California Recall Daily Thread: 57 Days To Go

In just 57 days, the people of California will choose a Governor and as a result set a course that will affect the future of the state and our country in profound ways.

This thread has been created to keep us all informed of the important developments.

I invite you to post all the major recall stories here or if it has already been posted, then add links to these posts. We welcome discussions of the candidates, the issues, campaign strategy, the polls, etc. Please be civil in your comments.

If you want to be added to a ping list on the recall please freepmail me and make sure you mention that you want to be added to the "recall ping list." I will ping you once daily at the start of the thread and occasionally if there is major breaking news.

More Than 190 File In California Recall

NewsMax.com
Monday, Aug. 11, 2003
California State Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi’s eleventh-hour bailout in that state’s controversial recall hardly thinned the ranks as the Recall candidates total grew to 193. That figure is up from original reports of over 150 and is reportedly owing to last-minute document sifting at the secretary of state’s office. Potential candidates had to make a filing deadline of 12:20 a.m. PT (3:20 a.m. ET) Sunday.
According to CNN, the elections officials had completed reviews of the paperwork of 55 candidates and were still reviewing 100 others. California’s secretary of state has until Wednesday to issue a final certified list of qualified candidates for the Oct. 7 race to replace Gov. Gray Davis.

Only a fraction of nearly 600 people who expressed interest in running have filed their papers to enter the race.

"I know firsthand that this recall election has become a circus," Garamendi said. "I have concluded I will not engage in this election as a candidate."

Garamendi and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante had declared their candidacies Thursday, despite promises not to run against fellow Democrat Davis, who wanted fellow party members to stay out of the race so he could concentrate on defeating the recall.

Meanwhile, Davis continues to fight to save his job, saying in an interview Saturday on CNN that has asked former President Bill Clinton to help him retain his position.

A CNN/Time poll released Saturday showed action star and Republican activist Arnold Schwarzenegger receiving the most support if Davis were recalled -- 25 percent of the vote. Bustamante followed with 15 percent, and State Sen. Tom McClintock, a Republican, was third with nine percent.

Former child actor Gary Coleman and Hustler Magazine czar Larry Flynt aside, the cast of usual suspects for the recall prominently features:

Democrat Cruz Miguel Bustamante, who has been the state’s lieutenant governor since 1999. He's the state's first Hispanic elected speaker of the Assembly, and the first Hispanic elected to statewide office in over 120 years.

Green Party member Peter Miguel Camejo was the Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president in 1976. Never elected to any office, as the Green gubernatorial candidate last fall, he garnered 5.3 percent of the vote. He focuses on issues such as solar energy, corporate responsibility and the poor.

Independent Arianna Huffington is a well known columnist, who also heads a nonprofit organization, The Detroit Project, that urges drivers to choose fuel-efficient vehicles. Divorced from U.S. Senate hopeful Michael Huffington, she has written nine books, including a biography of Pablo Picasso and the New York Times best seller "Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America."

Republican Thomas Miller McClintock has been a state senator since 2000 and has gained modest famed trying to nix the state's car tax and cut government waste. McClintock is running on a platform that includes tossing out $42 billion in "overpriced" electricity contracts negotiated by the Davis administration and instituting an Arizona-style workers compensation system that he maintains would cut costs by two-thirds.

Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was Mr. Olympia seven times, from 1970-1975 and in 1980. He pushed California Proposition 49, a state ballot initiative aimed at funding school programs and also is prominent in the Special Olympics. He is married to journalist Maria Shriver, a Democrat and Kennedy relative. Fuzzy as yet on the issues, he has promised to release position papers during the course of the campaign.

Republican William E. Simon Jr. was the Republican nominee for California governor in 2002. He is the eldest son of the late William E. Simon Sr., who was U.S. Treasury secretary under Presidents Nixon and Ford. His unsuccessful bid for the governor’s mansion was his first political adventure.

Republican Peter V. Ueberroth was president of Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, 1982-84, and commissioner of Major League Baseball from 1984-89. He has been Time magazine's Man of the Year. Currently he is the managing director of the Contrarian Group investment and management company in Newport Beach.

Oldest candidate honors go to Matilda Spak, 102, of Long Beach, California. Spak is sponsored by the 99 Cent stores, which is paying her $3,500 filing fee.

Vying for most eccentric: Kitty Lu, founder of the Drag Party, who arrived -- in drag -- at the Los Angeles County Registrar's office to turn in her papers.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/8/10/124121.shtml

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Clinton advising Gray Davis

August 10, 2003
BY JULIAN COMAN Advertisement

WASHINGTON--Faced with Arnold Schwarzenegger's bid for his job, California's beleaguered Gov. Gray Davis has turned to perhaps the only man in America who can save his skin.

