Posted on 10/09/2005 5:58:36 AM PDT by billorites
'Curtain up! Light the lights! You got nothing to hit but the heights!" Arnold Schwarzenegger might not sound like Ethel Merman, but he's belting out her song as the curtain rises on the November special election. He's gambling as Merman puts it in the 1960's Broadway hit "Gypsy," that his "lucky star is due." And soon we'll know whether "everything's coming up roses" for Arnold and the GOP.
With a month to go until the Nov. 8 vote, the oddest thing about this election is that it is not really about the four initiatives he's endorsed, nor the four others that crowd the ballot. It is much more complex, and symbolic of an underlying political struggle in California.
The election is surely a referendum on Schwarzenegger; his enemies have seen to that. But it is also very much a referendum on the power of the public employee labor unions in Sacramento, and that's where Schwarzenegger is aiming his fire.
The road show began in January with Schwarzenegger's State of the State message where he outlined a broad agenda for reform. But along the way his education reforms dwindled to a single measure, Proposition 74, to lengthen the time for teachers to get tenure. An ambitious plan to overhaul public employee pensions fell by the wayside – although it is a subject we are sure to hear more about in the future – as did merit pay for teachers.
His spending cap measure, Proposition 76, was at first roundly criticized by fiscal conservatives as not being a real spending cap, although most have come around. Its complex formulas and a supposed threat to education funding have made it a favorite whipping boy for his detractors.
The legislative analyst has opined that the measure would have "substantial and far-reaching effects on the state budget," but that the "effects would depend on circumstances surrounding the budget and the policy choices of the governor and legislature." That's bureaucratic speak for maybe, maybe not. The legislative analyst also notes that state savings might mean higher costs at the local level.
Perhaps the most far-reaching reform he proposed in January was to remove redistricting from the Legislature and give it to a panel of retired judges. This is now Proposition 77. The districts developed by three retired judges acting as Supreme Court Masters in 1991 have received almost universal praise, and no one can seriously deny that the gerrymandered districts produced by the Legislature in 2001 removed competition from most legislative and all congressional elections.
Democrats have howled their heads off that Proposition 77 is a Republican power grab, and a lot of Republicans must agree since it has fervent GOP support. But the reality of redistricting is that it cannot happen very soon. County clerks say it is too late to draw new districts for 2006, with the filing period for candidates commencing just after Christmas.
And many observers think the data will be too old for new districts in 2008, so new districts are most likely in 2011, when they are scheduled to be redrawn anyway.
The final tool in the Schwarzenegger quiver is one he just added, Proposition 75, that would make it more difficult for public employee unions to do what they are currently doing: pour huge amounts of money into political campaigns.
Proposition 75 would make the unions get permission before they could spend their members' dollars on politics.
But Ray McNally, an experienced political consultant who is running part of the campaign against Schwarzenegger for the prison guards union, let a secret out of the bag: political money, like water, always reaches its level. "Anybody who competes in the political arena is always adapting to the way the game is played. If the rules change, people adapt. At the end of the day, this will probably have zero impact if it passes."
So if these four measures leave hungry voters wondering where the beef is, what is the election really about? As is so often the case, it is about broader political power. Schwarzenegger had a remarkably successful 2004. In the primary, he convinced voters to pass by a wide margin his economic recovery plan that started out well behind in the public opinion polls. In November, he convinced voters to turn down a flawed "three strikes" prison reform, two Indian gaming measures, and mandatory health insurance, while passing an initiative to curb the power of trial lawyers.
His political team calculated that "Arnold can sell anything," and then moved toward a 2005 special election without defining exactly what "anything" would be. Things have gone down hill ever since. While "Team Arnold" began searching around for issues for the ballot, Schwarzenegger himself became embroiled in a separate matter; his supposed promise to provide the schools with more money in 2005 if they took a cut in 2004.
This began as a fairly simple disagreement about who said what but has escalated into a huge confrontation between a governor on the defensive and the powerful California Teachers Association, whose leaders claim Schwarzenegger lied to them.
That was compounded by his fight with another powerful union, the California Nurses Association, over nurse staffing levels in hospitals. Public employee unions have committed, and will probably spend, over $80 million to defeat Schwarzenegger's four initiatives, in the belief that it will so batter him he cannot be re-elected next year.
So the jihad between Schwarzenegger and the unions evolved out of confrontations that have nothing to do with the special election. But they were probably inevitable, because of union power in Sacramento.
Unintended consequences are the story of American politics, and Schwarzenegger is the victim of something he had nothing to do with: term limits. It took 15 years for term limits to take full effect, and in the process legislative leadership became weaker and weaker.
But like political money, political power also finds its level, and it flowed from legislators to their primary finding sources, the public employee unions. Democrats have a stranglehold on the Legislature, and the unions have a stranglehold on the Democrats. In an age of closed primaries and short legislative terms, no Democrat can afford to cross the unions, and hardly any ever do.
Schwarzenegger has realized he can get nothing from the Legislature as long as the unions are opposed, and they quite visibly killed his pet legislation this summer, a bill to subsidize solar homes, to show him they mean business.
It is not clear the public knows about union power in Sacramento or cares, and the danger is that voters will never focus on the governor's message. There has been much unhappiness in Republican circles over Schwarzenegger's failure to respond to the union-funded attacks on him this summer, and much hand wringing over the quality of his campaign.
But there is plenty of evidence of union power and arrogance in the Legislature. Both Democrats and Republicans have complained that fearful committee chairmen will not allow votes on even innocuous bills without the approval of public employee unions.
The governor's task is to convince voters that a yes vote on his measures will indeed curtail the power of union bosses and thus allow him to pursue the policies he feels he was elected to implement. That connection may be hard to make, because it requires an educational campaign before the voters focus on specific initiatives.
However, Schwarzenegger was elected to give the process a clean sweep. So he needs to convince the voters that taking on the union stranglehold in Sacramento is really what they elected him to do. How well he does that will determine the outcome of his special election gamble.
His greatest challenge this fall is not just an onslaught of union money to defeat him and his measures but a grumpy and disinterested electorate that views this movie not as "Gypsy," but like "All Quiet on the Western Front," a meaningless slog where vast expenditures of money and effort do not "come up roses," but come up with nothing at all. Overcoming that perception may be the biggest problem the governor faces.
Quinn is a veteran political observer and co-editor of the California Target Book, a nonpartisan analysis of legislative and congressional elections.
Oh, GO ARNIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
All I can say is - I am glad I moved out of California. I have watched it deteriorate for 25 years. It truly is the land of fruits and nuts. Californians can have their gay marriage (which is coming soon!) and their licenses for illegals (also coming!) and their budget deficit that exceeds that of the 49 other states combined (Texas has a surplus!), and their housing bubble, and their crowded cities, and their whacked out Legislature that is more concerned about special rights for gays and illegals than about anything else, and it's ridiculous state taxes. I renounced by California citizenship the date I got my new driver's license.
Public employee labor unions should be illegal.
Only from the pen of Tony Quinn and only by the SDUT.
The liberal evening prayer:
"Please God don't let the voters find out that public employee unions have corrupted California politics absolutely".
They are not praying to God, they are praying to a false idol.
Their prayers will not be answered.
Gee, just because their wages are tax funded and a percentage of those wages go to a Union?
Since when have Unions been denied their place at the trough? /s
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