Posted on 05/29/2006 12:49:30 PM PDT by RWR8189
YOU CAN NEVER BE TOO rich or too thin, the saying goes, and it certainly holds true for California's June 6 primary. State Controller Steve Westly, a former eBay executive and Democratic candidate for governor, has spent $34.5 million of his own fortune in hopes of earning the right to face Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this fall. The other Democrat in the race, State Treasurer Phil Angelides, would certainly be out of the running by now but for a wealthy friend who spent $6 million on an "independent" expenditure to prop up his flagging campaign. As for the Governator, he's not exactly living on K rations: According to the Los Angeles Times, Team Arnold has spent nearly $145 million (including $25 million of Schwarzenegger's own money) on various campaigns over the past five years.
Meanwhile, only two initiatives will be on the ballot--an anorexic figure by California standards--and one of them now lacks its main champion. That would be Rob Reiner, the movie director and left-wing activist who is responsible for Prop. 82, which would guarantee preschool for every California 4-year-old by raising taxes on the state's top income-earners ($400,000 for individuals; $800,000 for couples). Reiner's sudden exit from the debate and the possible defeat of Prop. 82 may augur the return of a California politics that is less starstruck and less sentimental. One can hope so, at any rate.
While there's no denying the emotional tug of preschool, much about Prop. 82 defies common sense. According to various analyses of the measure, the $2.4 billion tax increase would result in only an additional 4percent of preschoolers being enrolled. Under Reiner's rules, three hours of preschool, three times a week, would cost $8,000 per child, with only 8.4 percent of the new program's funding going to high-risk children. Because the initiative requires preschool teachers to obtain a bachelor's degree, Reiner himself couldn't work in a preschool, as he attended but never graduated from UCLA.
Nor is Reiner's initiative a new approach to California policymaking. In the Golden State, the predictable liberal bromide is higher taxes for expanded government, one example being Proposition 63, approved in November 2004, which raised taxes on millionaires to expand state mental-health programs. While Reiner wants higher taxes for universal preschool, gubernatorial candidate Angelides wants to soak the rich to increase K-12 education spending. Even special interests play this game: The California Nurses Association, which fought Schwarzenegger tooth and nail in last fall's special election, has planned a November ballot initiative that would publicly finance state elections by increasing California's corporate tax.
Last November, Reiner was front and center in kicking off his initiative. The speculation then: Prop. 82 was a prequel to a run for governor, just as Schwarzenegger successfully campaigned for an after-school initiative a year before California's recall election. Reiner had momentum, as well as a fawning media. As recently as early March, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne extolled Reiner as "like Reagan, the opposite of a political dilettante." Today, a better description would be "albatross." With the primary days away, Reiner is nowhere to be seen--not on the campaign trail, nor in TV ads. If Prop. 82 fails--and the latest polls have it barely above 50 percent--it will signal an end to Reiner's future as a candidate.
So what brought about this sudden reversal of political fortune? Credit it to dubious judgment and celebrity arrogance. In November 1998, Reiner spearheaded the passage of California's Proposition 10, which imposed a 50-cents-a-pack tax on cigarettes. It also created a state government "First Five" commission, chaired by Reiner, to spend the proceeds on public-awareness campaigns for early childhood development issues. Since then, First Five has spent some $230 million on advertising and public relations, with Reiner's friends and Democratic cronies being the chief beneficiaries. That would include the Washington, D.C.-based GMMB agency, which also happens to be Reiner's political media consulting firm, as well as Los Angeles-based Rogers & Associates. The head of that firm, Ron Rogers, is the son of Henry Rogers, once described as the "father of Hollywood PR" and a friend of Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner's father.
The younger Reiner's mistake in allowing this "all in the family" approach to rewarding friends with taxpayer funds was compounded by his commission's use of those funds to advance the chairman's political agenda. While Reiner and his political team gathered signatures for Prop. 82 under the banner of "Preschool for All," First Five launched an advertising campaign to whet the public's appetite for preschool. That campaign's slogan was, oddly enough, "Preschool for All."
Thus began Reiner's second major mistake--a refusal to admit that his commission had overstepped its bounds. A mid-March appearance at the Sacramento Press Club meant to charm the political press corps and defuse the controversy instead backfired. Reiner was defensive and testy, didn't answer reporters' questions, and pleaded ignorance to the coordination of state resources and his own political ambition.
"He was either remarkably inattentive," surmises Bill Bradley, a Democratic insider whose New West Notes blog has been highly critical of Reiner, "or he was well aware of what was going on. He controlled the commission, so it is hard to believe the former. He thought it was okay to use taxpayer funds to stimulate demand for more government spending. It's not."