Former President Bill Clinton has taken a hands-on role in the Democratic governor's campaign to help him try to avoid being recalled by voters. Close aides of Davis said the two men met privately for more than an hour last week in Chicago and are in daily telephone contact.

The former president apparently advised Davis to play the sober politician to Schwarzenegger's brash show business star.

"Davis and Clinton are friends, and Bill is giving him all the help that he can," one prominent California Democrat said. "The Chicago meeting was an important strategy session. They've been discussing the themes that Gray needs to push in his campaign, the problem of fund-raising, and how to get help for the governor at a national level."

Another senior Democrat confirmed: "Clinton has been [to California] a couple of times and is managing the whole deal by phone. If Davis survives, he'll owe it to the Clintons. Then, if Hillary jumps into the presidential race, she'll have the California delegates locked up as well as the ones in New York."

As the unfolding political circus prompts a mixture of amusement and consternation across the country, Clinton has advised the bruised governor to present a businesslike image in the lead-up to the Oct. 7 recall vote. If Davis fails to get a majority vote of confidence on that date, it will trigger a second vote to elect another governor from a field of at least 51 candidates.

Scores of Californians took the once-in-a-lifetime shot to run for governor Saturday as Democrats successfully whittled their own field to one major backup candidate in case Davis is ousted.

Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi dropped out two hours before the filing deadline, leaving Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante as the only prominent Democrat on the ballot. That raised hopes of keeping the governor's office in party hands if the unpopular governor is voted out. If voters turn Davis out, Bustamante will compete against a field that includes last year's gubernatorial runner-up, Bill Simon; actor Arnold Schwarzenegger; former baseball czar Peter Ueberroth--all Republicans--and columnist Arianna Huffington, an independent.

The field also includes former child actor Gary Coleman; comedian Gallagher; porn czar Larry Flynt and Angelyne, a buxom artist whose likeness appears on billboards around Los Angeles.

Despite the onslaught of wannabes aiming to run the state, Davis remained confident Saturday.

''Many people are trying to become the governor. I am the governor,'' Davis said to laughter after a bill signing at a health clinic in Santa Monica. ''Whether the people of the state want me to stay 60 days or 3-1/2 years--as hopefully they will eventually decide--I am going to do my level best to improve their lives every day I have.''

Voter anger has been building since the state's 2000-2001 energy crisis. Since then, Californians have witnessed the decline of the state's technology sector and a record $38 billion budget deficit, which triggered a tripling of the vehicle tax, forced college fees to rise as much as 30 percent and has threatened state employees with layoffs and pay cuts.

Saturday was the deadline for filing candidacy papers. The official number of candidates who will appear on the ballot won't be until released until Wednesday.

Sunday Telegraph, with AP contributing

http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-aside10s1.html

Schwarzenegger opens at No. 1, poll shows

By Martin Kasindorf, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — If California's recall election were held today, Democrat Gray Davis would be swept out as governor and Republican political rookie Arnold Schwarzenegger would be swept in.

That's the finding of a CNN/USA TODAY/Gallup Poll of registered voters at the start of an eight-week campaign that shapes up as one of the wildest in U.S. history.

Davis, criticized for his handling of California's budget and energy crises, has a lot of explaining to do if he is to win back voters before the recall election Oct. 7. In the survey of 801 California registered voters taken Thursday, Friday and Sunday, 64% — including 40% of Democrats — say Davis should be removed from office. Only 29% say he should serve the remaining 39 months of his second four-year term. If Californians reject Davis, he will become the first U.S. governor to be recalled since North Dakota's Lynn Frazier in 1921.

Schwarzenegger muscled into a big early lead on the motley list of candidates to step into Davis' job if he is recalled. A near-majority of the voters surveyed — 42% — say there's a very good or good chance they will go for the Hollywood leading man.

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the only well-known Democrat running, stands a distant second. He is followed by two GOP conservatives, state Sen. Tom McClintock and businessman Bill Simon, who lost to Davis last November.

Trailing them in the poll: former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth, a Republican campaigning as an independent; columnist-author Arianna Huffington; Peter Camejo of the Green Party; Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, and former sitcom star Gary Coleman. The poll has a margin of error of +/-4 percentage points.

Californians will face two questions on the ballot. The first will ask whether Davis should be recalled. The second will give voters, regardless of how they vote on the first question, a choice of potential replacements if Davis fails to persuade 50% to keep him. The list will be daunting. Election officials say that 158 people filed to run. In a carnival atmosphere at county registrar offices Saturday, last-minute candidates included a porn star, a TV comedy writer and a 100-year-old woman whose filing fee was paid by the 99-Cent Stores. Officials will announce Wednesday how many actually qualified. It takes as few as 65 validated voters' signatures and a $3,500 check.

