It's a crazy world out there. Twenty-three people died in a bombing of the United Nations embassy in Iraq, our economy is still in the tank and the international situation gets worse everyday. So of course those who follow politics are focusing on the recall of Gov. Gray Davis, D-Calif.
You can set your watch to the conflicts in the Middle East and our economic problems, but the the power of recall-where a certain number of citizens can sign petitions to hold a special election throwing out an officeholder-had not been successfully applied to a governor in this country since 1921, when North Dakota's progressive Gov. Lynn Joseph Frazier was thrown out of office. California, however, is the fifth largest economy in the world, and has a lot more impact on the country and the world than North Dakota in 1921. Throwing another curveball into it is the presence of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the betrayal of Davis by his own Lt. Gov., Cruz Bustamante. Between Schwarzenegger, Bustamante and former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth, we have the most novel race in American history.
The sad part is that it really does not matter who the winner is. California does not need a new governor; it needs a new constitution. For the last 25 years, conservative organizations used the initiative process to pass various amendments to the state constitution that altered the structure of government. The key parts were Proposition 13, which limited property taxes and thus shifted many responsibilities for funding local spending to the state, strict limits on terms for legislators and a requirement that a budget needed a two-thirds majority in each house of the legislature in order to pass.
As a result, California has a class of legislators that is simply unfit to make bargains, and a requirement that bargains be made. More initiatives passed that codified all sorts of spending programs into the state constitution, like a $450 million after-school programs initiative pushed by Schwarzenegger last year. The legislature is pulled in different, contradictory directions and has little real discretion. The only people who are able to stick around and know the structure of state government are the lobbyists.
When Davis came in, he had large Democratic majorities in the legislature, but not so large that the Republicans could not block any budget. His own party wanted to raise spending, but Republicans would not back the measure. As a result, in the middle of the prosperity of the late 1990s, California increased spending on popular programs by large margins without any idea of how to pay for it. Davis' failing was not a specific policy course, but a lack of real leadership to keep these competing forces under wraps. The state now has a $38 billion deficit.
On the other hand, if Davis had done any differently there would have been a revolt against him in the legislature and initiatives pushed to increase spending in the way he ended up doing it. The larger economy, which has exacerbated the deficit, is not his fault. Going back in history to 1921, after Frazier was recalled the people came to realize they blamed him for too much. In 1922 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served for 18 years. This recall is not a rational act of democracy, it's a mass scapegoating of one person for a multitude of problems. It will not solve anything.
But maybe California will end up with a new leader who can undo the mistakes of the past few years and raise the right taxes, cut the right spending and steer the state into balance. Maybe that person will end the reign of the lobbyists, the one group that has benefited from all this. Then again, if such a strong leader did emerge, they'd just recall him.
eekleefeld@wisc.edu.
