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Posted on 07/02/2003 11:04:54 PM PDT by LdSentinal
In California, there's always been a certain tension -- even hostility -- separating north and south.
San Franciscans tend to think of Southern Californians as beachgoers and movie stars full of silicone and tofu. Angelenos don't understand why people in the Bay Area are so serious.
Now a new divide is opening up in the Golden State's 20-member Republican delegation -- this time over the possible recall of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and who should succeed him if the governor gets bounced.
Northern California Republicans lean toward Rep. Darrell Issa, whose district lies just north of San Diego, while those in the Los Angeles area are coalescing around Hollywood action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger.
There's talk of California Republicans holding an endorsing convention to clear the field, but it remains to be determined what form that convention would take. The state central committee could pick a nominee, the party could rely on county caucuses, or it might conduct a straw poll.
For now, the Republicans have yet to arrive at a consensus about anything except that they don't like Davis, whom they blame for the state's $38 billion budget shortfall, an energy crisis and political gridlock.
Down south, there's lots of buzz about the Terminator. Case in point: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, whose district stretches from Palos Verdes, in Los Angeles County, south to Orange County.
"If the recall succeeds, Arnold Schwarzenegger will be the next governor," predicted Rohrabacher. His conservative credentials as a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, a former actor who served in the governor's chair before become president, contrast with Schwarzenegger's more centrist politics.
Brushing aside Issa's candidacy, Rohrabacher said Californians are unlikely to give the governorship to the two-term congressman, a former car-alarm magnate who has bankrolled the recall effort, simply "because they're grateful for his political activism."
Rep. Mary Bono opposes the recall but said she backs Schwarzenegger, too. The western border of Bono's rectangular congressional district lies in Murrieta, southeast of Los Angeles; the eastern edge is the Arizona line.
She said that jumping from Hollywood to the political limelight could be a challenge for Schwarzenegger, recalling that her former husband, Sonny Bono, had been forced to shed his role as entertainer when he first ran for the House, in 1994.
"Sonny was always the straight man to Cher," Bono said of the former congressman, who died in a skiing accident in 1998, and his ex-wife and singing partner.
Harmony Allen, spokeswoman for Rep. Randy Cunningham, said her boss, a seven-term congressman from the San Diego suburbs, "likes Schwarzenegger and has talked to him."
She added, however, that Cunningham "doesn't want to comment too much other than to say he's going to support the candidate who he thinks will win."
Meanwhile, north of L.A., Republicans aren't as enamored of Schwarzenegger's movie-star persona or name recognition, which many GOP officials and consultants say will be especially important to win a recall election.
"Itâ's not necessarily about name ID," said Rep. Doug Ose, who's supporting no one for now. Citing Sean Penn, the actor turned anti-war activist, he added: "You might have name ID, but you're not running for mayor of Baghdad."
Rep. Devin Nunes, a first-term Republican from the San Joaquin Valley, argued that Issa is a proven conservative with government experience, whereas Schwarzenegger is an unknown quantity hoping to capitalize on his fame.
Rep. Richard Pombo, a rancher whose congressional district is an hour-and-a-half drive southeast of San Francisco, more or less agreed with Nunes but stopped short of an endorsement.
And John McCamman, chief of staff for Rep. George Radanovich, a winery owner from Mariposa County, north of Fresno, said Radanovich is not backing anyone but that he'd met with Issa and Bill Simon, last year's GOP gubernatorial nominee.
Radanovich has not met with Schwarzenegger, McCamman said.
The north-south split within the GOP contrasts with the unity prevailing -- for now -- among California's 33 congressional Democrats, who repeatedly have voiced support for Davis. Still, Democrats concede the party's unified front is fragile at best and could crumble the moment one of their own jumps into the recall race.
That could come in the next two weeks. Recall backers, who need at least 897,000 valid signatures to get the initiative on the ballot, say they will meet their goal by mid-July, in time for a fall election.
Possible Democratic contenders include Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, Attorney General Bill Lockyer and Treasurer Phil Angelides.
All four now say they have no plans to run, but some Democratic members of the congressional delegation said last week the party is still pinning its hopes on Feinstein. Other Democrats and Republicans, elected officials and consultants, maintain that all the behind-the-scenes jockeying is too complicated to be reduced to a simple geographic divide.