With the field of credible hopefuls now known, the campaigns are devising strategies. Davis, 60, is all alone on his part of the ballot, but well-financed recall committees and most of the succession candidates will zing him. He'll have to decide how personal his counterattacks will get. Right now, he's stressing the election's zaniness and $70 million cost — and the possibility that an inexperienced newcomer such as Schwarzenegger could take over in Sacramento by getting only about 15% of the vote.

Davis, McClintock and Simon already have gibed at Schwarzenegger's modest political record. Election officials say the actor has voted in only two of the past eight statewide elections. He sponsored a successful ballot initiative last November to increase spending on after-school programs for kids.

Schwarzenegger has endorsed Republican candidates in past elections. He campaigned for the first President Bush in 1992, giving the current President Bush warm feelings toward him, a White House official says. That might account for Bush's statement to reporters at his Texas ranch Friday that he thinks Schwarzenegger "would be a good governor." White House officials say Bush won't campaign for any Republican in the recall election.

Schwarzenegger, 56, has dominated news accounts of the recall since he made his surprise announcement that he would run to NBC's Jay Leno on Wednesday. Now he's on the cover of Time and Newsweek. Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, a former California governor and a Democrat, told CNN on Sunday that Schwarzenegger "is on top. It's his to lose."

Schwarzenegger, who has yet to specify how he would handle California's budget, housing and education problems, appeals to voters of all ages and ideologies, the CNN/USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows. Even among Democrats, he trails Bustamante by only 6 points.

Building his own base of Democrats, GOP moderates and younger, first-time voters is crucial for Schwarzenegger. He can't count on the conservative core of California's Republican Party. Simon and McClintock will remind conservatives of Schwarzenegger's liberal views on abortion rights, gun control and environmental regulation.

Davis' strategy of keeping other Democrats off the ballot collapsed after Schwarzenegger entered the race. Though the popular Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., decided not to run, Bustamante and state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi jumped in. Organized-labor leaders and other Democratic Party insiders pressured Garamendi to withdraw Saturday so the party could unite behind a single backup candidate.

On NBC's Meet the Press, Feinstein hinted Sunday for a second time that she could decide to run as a write-in candidate. The deadline for filing for such a candidacy is Sept. 23.

Bustamante, 50, has to make a tricky dual argument to voters. He must urge Democrats to vote for him but at the same time portray himself as a loyal Democrat who is urging a "no" on dumping Davis. Many Hispanic Democrats may vote against Davis because they welcome the prospect of Bustamante becoming California's first Hispanic governor since 1875.

Ueberroth, 65, competes with Bustamante and Schwarzenegger for independents and moderates. Ueberroth, Time Man of the Year in 1984, organized that year's Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, then ran baseball for five years. He is positioning himself as a serious-minded reformer with bipartisan appeal. He'll use his Olympic cachet without stint. Dan Schnur, his campaign strategist, promises: "You'll see more references to gold medals and passing torches than you ever thought possible."

Contributing: John Ritter in San Francisco; Laurence McQuillan in Crawford, Texas; and Judy Keen in Washington

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/2003-08-10-recall_x.htm

Dilemma deepens for Calif. Democrats

Rebuffed in efforts to paint the recall as a right-wing coup, they now lack a strong candidate in a replacement field of 155.

By Dick Polman
Inquirer Staff Writer
Philly.com 8.11.2003

With just 57 days left on the campaign clock, it is now glaringly apparent that California Democrats have no consensus strategy for saving their governor from being thrown out of office, and quite possibly replaced by an actor who has committed an estimated 500 on-screen killings.

With Arnold Schwarzenegger ascending, and Gov. Gray Davis descending, Democrats seem incapable of getting their act together, because their anti-recall firewall has collapsed. If they don't recoup quickly, the twice-elected Davis seems poised to become the first California governor to be ousted since the recall provision was enacted 92 years ago. That could leave the GOP in charge of a state that boasts the world's sixth-largest economy.

Five weeks ago, when it first became clear that the recall election was going to happen, thanks to a massive petition drive, the Democrats came up with a strategy: Stand in solidarity with Davis, and paint the Oct. 7 recall as an attempted coup by "extreme right-wingers" - a reference to conservative California congressman Darrell E. Issa, who bankrolled the petition drive from the millions he made in the car-alarm business.

The Democrats hawked that argument for weeks. But it didn't sell - not even with Democratic voters. In early July, a poll reported that 51 percent of all Californians, including 33 percent of Democrats, wanted Davis gone. Now, a new survey sponsored by CNN and Time magazine puts those numbers at 54 percent and 39 percent, respectively. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

And now Democrats are faced with a "replacement" ballot that undermines their defense strategy. The roster of candidates who would replace Davis - assuming a majority of voters first vote yes on a recall - does not jibe with the Democratic portrait of a right-wing coup.

