The Feld-Blog

I love where I live. California voters do not always inspire me with greatest confidence. After all, we did elect Arnold in the first place. Still, yesterday California sent Arnold a resounding, unified message: “Stop the craziness.” Every single proposition on the ballot failed. Even the dueling prescription drug bills both failed. They jockeyed for support, they battled over airwaves each trying to get more support than its opposition bill and yet, in the end the voters gave both a booming thumbs down.

On a similar note for all you San Diegans out there, the special election also gave San Diego’s mayoral office to Jerry Sanders. Frye won the plurality of the last runoff between Francis, Sanders and Frye, but it seems that the large majority of Francis supporters moved to support Sanders. I am also pretty happy with this outcome. Though I’ll admit Frye’s ideology more closely aligns with mine, watching the debates and hearing Frye’s almost completely single-issue campaign was pretty disillusioning. Transparency is great, but there are other responsibilities that come with the Mayor’s office. Sanders has the experience and though I don’t always agree with him ideologically, I hope his experience can dig San Diego out of the hole its fallen into both financially and through the recent rash of corruption.

Back to the propositions. Why a special election in the first place? What was wrong with the California state legislature? Schwarzenegger called an elections whose cost will weigh most heavily on the individual counties throughout California under the auspices or ‘reform,’ and yet he got nothing done. It really was a multimillion-dollar ‘whoops.’ What was wrong with working through the state legislature? President Bush, after all, often pushes legislation through Congress. Why couldn’t Schwarzenegger do the same thing in California? Probably because the California state legislature represents the citizens of California and Arnold does not. Recently the legislature put a bill on Arnolds desk legalizing gay marriage, an enormous and vital step forward for America’s stumbling LGBT civil rights movement. Arnold vetoed it. This same legislature probably saw the ridiculousness of these most recent propositions and shot them out of the sky. Frustrated, Arnold tried to go around the legislature only to run into another brick wall.

It’s unfortunate this election had to flop and flush a colossal amount of money down the drain. Still, at least the voters have called Arnold on his BS. These numbers do not bode well for Arnold’s reelection prospects, but when combined with the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats prospects for 2006 and 2008 are looking better and better.