thing is really the nuts and bolts and the guts of political theater. It's so much fun being on talk radio. I have a blast doing it.
"Governance is incredibly boring and demanding and people are always yelling at you and pressuring you to do things you might not want to do. So I get to be the one who pressures and not the presuree."
After using her media influence to help bring down a state leader she found ineffective, what will Morgan do if Schwarzenegger doesn't follow through with his campaign promises?
"Then we'll turn on him," Morgan said with a laugh. "That's the beauty of being in talk radio. We can hold people accountable."
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Lee Rodgers and Melanie Morgan are heard in the mornings from 5 AM to 9 AM. Her husband, Jack Swanson, is (or was) the operations manager at the radio station. Their website (www.ksfo.com) doesn't easily identify management staff. She was the one who championed the cause of getting CalEPA-approved MTBE banned from our reformulated gasoline. Her bio page, by the way, carries a link to FreeRepublic! The "Melanie's Favorite Hate Emails" link is hilarious!
After using her media influence to help bring down a state leader she found ineffective, what will Morgan do if Schwarzenegger doesn't follow through with his campaign promises?
"Then we'll turn on him," Morgan said with a laugh. "That's the beauty of being in talk radio. We can hold people accountable."
Republican governor Pete Wilson hated KSFO. Conservatives were not too fond of Pete either on several issues like MTBE. Ms Morgan and KSFO folks organized more than one big rally at the state capitol building.
Except for a few "Party" radio hosts nationwide conservative talk radio is far more independent of the Republican Party than the "objective" mainstream media is "independent" of the Democrat Party. People who say otherwise prove that they do not really listen.
As a regular listener to the show, I can back that up. Lee Rodgers and Melanie Morgan are 100% independent. They say what they believe, and don't back down, even if it means Republicans must be targeted.
Longtime listeners remember how long before it became a national controversy, Rodgers and Morgan were pressuring then-Governor Pete Wilson to ban the carcinogenic gas additive MTBE. When the stuff -- as it tends to do -- leaked out of gas tanks all over California and poisoned drinking water sources, the Republican governor had egg all over his face. Softening the blow was the fact his wife was named to the board of an oil company.
During the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush -- through representatives -- refused to come on the show or the station. So did quintessential RINO Dick Riordan in 2002 in his disastrous run for Governor. Rodgers grills GOP boosters like Rich Galen of Mullings.com mercilessly. Mel suggested that McClintock run for governor long before the 2002 goober election.
They get it.
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