The filing deadline for candidates was Saturday, so the field is complete and Issa, contrary to expectations, will not be a candidate. His presence as chief recall bankroller had been an early boon to the Democrats.

But now, as Issa said yesterday on NBC's Meet the Press, "Gov. Davis' weeks of pounding on me... needed to be taken out of the mix."

It's tougher for the Democrats to paint the recall as an attempted right-wing coup if its financier is out of the frame. As Issa pointed out, the remaining candidates on the ballot "have no connection" to the recall's origins.

Also, a number of the replacement candidates - Schwarzenegger, political commentator Arianna Huffington, and ex-baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth - don't fit the right-wing profile. Ueberroth, who organized the 1984 Olympics, is a centrist businessman. Huffington is running as a left-leaning populist. And Schwarzenegger is liberal on gun control, gay rights and abortion rights.

Democrats had recently hinted that Schwarzenegger could be tarred with guilt by association. Democratic spokesman Carroll Wills warned last month: "If you participate in a process created with the intent of implementing a conservative coup d'etat, then no matter what your individual politics are, you've thrown in with the right wing."

But when various Democrats took to the airwaves yesterday morning, none of them raised that argument against Schwarzenegger. Instead, they made passing references to his inexperience, and they complained that the movie star was getting too much media attention.

The bottom line: They're unsure how to handle the guy. The polling data indicate that he could pull Democratic voters. And his wife, Maria Shriver, a member of the Kennedy clan, is pitching that message.

Democrats have an internal headache, too. The original plan was to ensure that no Democrat would appear on the replacement ballot; if that happened, it would undercut the party line that the recall was wrong and that Davis was worth saving.

When California Democratic strategist Bob Mulholland was asked on July 7 whether any Democrat would break ranks and muddy the party message, he barked, "It won't happen."

It happened.

Davis' lieutenant governor, Cruz M. Bustamante, is on the ballot, offering himself as a replacement in case the recall passes. And, in another indicator of disunity, he was attacked on Meet the Press by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.): "It's somehow difficult to say, 'Don't vote for the recall, but if you do, vote for me.' There is some hypocrisy in that."

Bustamante defended himself on ABC's This Week. His basic plan squares with Feinstein's depiction: He will campaign against himself, urging a no vote on the recall ("it's bad for politics"), while touting his own bona fides, just in case Davis gets dumped. He called this "a viable two-pronged strategy" for the party.

Bustamante's problem is that most Californians, who are inattentive to state politics, don't know who he is. Of all replacement candidates in the new poll, he draws only 15 percent of the voters. That's a distant second place. Schwarzenegger tops the field with 25 percent. With 155 candidates on the replacement ballot, 25 percent might be more than enough to win.

Another Democratic strategy would be to pepper Schwarzenegger with negative attacks - that has long been Davis' preferred mode of campaigning - but there's no consensus for that. The Democratic attorney general, Bill Lockyer, has warned Davis not to practice "puke politics."

So the latest Democratic strategy appears to hinge on the hope that Californians will come to their senses about the recall, and that the media will quiz Schwarzenegger closely about the budget, drugs, agriculture, suburban sprawl, water rights, immigration and smog. He has said virtually nothing about those core issues, and he was AWOL from the Sunday talk shows.

Will he even make himself available? The recall questions are endless. Will Democrats panic anew, and urge Feinstein to jump in as a write-in candidate (deadline, Sept. 23)? Will they pressure Davis to quit ahead of the recall? Can registrars design a coherent punch-card ballot that has 155 candidates? Will voters heed the registrars' written advice not to leave "hanging chads"?

It is for these reasons, and more, that comic Bill Maher has dubbed the recall campaign "the 2003 Monologue Assistance Act."

Contact Dick Polman at 215-854-4430 or dpolman@phillynews.com.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/6505554.htm

Total California Recall

By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 11, 2003

From the outset the California recall was a bad idea for Republicans. It was a lose, lose, lose situation. Without the recall Republicans would have contended for an open seat in 2006 against a non-incumbent Democrat running on a crippled legacy. The recall introduced three basic possibilities into this mix, all of them bad.

The first of these would be a defeat of the recall and hence a win for the Democrats. The second would be a victory for the recall but the election of a Democrat to replace Davis, forcing Republicans to face an incumbent in 2006. The third would be a victory for the recall and a Republican governor. Ironically, this would have created the possibility for the worst scenario of all.

The victory of a Republican would have meant a conservative governor with a plurality of 20 percent. Even this would probably be optimistic since Republicans notoriously lack discipline, guaranteeing a full Republican field. Thus a conservative victory would set up a conservative disaster.