But they acknowledge that Southern Californians are more comfortable with glitz and glamour and northerners -- particularly in the rural reaches of the Central Valley and farther north in Eureka, Chico, Susanville and elsewhere -- prefer more straight-laced politics.
There are plenty of rock-ribbed Republicans in Southern California; much of Orange County is a GOP stronghold. But there's also a casualness and quasi-libertine spirit permeating the ocean air, from Malibu to Santa Monica to Newport Beach. Rohra-bacher, for example, surfs, played in a rock band and admitted to having using drugs.
What remains incontestable as far as the recallâ's organizers are concerned is that retail politics -- knocking on doors, collecting signatures at shopping malls -- is far from dead in California, long considered too big a place for old-fashioned democracy.
"The grassroots movement still matters in California," one organizer said. "It's been dormant for the last 25 years, but this really is a grassroots movement and I think whoever can tap into the energy stands a good shot at being the next governor of California."
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Great, more of the "moderate" logic that has sucessfully repelled conservative voters from the voting booth and turned CA into almost an entirely Democratic state, when the rest of the nation is turning more Republican, because of feckless dithering and a lack of respectable principles.
Is this really Parsky posting under an assumed name? Some data you should look at that your stratigy of being Democrate Lite has incompetently botched. http://vote2002.ss.ca.gov/Returns/gov/59.htm The party of Reagan has been taken over in Sacramento by clueless morons who believe if they can just run to the left they can pick up those 3% soccer moms in LA and San Fran who are convinced that they feel their pain, meanwhile the rural counties stay home and the GOP gets pasted. (Next time if they run even further left maybe they'll get 4%, you keep your fingers crossed) Republicans like Wilson and Ronald Wilson Reagan got elected, and were wildly popular, that is just plain impossible by your reasoning. Wait I forgot, you aren't making a reasoned case, you are playing not to lose and trying to fool the electorate. The voter who is easily fooled votes Democrate anyways.
Moderate Republicans have moderate campaigns, and always lose in California. Look at the past three Presidentital Elections. Recall the Senatorial and governatorial campaigns of Michael Huffingington, Dan Lundgren, Matt Fong, and Tom Campbell. Even Simon's campaign, inept and inexperienced as it was, was moderated by RNC forces.
The whole "CA will vote for moderate Republicans" thing is a myth. Moderates convey timidity, and that's a turn-off for voters here.
Pete Wilson was the last, most successful GOP politician in CA. He was a centrist, but no moderate, and yet managed to win Statewide here in two Senatorial and two gubernatorial elections in the 80s and 90s. Yet the unchallenged "wisdom" of the RNC has been that the California GOP needs to run away from Wilson. That wisdom is more rooted in the RINOs own lack of fire in the belly than it is in any objective take on political reality.
I won't, he's a big government Kennedy-Clanster in GOP clothing. I won't vote for Issa either, he's soft on terror.
I don't know yet who would get my vote, I need to look at McClintock more closely.
Difficult to say, especially since I don't think the Terminator will run. Course I thought T3 would be an abomination of unneccessary sequals, but I saw it last night and was very impressed with how they got around the tied up loose end of the T2, so perhaps Arnold wasn't simply pumping up a bomb of a movie. I still don't think he wants his first job to be the buck stopping on his desk of a $38 bil deficit, I think he wants to be a bridge builder and this job isn't that.
And if McClintok doesn't would you vote for Arnuld
It kind of depends if he can sell McClintock's reasoned arguement of cutting spending by 10% and holding it...etc I would in a second.
Then you need to look here www.tommcclintock.com and read what the man wrote. Pay special attention to his op-ed in the OC Register for daring to make the case that the budget crisis is fixable here
The masterstroke, it seems to me, would be to get Condi Rice on the ballot. That would give her three years in an elected executive position, on top of her foreign policy experience, before the 2008 campaign.
I think in 2010 Arnold is your man. He's a full blown movie star again, I just don't hear things coming from his own lips that lead me to believe he want to be the politician who's having the buck stop on his desk.
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