Posted on 06/12/2003 12:02:29 AM PDT by AnnaZ
"The answer of the officer to be recalled is as follows: IF YOU SIGN THIS PETITION IT MAY LEAD TO A SPECIAL ELECTION THIS SUMMER COSTING US TAXPAYERS AN ADDITIONAL $20-40 MILLION. Last November, almost 8,000,000 Californians went to the polls. They voted to elect Governor Davis to another term. Just days after the Governor's inauguration in January, however, a handful of rightwing politicians are attempting to overturn the voters' decision. They couldn't beat him fair and square, so now they're trying another trick to remove him from office. This effort is being led by the former Chairman of the State Republican Party, who was censured by his own party. We should not waste scarce taxpayers' dollars on sour grapes. The time for the partisanship and campaigning is past. It's time for both parties to work together on our State's problems. Moreover, the allegations leveled against the Governor are false. As governor, Davis has vetoed almost $9 BILLION in spending. California, along with 37 other states, is facing a budget deficit due to the bad national economy. The Bush Administration has announced the federal deficit this year will be the biggest in history. $304 BILLION. In these difficult and dangerous times, LET'S WORK TOGETHER, not be diverted by partisan mischief. /s/ Gray Davis Governor Gray Davis 9911 W. Pico Boulevard, Suite 980 Los Angeles, CA 90035."
The issue certainly was rapidly triaged, gutted, resembled and left for all to marvel anyone who might by chance stumble over it in the future.
RE: the Recall.. Done Deal!
Best Option.. One Republican candidate runs.. best person for the job?
RE: FR - There ain't no better place to start some fires on the plains of politicoland then here..
The power of the internet, Greeley and Mencken would have killed for this tool to report the news and events.
What better way to share and query thoughts inside the heads of real people and not those under the influence of the camera lens and the warp and distortion effect inherent with it?
TV is and has been the way to communicate "effectively" to convey ideas, but often lack true detail of events.
We get the inside scoop here and there and we share it, unlike many reporting the news.
Speaking if the LA Times .. uhh. Let's not, They make me nauseous with the biased vitriol they put out.
There rhetoric alert level is at Red. ;-) THis illustrates the point that the media is feeling heat by being called to task for its complicity in keeping Davi$ in place and supporting boatloads of demRats.
We have the jayson Blair X factor working here as well. The LA Times is no Love Child to this state and never has been. :-)
I agree completely. The recall will happen. The only question is whether it will be in a fall special election or the March 2004 primary. And it's looking increasingly likely that enough signatures will be turned in by early July to force the fall election.
I would love it if the Republican Party were to coalesce around Tom McClintock. He'd make a marvelous Governor, and he's the only potential candidate in whom I have a high level of confidence that he could actually fix California's fiscal problems (and with no tax hikes!).
Unfortunately I doubt that the Republicans will rally around Tom. Issa is almost certain to run, since he's putting so much of his own money into the recall drive. Bill Simon is panting to run. Arnold Schwarzenegger is likely to run. Richard Riordan may run. Etc., etc.
Frankly, if I had to make a bet at this time, I'd bet that the Democrats will have greater discipline than the Republicans in limiting their prominent candidates. And especially since California is still a heavily-Democratic state, the odds are that Davis will be replaced by another Democrat.
It's worth the risk. Even most of the potential Democratic replacements would be major improvements over Davis (which just proves how horrible a governor Davis has been). And in any case it will be an object lesson for politicians in this state that the wrath of the people cannot be ignored.
There's the old story about two guys who see a bear coming after them in the forest. One guy starts to run away. The other guy calls after him, "It's hopeless to flee. You can't outrun the bear." The other guy calls over his shoulder, "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you." That has been Gray Davis' modus operandi his entire career, as he laborously climbed the political ladder to his present perch. As corrupt and incompetent and personality-challenged as he is, Davis has been blessed with Democratic and Republican opponents he could outrun (most recently Bill Simon). But this time the recall is focussed solely on Davis; there's no one along side him who he can simply outrun. Davis is about to become bear-food.
The recall vote tote is going to get the necessasy level of signatures by mid-July that includes a lot of additional signatures gathered to compensate for any disqualified signatures that are checked for authenticity,etc.
If the Secy of State wants to drag out the verification process for 6 months, so be it.. all the better,, that way Gray gets whipped or Cruz gets whipped as the budget melts down and the state with it.
I don't see the election happening next spring personally. It is a foregone that it will occur. Why postpone the inevitable?
And quite frankly, its California's last best shot of turning this state around.. sad to say.
We need Tom in the recall winner's circle and We need to toss demRats out of Stinkymento in 2004.
Not as many extra signatures will be needed as for normal initiatives or referenda. With a normal initiative you turn in all the signatures at one time, so you have to make absolutely certain that there is an ample margin to cover however many are disqualified. If you come up a 100 short out of 900,000, you are sh!t out of luck.
But with a recall measure, the signatures can be turned in on a continuous basis. The County Registrars are supposed to constantly be validating them, and the Secretary of State must report the total number of validated signatures on a monthly basis.
Not only does this give the circulators a much more accurate picture of their validity rate and the number of remaining signatures they need, but it eliminates the requirement for huge margins. For example, if the recall proponents know that they already have 800,000 valid signatures (out of perhaps 900,000 raw ones turned in), then they only have to submit another 115,000 raw signatures to make it over the top. And if they come up slightly short, they just submit a few more, assuming there is any time left.
In the case of the Davis recall, the goal is to finish by the 4th of July, almost two months before the September 2nd drop-dead date. If it takes them till the 8th of July, oh well. And if they're still a few short, they just keep submitting more signatures.
That's one of the reasons that it is an absolute certainty that this recall is going to make it onto the ballot.
Checkout www.drafttom.com ,, It has a write-up on Tom's biography, his background. Let me know what you think.
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