If Issa, Simon or McClintock had indeed won with 20 percent of the vote, he would have absolutely no mandate to govern. He would inherit a $38 billion deficit. He would face an overwhelming Democrat majority in the state legislature and the press. Moreover, being an isolated conservative with a small constituency, he would be unable to counter these disadvantages by going over the heads of the legislature and the media to the public to promote his agenda. He would have no popular base in the state. Thus, he would have no option to reduce the deficit by cutting the programs and payrolls fattened in the Davis years as the economy and state revenues were bottoming.

In other words a Republican victory would have led to the discrediting of fiscal conservatism and the prospect of twenty years of unchallenged liberal Democratic rule.

But the entrance of Arnold Schwarzenegger into the race has changed all that. Suddenly Republicans have an opportunity to take back the governorship, revive their all but dead party, and make themselves competitive again in the Golden State.

To understand this one must first understand that Schwarzenegger is above all a "modern" candidate (I borrow this term from Democratic strategist Michael Berman, who wickedly defines it as being pro-choice, anti-cigarette companies and believing that God is a tree). The last Republican Governor, Pete Wilson, if not entirely modern in this sense, was nonetheless a pro-choice, social moderate, He put together an electoral majority by taking two conservative issues which some modernists covertly support -- opposition to racial preferences and illegal immigration and forging a winning majority behind them.

Nearly a decade of statewide electoral contests since Wilson's retirement have shown that no candidate can win statewide office in California -- any statewide office -- who is not "modern." The insipid Gray Davis beat a pro-life typically starched Republican conservative, Dan Lungren, in a 1996 landslide election that took down the entire state Republican Party. In the wake of the Davis's tsunami, Republicans were left with two minor statewide offices. One of the offices was held by a crook, who had to resign. Now Republicans hold none.

Four years later, Barbara Boxer -- unpopular even with Democrats -- beat Matt Fong over the gay issue and with a phony but effective attack that represented him as an anti-environmental extremist. George Bush who is pro-life and does not believe that God is a tree, lost to Al Gore by a million votes in the same election despite a campaign of "compassionate conservatism." The Gore camp did not have to spend a penny in the state to win. Then in 2002 a hugely unpopular Gray Davis thrashed conservative Bill Simon despite droves of Democrats who sat on their hands because they could not bring themselves to even hold their noses and vote for the incumbent. These results should show anyone who cares to look that the California electorate does not resonate with social conservatism and will not vote for anyone who isn't "modern."

Another term for "modern" might be "cool." John McCain is a cool Republican and could have carried the state in 2000 if the Republican primary electorate had not preferred George Bush.

Now comes Arnold Schwarzenegger a fiscal and national security conservative who is the epitome of cool. Suddenly Republicans have become people that Hollywood not only wants to know, but already does know. And respect. With Arnold's entry into the race the political landscape of California -- and beyond it the nation -- has changed.

I am amazed at Democrats who have been quoted saying that Schwarzenegger can be damaged with references to possible amorous indiscretions and dalliances with Sixties recreational substances. Californians will love him for that -- or forgive him. I am more amazed at Dick Morris who thinks that Arnold's celebrity has peaked. It is only beginning. He is one of the few actors in Hollywood that the American public regards as serious person, a shrewd businessman and a master of his own image. Perfect credentials for a prospective governor.

I am less amazed at conservative Republicans who still don't get it (because that's actually what Republicans are famous for) and are still in the race. As previously noted, even if a Republican candidate like Tom McClintock or Bill Simon could win the plurality to become governor, which they can't, their administration would be a disaster -- for them, for Republicans and for their conservative cause. If conservatives want to make California a conservative state they need to lay a lot more groundwork for that to be possible.

Arnold's is a dream candidacy for the Republican Party, which he alone can rescue from the dead. He has already made Republicans more user friendly to the public at large. He will make it easier for media talent in the state to relate to the Republican Party, which has ramifications for campaigns beyond California. He will inspire significant numbers of independents to vote for his party. And if he is elected -- unlike the conservatives biting at his heels -- he will be a formidable counter-balance to the Democratic legislature, which means he could actually improve the financial condition of the state.

If Governor Schwarzenegger were to do the right thing -- for example veto Democratic attempts to protect their expensive programs -- he would be in a position politically to resist their override. He could just take his enormous popularity and media presence into their individual senatorial and assembly districts and immediately threaten their electoral futures, so great is his popularity and media presence. Of course politics has its uncertainties and unseen pitfalls and no one knows if Arnold will be able to navigate them successfully. But if he manages to do so and win, he will actually have a chance to revive the state and run for a second term.

Even more important, Governor Schwarzenegger would change the political equation for the next presidential contest in 2004. A Bush 2004 campaign with Arnold as the President's point man in the state would unquestionably turn it into a competitive affair. This means that even if Bush does not ultimately win the state, the Democrats will have to pour big dollars into the state to contest the election. The drain of money and resources will impact close races across the country.