Reiner's problems soon compounded when it was revealed that his term as First Five chairman had long expired--and Schwarzenegger was free to name a replacement. However, the Republican governor refused to name a successor, which led to still another flap: Was Arnold dallying because of his longtime friendship with Reiner or because of first lady Maria Shriver's insistence that he be nice to Democrats? Or did the governor, who opposes Prop. 82, see an advantage in letting Reiner twist in the wind?
If it was the latter, then Reiner didn't twist for long. Two weeks after failing to stem the tide at the Sacramento press conference, he sent a resignation letter to Schwarzenegger. "When you and I spoke over the weekend," Reiner wrote, "we agreed that we cannot let personal political attacks get in the way of doing the very best we can for California's children." Twice, in his one-paragraph resignation, Reiner mentioned that his service was "voluntary." Not once did he express contrition.
"Reiner's fall can be traced to a negative celebrity two-step--viewed as going from selfless to selfish," says Jonathan Wilcox, who teaches celebrity, culture, and public relations at USC's Annenberg School for Communications. "In this, he became controversial--the one thing public figures who do good works can't endure."
A Reiner departure from the political stage, coupled with actor Warren Beatty's decision to stay on the sidelines, may signal an end to California's latest experiment with celebrity politics. A term-limited Schwarzenegger can't run for reelection in 2010. And, assuming that Reiner is too tarnished and Beatty simply too old (he'll be 73 in 2010), the rising stars on the Democratic side are likely to be actual politicos: Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and San Francisco's charismatic mayor, Gavin Newsom.
Or perhaps California Democrats have already figured this out. "Reiner is Hollywood, not Sacramento, and the smart Democratic political consultants in this state--and there are a number of them--probably understood that long before the party regulars," claims Susan Rasky, a senior lecturer at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. In other words, the show must go on--with or without Reiner or any Hollywood Democrats on the playbill.
Bill Whalen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he follows California and national politics.
I think Meathead ought to be personally liable if his party bankrupts the state of California.
Imagine that.
BOYCOTT HOLLYWOOD MOVIES!
Don't you get it? When we pay to see their terrible anti-American junk we are underwriting their treason.
I've been boycotting them for the last 20 years.
Hollywood gets most of their revenues from the international market now. Boycotting them is fine but doesn't solve the real issues facing California.
Golden State BUMP
Love the graphic, BUMP
Using the name "Rob Reiner" and the word "sagging" in the same sentence is redundant.
Do you know the status of the multiple investigations that got launched?
Steve Westly, a former eBay executive and Democratic candidate for governor, has spent $34.5 million of his own fortune in hopes of earning the right to face Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this fall.
$34.5 million! I know that in the USA one can do what he chooses with his money but I think that someone who puts out that kind of money for a political office ought to have his head examined.
Are you truly "Green?" Is it easy???
What a crazy idea.
Oh my lord Antonio Villaraigosa and Gavin Newsom. California is doomed.
Not crazy at all. Think of the billions that politicians can steer to themselves and their friends.
What is crazy is that the public allows this plutocracy to continue.
Look at the Senate Democrat Caucus. It's the Billionaires Club: Rockefeller, Kennedy, Kerry, Feinstein, Dayton, Kohl, Boxer, Clinton, Cantwell, Landrieu, Lautenberg.
Look at the Senate Democrat Caucus. It's the Billionaires Club: Rockefeller, Kennedy, Kerry, Feinstein, Dayton, Kohl, Boxer, Clinton, Cantwell, Landrieu, Lautenberg.
Yeah. You notice though, when they talk about taxing the rich, they really mean high-income earners (the "pre-rich"). Hey, they already have their wealth. An income tax isn't going to hurt them much. And with trusts and shelters people like Teresa Heinz Kerry, for example, paid an effective tax of just 11.5% on an income of $5.1 million. She's worth over $500 million.
If the Republicans really wanted to stick it to the money base of the Democrats, they'd call Democrats' "tax the rich" bluff and start taxing based on total assets.
I've been pointing that out for years, and figured that everyone knew, but didn't do anything about it because they were all for it. I guess when Reiner was a potential obstacle to Angelides, who has bided his time as a CA Demo powerbroker for over a decade until he was ready to run for Governor, Reiner's use of public money to promote his pet project suddenly became important.
What I was trying to say was that some of these people spend this money because they want to be "important" and have a title such as governor or senator. Egotism, pure and simple.
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