Memories:
California Power Crisis animations featuring Governor Gray Davis
AND......................
...to see what bad, bad things Davis has done... - CLICK HERE
calgov2002:
 calgov2002: for old calgov2002 articles. calgov2002: for new calgov2002 articles. Other Bump Lists at: Free Republic Bump List Register |
Note that these are RATs who will be voting for "None Of The Above."Marjie Lundstrom:
Many voters will draw a blank making a choice for governor
By Marjie Lundstrom -- Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Saturday, November 2, 2002When the winner of next week's governor's race quits crowing about his margin of victory, there's another election figure that's bound to sting.
This is the percentage of California voters who refused to even deal with the governor's race.
Mind you, these will be the people who went to polls. These will be the people who did vote. They just couldn't bring themselves -- even holding their noses -- to choose any of the gubernatorial candidates, so they skipped right over and moved on to more scintillating matters.
The SMUD board leaps to mind.
It's as close as California's election process comes to the NOTA option -- None Of The Above -- and it appears likely this will set a record for the state's gubernatorial contests. A Field Poll released Thursday shows that 3 percent of likely voters volunteered to polltakers that this was one race they planned to bypass.
"This is not a disengaged voter," said pollster Mark DiCamillo. "This is someone who has looked at it all and said, 'I'm opting out.' It's really amazing."
DiCamillo said the actual percentage will likely be higher, perhaps hitting an unprecedented 5 percent -- or higher still.
The sentiment is undeniable, and reflects some serious scouring of consciences.
"I'm leaving the governor's race blank," a friend declared the other day, a woman whose family has voted the straight Democratic ticket since the Grover Cleveland administration.
Wait, I argue, isn't that a wasted vote? Don't you want your voice heard?
"That," she said icily, "is my statement."
Even newspapers have jumped into the act. In an editorial published Tuesday, the Los Angeles Daily News concluded that neither Gray Davis nor Bill Simon is fit for the job and suggested voters "do something in protest" -- write in Richard Riordan, for instance, or select a third-party candidate.
"Or better yet," it read, "simply leave the chads on the gubernatorial portion of your ballot unpunched as a protest vote."
The Santa Cruz Sentinel said it came to the "reluctant conclusion" that it could make no recommendation for governor.
Bob Stern, president of the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, said he believes the Daily News' suggestion to blow off the governor's race is "irresponsible."
"It's a cop-out," he said. "People tend to say, 'I'm protesting this way,' but you really sort of waste a vote."
The one man most bemused by this has to be Al Shugart, the Pebble Beach businessman whose 2000 ballot proposition would have created a "none-of-the-above" option for California voters. But the measure was soundly rejected, leaving Nevada as the only state with a nonbinding "none-of-the-above" alternative to all candidates.
"People are telling me more and more, 'Where's NOTA now that we need it?'" Shugart said.
That's just what Anne Staines of Sacramento would like to know. Staines, a marketing person and mother of three, has agonized over the governor's race but wouldn't dream of skipping over it.
"I don't want to be considered part of the apathetic, because I'm not apathetic," said said. "I'm frustrated."
But given the NOTA option, she said, she'd "vote for that in a heartbeat.
"I would be out campaigning for it," she said. "It's time we tell our political parties we don't approve of the choices they give us."
It was her 11-year-old son who summed it up best the other night when he mused: "I don't understand why lots of good people don't want to be governor."
Sacramento political consultant Jeff Raimundo has heard all the angst about this gubernatorial election. He just isn't convinced that voters ultimately will carry through on their threats to breeze past this top-of-the-ticket race.
Once in the voting booth, he believes, people will make a choice -- however grudgingly.
"They may not like it," he said. "But they will bite their tongue, they will swallow their distaste and they will do it."
Maybe that's true for some.
He just doesn't know my friend.
The Bee's Marjie Lundstrom can be reached at (916) 321-1055 or mlundstrom@sacbee.com.
On the OTHER hand, I know of a LOT of "broken glass Republicans" who will be passionately voting FOR Bill Simon on Tuesday, so my prediction remains:Simon = 44
Davis = 40
Camejo = 14
all others = 2