For all these reasons Republicans of all factions should rejoice at the Schwarzenegger candidacy. It offers the only possibility of a win for state Republicans or for the Bush campaign in California. It will help to revive the California Republican Party. And it could reshape the politics of the nation.

David Horowitz is the author of numerous books including an autobiography, Radical Son, which has been described as “the first great autobiography of his generation,” and which chronicles his odyssey from radical activism to the current positions he holds. Among his other books are The Politics of Bad Faith and The Art of Political War. The Art of Political War was described by White House political strategist Karl Rove as “the perfect guide to winning on the political battlefield.” Horowitz’s latest book, Uncivil Wars, was published in January this year, and chronicles his crusade against intolerance and racial McCarthyism on college campuses last spring. Click here to read more about David

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9320

Bustamante: The Racist in the Race?

By Lowell Ponte
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 11, 2003

HIS FAMILY NAME CAN MEAN “GRAVE DIGGER” IN THE SPAIN his ancestors left to become colonizers and exploiters of Mexico.

Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante, having broken his promise not to put his name on the October 7th recall ballot as a candidate to replace fellow Democrat Gray Davis, has emerged as his party’s last best hope to retain control of California’s governorship.

This race’s first Time/CNN poll shows Bustamante besting all Republicans on the ballot except Arnold Schwarzenegger (“Black Plowman” in Austrian German), to whom he would lose today by 10 points.

With what he calls “two bruising months” to smear the Hollywood star before the election, Bustamante could win. Or this mistake-prone, erratic politician could lose badly and in the process dig a hole so deep that he could bury California’s Democratic Party for decades to come.

Who is this round-faced, balding 50-year-old pol from the farmlands of California’s Central Valley, where a large share of America’s nuts and fruits are grown?

The oldest of six children, Cruz Bustamante grew up south of Fresno, California, with his siblings, mother Dominga and father Cruz, a barber and, briefly, local City Councilman. They shared the home with his grandparents on both sides of the family from Chihuahua and Zacatecas in north-central Mexico. (One of Mexico’s notorious presidents, 1837-1839 & 1839-1841, had been Anastasio Bustamante.)

In this agricultural region that some call the once-and-future Mexifornia, little Cruz prior to kindergarten spoke nothing but Spanish. As a politician he reportedly has voiced regrets about losing perfect fluency in it and said he wants to make frequent trips to Mexico to regain it.

When he attended local Tranquillity High School, as Bustamante told LatinoLink reporter Fernando Quintero in 1999, “You noticed the differences between everyone there, and you had to take sides. You were either a good Mexican kid or a coconut [‘brown on the outside, white on the inside’].”

This was the era when, amid cries of La Raza, “the race,” United Farm Workers fought growers and then the Teamsters Union for control of farm fields in California’s heartland. Those pickers who dared to question UFW caudillo Cesar Chavez risked a visit by thugs at midnight who would leave them with smashed faces and broken arms as the leftist union tried to force racial polarization and political radicalization down Latino throats.

After high school, Bustamante began studies at Fresno City College to become a butcher. He dropped out before earning his degree.

His father persuaded local Congressman B.F. Sisk to make Cruz an intern in Washington, D.C. The experience ignited in Bustamante a passion for politics and power.

“I was like a kid in a candy store…” he told Quintero. “I found that I could call an agency and make things happen. That was very exciting for me.”

To another reporter he said of his internship: “I discovered that I was much better at cutting red tape than at cutting meat.”

Returning home, Bustamante began attending Fresno State University, where he also failed to graduate but immersed himself in local and student politics, including the racial activism of MEChA, a group whose name is an acronym for “Moviemiento Estudiantil Chicano de AZTLAN,” the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan.

“I wasn’t the most radical Mechista,” says Bustamante nowadays. Perhaps not, but he was a member of MEChA and has refused all requests that he dissociate himself from its values and ideas.

As its critics might argue, to say you were not “the most radical Mechista” is a bit like saying you were not “the most radical Nazi.” Just to have been a Nazi, however “moderate,” is radical, socialist and evil enough to warrant condemnation.

Like Nazism, MEChA has acquired more than a tinge of racism. In their tactics to advance Latinos and “La Raza,” many of its activists have directed racist attacks against not only white-skinned Anglos but also against blacks, Asian-Americans and Jews – in fact, against every non-Latino group.

The “A” in MEChA stands for “Aztlan,” their word for the entire southwestern United States from Texas to California and from the Mexican border to the Canadian border, lost in war or sold by Mexico to the U.S. Mechistas aim to reclaim all this land for Mexico in a new reconquista, a “reconquest” like the re-taking of Spain from Moorish Muslims by Roman Catholics that was completed in 1492.

