The Democracy Center On-Line

Volume 48 - August 1, 2003

RECALLING CALIFORNIA

Dear Readers:

As some of you may have noticed, the usual monthly editions of this newsletter have been a bit sparse this year - it has been a busy time.  Since New Years The Democracy Center's work with citizen groups has taken me to five continents (which translates into a lot of bad airplane food).  The other major source of distraction in my life recently is totally joyous, a new baby daughter, Mariana Elizabeth Shultz.

News events these days bring this newsletter back to old territory, California politics.  For those who have followed The Democracy Center's work for any time, you know that I was involved in political issues in California for more than twenty years, with a special interest in ballot politics.  In 1996 The Democracy Center published a popular guide to ballot initiative campaigning - "The Initiative Cookbook - Recipes and Stories from California's Ballot Wars."  This month, a little history lesson as my home state marches into the three ring circus of recall politics.

Jim Shultz

The Democracy Center

RECALLING CALIFORNIA

For its shear novelty alone, the Gray Davis recall effort is guaranteed a place in national and international headlines from now until election day.  The biggest state in the most powerful nation on earth may well be on its way to kicking out a sitting governor, using a political tool added to the state constitution in the days of the Model T and never used since at a statewide level.  Voters may get to choose from among 300 candidiates!

Nevertheless, California's march toward a recall isn't quite the "uncharted waters" that pundits across the nation keep calling it.  In fact, the recall vote contains some important echoes from the  state's experience with that other century-old populist reform - the initiative process.  Both the Democrats and the Republicans are dancing with shadows of grave political errors that they have committed before.

For the GOP, the Perils of Adopting Causes from the Fringe

For the Republicans, the Davis recall effort itself recalls the politics of a decade ago when the GOP took up the political crusade against "illegal immigrants".  In 1994 the idea of placing an anti-immigrant measure on the ballot was hatched, like the recall, not in the party's mainstream but on its far-right fringes.  Its early sponsors championed the ballot measure (which later became Proposition 187) in activist newsletters peppered with racist sloganeering such as, "Wake up and smell the refried beans."

With just six weeks left in the qualification drive, the campaign had collected less then a fourth of the signatures required and looked destined to end up as just another minor footnote in state politics.  Then Governor Pete Wilson and the GOP leadership, facing a tough re-election campaign in the midst of a deep recession, decided that they did smell something - political opportunity.  At the last minute Wilson and the GOP swooped in,  adopted the anti-immigrant measure as their own, and poured in a mountain of cash to put paid signature gatherers on the street and put Proposition 187 on the ballot.

From the vantage point of history, Wilson's anti-immigrant move has become a text book example of short-term smart and long-term stupid.  On the one hand, Proposition 187 energized the Governor's far-right constituency and converted the election into a referendum on Latinos marching across the border instead of the Governor's own political record.  On the other hand, Wilson's anti-immigrant crusade left the state GOP with the indelible image of being anti-Latino, in a state where Latinos are becoming a key political force.

Proposition 187 helped chase away Latinos to the Democrats in the same way that Republican opposition to civil rights chased away black voters in the early 1960s.  In eight years California went from being a state with a GOP on the rise to being a place where Republicans could not win a single statewide office.

Now once again GOP leaders think they smell a surprise opportunity handed to them by the party's most conservative fringe.  To a party desperate for a way back into power in the state the recall looks like the sudden appearance of a secret passageway, like the magic door in the latest Harry Potter sequel.

That sudden entry way may also turn out to be just as long-term stupid as the GOP's anti-immigrant crusade.

If Davis' popularity plummets enough, Democrats might well switch their bets from a likely loser to a certain winner - a senior Democrat behind whom the party and Democratic voters could unify.  Instead of a Terminator or car alarm magnate in the Governorship the state might well end up with a Democrat unburdened by Davis's unpopularity and eligible to run for re-election in 2006 as an incumbent.

One has to at least give California Republicans credit for being eager gamblers, though they haven't demonstrated all that much savvy recently on where they place their bets.

For the Democrats, the Dangers of Betting on Weak Cards

Democrats, however, seem poised to repeat their own great ballot politics error -

the squandered opportunity sixteen years ago this summer to scuttle Proposition 13 in favor of a tax relief plan that would have done far less long-term damage to the state's financial health.  In Proposition 13, as with the recall, state Democrats faced a political force coming from the GOP's grassroots.  Even though the GOP establishment and key segments of the business community eventually opposed the ballot measure as too radical, it was the Democrats (who, like now, held both the governorship and a majority in the Legislature) who were required to take the lead against the tax-slashing measure.

Throughout the summer of 1977, when Proposition 13 was still in its political cradle, Democrats in the Legislature and the Democratic Governor, Jerry Brown, struggled to pass an alternative property tax relief bill that would satisfy voters and knock the wind out of Proposition 13's sails.  There was plenty of reason to believe they could have succeeded.  The main plan would have put tax rebate checks in voters' mailboxes that fall just as anti-tax crusaders Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann were taking their petitions to the street. 

In the end, the summer-long effort failed, as Democratic liberals and moderates could never agree on a tax-relief formula.  By the time they returned to the Capitol in January 1978 it was to late. The Proposition 13 juggernaut was too far underway and its passage that June changed the shape of state finances in ways that are still deeply felt.  It also ushered in a golden era for GOP conservatives riding the anti-tax wave - including Ronald Reagan's entry into the White House two years later.

Here as well there are echoes of history in the Democratic response to the Davis recall.  In 1978 Democrats saddled themselves, needlessly, with a political alternative that was not the strongest they could have put forward.  The tax relief counter-measure that they placed on the June 1978 ballot (Proposition 8) never had a chance against the roaring populist thunder of Proposition 13.

Fair or unfair, the reality is that Governor Davis is beginning to look like the human equivalent of the Legislature's tax relief alternative - unsatisfying, untrusted, unwanted, and not the party's best shot at retaining the governorship.

The Democratic national party chair, Terry McAuliffe, laid out the party's strategy earlier this month, proclaiming the party's loyalty to Davis and pledging to squash any Democratic alternative.  His message to California voters was clear, "You are not going to have an option but a bunch of right-wing conservatives on the ballot." 

The stakes in the Davis recall effort are high, not just for political parties and politicians but for California's future.  Who sits in the Governor's chair, even if it is just for three years, will effect California's schools, health care, environment, economy and future for many years to come.  It is not just the state's political animals who need to pay attention to the political machinations heading into the recall vote, but all citizens who care about the state's future.

In the face of Proposition 13 two and a half decades ago Democratic leaders underestimated the political threat, dawdled until it was to late to act, did not put forward the most attractive political alternative that they could have, and they lost badly.

In the Republican crusade against immigrants a decade ago GOP leaders were seduced by the dreams of the party's most extreme fringes, jumped into bed with them, and woke up with a political hangover from which the party has still not recovered.

As the saying goes, history may not repeat itself precisely, but sometimes it echoes.

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