California’s constitution is riddled with early-20th-century Progressivism, the persuasion of the sort of people an English wit once called Dawnists–people who believe that there will be a dawn of perpetual happiness if the people are just allowed to work their will. California’s constitution institutionalizes fickleness, giving the people the power to change their minds about elections by initiating recall votes.
Eight months ago they re-elected Gov. Gray Davis, a chilly political careerist who seems even less competent than he is charming. But the vote was a robust expression of unenthusiasm. Beating a badly outspent and mistake-prone political rookie, Davis won just 47 percent of the vote, receiving 1.3 million fewer votes than in 1998.
Soon after the election, Davis admitted what politically sentient Californians–including the activists now organizing the recall–knew or suspected: the state’s deficit was much bigger than he had said. Now all the governor’s choices–raising taxes, cutting services–have the cumulative effect of annoying everyone.
Davis could become just the second recalled governor in U.S. history. The first was North Dakota’s Lynn Frazier in 1921. Bad weather, poor crops and a postwar depression made North Dakotans cranky. They tossed Frazier out. In 1922 they tossed him into the U.S. Senate, where he served until 1940. California never cornered the market on fickleness.
But California’s mood swings matter more than North Dakota’s. One in eight Americans lives in California, which has 55 electoral votes, slightly more than one fifth of the 270 needed to win the White House. In 2000 George W. Bush tried to carry California but did not even manage to make Al Gore break a sweat: Bush did not much better than Bob Dole did in 1996. Bush hopes to carry California in 2004 or at least to make it costly for the Democratic nominee to hold it. That hope would be best served by Davis, whose job approval has plunged to 21 percent, continuing in office, and the electorate’s continuing to seethe.
But a wealthy Californian Republican congressman, Dan Issa, who wants to be governor, is funding the gathering of recall signatures. To get a recall vote, 897,158 signatures (12 percent of the number of people who voted in last November’s governor’s race) are required. Then a two-part ballot would be put before the voters, who would decide whether to oust Davis, and would pick his replacement from names on the ballot. Anyone who gathers 65 signatures–yes, just 65; anyone’s friends and relatives will suffice–and pays $3,500 gets on the ballot.
Some Democrats had hoped to get Sen. Dianne Feinstein to pledge to serve only the remainder of Davis’s term, in exchange for a guarantee that no other Democrat’s name would be on the ballot. But she has said she will not run, and now every other Democrat elected statewide has made a similar pledge.
Republicans are more unruly and could produce what Issa likens to “a circular firing squad.” Which would serve them right for encouraging the electorate to act like petulant shoppers suddenly seized by buyer’s remorse. Issa rejects that analogy, saying that the recall process as applied to Davis is akin to a “lemon law.” He says, “If a product has been falsely represented, you should be able to exchange it.”
Issa would like Republicans to hold a convention to select a single candidate. But that is unlikely, and such a body might pick someone other than Issa, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Who could find himself opposed by, among others, Rob Reiner (“Meathead” from TV’s “All in the Family”). So in the throes of a budgetary train wreck, California could have a governor elected by 20 percent of the turnout–a chief executive viewed by many as an illegitimate usurper. And suddenly a Republican would be the focus of Californians’ disgruntlement.
How many signatures are gathered–roughly 1.2 million are thought necessary to be sure that 897,158 are legitimate–and how fast they are gathered will determine if there will be a recall vote, and when it will happen. If verification of the signatures is swift, the election will be this fall, when the state is in a rolling boil about budget decisions. If verification is dilatory, it will be next March, during the Democratic presidential primary. That might help Davis by increasing Democratic participation.
When Ataturk was creating modern Turkey, going against the grain of society, pulling a reluctant people toward modernity, his saying was: “Government for the people–despite the people.” Californians need someone similar, someone who will make difficult choices of the sort Davis has ducked and who will tell the people they cannot casually slough off responsibility for the electoral choices they make. Californians need an Ataturk. But they probably would recall him.