In 1996 and 2000, then Vice President Al Gore worked closely with the Southwest Voter Registration Project to register Hispanic voters as Democrats. Gore appeared with project leaders who as they shook his hand were wearing the brown berets of Aztlan symbolic of the Mechista crusade to restore Mexican control to all once-Mexican land.

Again, Bustamante has refused to distance himself in any way from MEChA and its desire to return Aztlan to Mexico. Does he see himself running to become governor of one of the United States – or of the regained Mexican state of Alta California, as the Spanish called the upper counterpart to Baja California in Mexico? This is something he should be asked about by voters and the press at every public appearance.

After telling reporters at a press conference, “We could not conduct business without the immigrant,” the then-Assemblyman was asked if he supported illegal immigration, Bustamante replied: “My district requires it.” Thereafter for a time he restricted his press conferences to Spanish language media.

Bustamante’s political success is one symptom of America’s largest, fastest-growing Hispanic minority. In California Hispanic-Americans today make up about one-third of the population, and Anglo whites are now less than 50 percent of this state’s residents.

(Blacks comprise only eight percent of California’s population but hold 11 percent of all government jobs, nearly 50 percent more than what advocates of racial apportionment would call their “fair share.” Blacks, even more than whites, are immediately threatened in their neighborhoods, jobs and future by the growing rival Hispanic minority manifest in Bustamante.)

The first Hispanic elected statewide in 120 years, Bustamante throughout his political career has urged Latinos to vote for him in ethnic solidarity. Last year he was the “poster child” running mate Governor Gray Davis embraced in campaign ads aimed at this community. How ironic it is that Bustamante has now dug Davis’ grave by giving Democrats an alternative on the October 7th ballot.

Bustamante built his early career not only on brown skin, however, but also on green cash. A skilled fundraiser for Democrat politicians, he in 1993 was rewarded with a safe Democratic seat in the Assembly from Fresno. In 1996 he was elevated to Speaker of this lower house of the California legislature when veteran Speaker Willy Brown, now San Francisco Mayor, was pushed out by a new term limits law.

This law turned California politics into a game of musical chairs, forcing career politicians to jump from one job to another. When he was term-limited out of the Assembly, Bustamante won election in 1998 to the lucrative but usually unimportant job of Lieutenant Governor.

In a “Freudian slip” during a 2001 speech, Cruz Bustamante may have revealed just how much MEChA-like racism continues to infect his own mind.

On February 9, 2001, during a Black History Month speech before 400 members of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Bustamante casually referred to an African-American labor organization as the “Nigger” labor organization, using the evil “N” word and continuing obliviously with his speech for another 10 minutes while up to 100 outraged listeners rose and left the room.

Bustamante then stopped and apologized for what he called his “slip.” Black activists like the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who would have demanded the head of any Republican politician who used the “N” word, uttered no criticism of Bustamante. The nation’s leftist press largely ignored the issue, as it had when former Ku Klux Klan leader Robert Byrd, D-WV, used the same vile epithet on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

“You don’t make a slip like that,” said audience member Gwendalyn Bello, “unless it is something you say normally.”

“What was troublesome to a lot of people,” said San Francisco labor organizer and state president of the A. Phillip Randolph Institute James Bryant, “was that the word came out very naturally.”

Perhaps Mr. Bryant did not know that Bustamante had formed his ideas about race as a Mechista.

Bustamante’s first name Cruz is the Spanish word for “Cross.” This embustero’s true name should be Doblecruz, “doublecross,” to remind people of his tendency to betray and backstab onetime allies.

With the recall movement against his ally Governor Gray Davis on the verge of success, Bustamante shocked fellow Democrats by proposing that he would allow a statewide vote to recall the Governor – but, by ignoring what the state constitution clearly requires, would forbid any vote to replace Davis.

By this de facto coup d’etat, boasted Bustamante, the Governor’s office would become vacant and he as Lt. Governor then would automatically become the new Governor. All that would be needed to guarantee continued Democratic control of this office, said Bustamante, was approval by an obscure, Democrat-dominated panel called the Commission on the Governorship.

Fellow Democrats apparently sat Bustamante down and explained that California was not yet Mexico, that the voters would not accept such an obvious banana republic coup d’etat or his shredding and burning of the constitution in front of their eyes. What he advocated was blatantly illegal, much like Gray Davis’ demand that his name be allowed on the ballot of candidates who could succeed him.

For days Bustamante sulked, “holding out the possibility,” wrote veteran Sacramento Bee political columnist Daniel Weintraub, “that this panel could weigh in and rule that only he could succeed Davis.”

