Posted on 07/26/2004 8:26:17 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO — From a shopping mall in Stockton to a Cheesecake Factory restaurant in San Diego, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been touring some of California's contested legislative districts, urging voters to "terminate" legislators who defy him.
The outcome of the November elections could prove critical to his stated goal of reshaping California's finances and political culture. Yet political experts say that wresting control of the Legislature from the Democrats this fall is a tall, if not improbable, order even for a politician with Schwarzenegger's popularity.
Most lawmakers represent districts they intentionally designed for easy reelection. Although 100 of California's 120 legislative seats are on the November ballot, only a handful are competitive races.
"I can't imagine circumstances where Republicans could take over either chamber," said veteran GOP consultant Dan Schnur.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
To have more success in winning his points before the legislature, Arnold only needs to knock off a handful (maybe 6 or so) of his most entrenched and troublesome opponents. The others will then get the message. Odds are, what I described is his plan, and taking a majority in both houses is not possible, but also not on his agenda, for now.
Congressman Billybob
Latest column, "The Wussification of America: Fallout from Arnold, John and Sandy"
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People's Advocate (Ted Costa) needs some help, folks.
Final Petition Approved !On 7/6/04 we received the final approved petition back from the Secretary State. The petitions are now being printed and will be shipping within the next two weeks. Register now to receive your copy as soon as they are ready. We have a very limited amount of time to gather the needed signatures so order your petitions today!
They didn't get the message after the Recall.
The liberal rag spin today is the demRats are still the ones holding the reins of power and the pursestrings.
Arnold may want to move make this up a notch or two on his list of top priorities.. that, and vetoing billions from the largest ever state budget... and release the CPR Now.
The best thing that can happen, imo, is this budget gets strung out into the late summer.
Lois Capps is a widower representative, her husband died and she took his seat.
If she had to run in a district that geographically was more appropriate, she would never win on her own.
The less folks in these other parts of the state see and know her, the better shot she has at keeping that die-hard voting leftist seat.
And the pubbies signed off on this... in fact, this last districting go-around was nothing more than slanting the playing field both ways for the parties... and setting up safe districts for the parties to hold power over in perpetuity.
That is ugly!
My husband was wondering aloud how "these people" get elected, and why they don't get thrown out of office. I was trying to explain the redistricting process, "safe" districts and gerrymandering, when he said, "Isn't gerrymandering illegal?" Hm, well, I guess illegality is irrelevant when you have elections to fix.
and courts that allow this to go on.
Yes, the Democrats have gerrymandered the legislature to ensure their control for the rest of the decade. In this they took natural advantage of the fact there are more registered Democrats here than Republicans. Unless the GOP finds a way to overcome the registration edge decisively, we won't have a GOP majority here any time soon. The Republicans could strengthen their ability to sustain vetoes in both houses but that's about it. The reason the Democrats didn't go for broke in redistricting is they might easily have gotten a two-thirds vetoproof majority but they would also have created a number of vulnerable seats. Its only the GOP veto clout that prevents California from turning into a Left Coast version of Massachusetts.
I could probably help with this. I'll have to look up policy but I think we stand on firm ground here.
Who ya gonna call... Kindergarten Cop??? Haaaaaa Ha Ha Ha
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