Then Bustamante relented, magnanimously declaring that he would allow the people to vote on replacements for Davis.

“There is no circumstance in which I would be a candidate,” said the humiliated Bustamante in one interview.

“I will not participate in any way other than to urge voters to reject this expensive perversion of the recall process,” he said earlier elsewhere. “I will not attempt to advance my career at the expense of the people I was elected to serve. I do not intend to put my name on that ballot.”

In saying this, he was maintaining the united front demanded by Davis and organized labor that no prominent Democrat go on this ballot, thereby sealing Davis’ fate by giving Democratic voters an alternative to voting against the recall.

But last week Bustamante broke his vow, double-crossed his party, and became the first major Democrat to leave a sinking ship by putting his name on the ballot to replace Gray Davis. His official posture is nearly paradoxical, telling Californians to vote against the recall of Davis but also to vote for him.

In a state with a million more registered Democrats than Republicans, and with Republicans likely to scatter their votes among several contenders, a sizeable turnout could mean victory for Bustamante. That Davis will be recalled seems likely, with a third of Democrats and more than half of Hispanics against him, so the only question to be decided is who will replace him.

But who is Cruz Bustamante? Is he the man who said he would not run under any circumstances, or the man who lied about this and days later was running?

Is he the politician who claims vast experience but now says he has only spoken via telephone with Governor Gray Davis “a few times” in recent years? Or is this former Assembly Speaker and current Lt. Governor a key part of the ruling Democratic elite that created the economic and social mess that prompted the Davis recall?

In other words, is Bustamante a knave or a naif? Was he part of this ruling leftist elite that ran up government spending by 41 percent while population grew by only 20 percent during the Davis years, thereby causing the current budget disaster in California as well as 40 percent of economic problems nationwide? Or was Bustamante only pretending to be an important player in the government? Either way, he is unfit to become Governor.

Why replace Davis with Davis II?

(It is true that he and Davis have disagreed on some issues, and in every case – e.g., whether to expand lawsuits to overturn Proposition 187 and its limits on government benefits to illegal aliens – Bustamante has advocated policies even farther to the Left than has Davis.)

Is Bustamante the politician who now says he wants to give Californians a choice? Or is he the coup plotter who tried illegally to seize the governorship for himself by denying the people any vote at all?

(This is close to what he and the Democratic Party are still doing, having used threats and intimidation to keep all other Democrats – except pornographer and Clinton operative Larry Flynt – off the ballot so that Democrats have no choice but him. Is this “pro-choice” liberalism?)

Is Bustamante the witty “moderate” and smiling grandfather that the leftist media will portray? Or is he still the ideologue who refuses to renounce his youthful embrace of the pan-Hispanic racism of MEChA and who in a Freudian slip called blacks “Niggers” in front of an African-American organization? What did this reveal, and can Californians risk electing a governor with this kind of mind and values?

Is he the “good Mexican kid” or the “coconut” he was prodded to choose between back in high school? Does he ultimately see himself as an American or a citizen of Aztlan?

Two things are indisputable about Cruz Bustamante: the man is an opportunist and a liar. He has lied so often and betrayed so many that nothing he claims to be now can be trusted or believed.

For the sake of California and the nation, we can only hope that the political grave DobleCruz Bustamante has dug is his own.

Mr. Ponte hosts national radio talk show Monday through Friday Noon-2 PM Eastern Time (9-11 AM Pacific Time) as well as on Saturdays 6-9 PM Eastern Time (3-6 PM Pacific Time) and on Sundays 9 PM-Midnight Eastern Time (6-9 PM Pacific Time) on the Talk America network . Internet Audio worldwide is at TalkAmerica.com. The show's live call-in number is (888) 822-8255. A professional speaker, he is a former Roving Editor for Reader's Digest.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9325

Hi, DoctorZIn!

It was WONDERFUL meeting you yesterday!

Starting this "daily recall thread" is a GREAT idea, but I have two suggestions to make it MUCH MORE effective:

1 - Incorporate the actual DATE into each day's thread title, i.e. (8/11/03) - so that others can more easily seacrh through these daily threads in the future.
(The Free Republic search function is most effective when searching for words in the thread TITLE.)
2 - Rather than posting the full text of each article, it would be MUCH MORE POWERFUL to post a short excerpt of each article, with a link to the discussion thread about it already posted here.
(Many FReepers who might be expected to visit these daily threads - now, and in the future - might have already found most of the articles that you are posting here, so they would want to be able to rapidly scroll past the ones that they DID already see, which is cumbersome in the current format of this thread.
In addition, if an article that post truly generates interest here, the comments about that article might best be all collected in one place, on the actual discussion thread already in progress for that article.)

My proposal for the format of articles posted on this summary thread would be something like THIS, using the Clinton article as an example...