By Jeremy Lott on 7.28.03 @ 12:01AM
What Gray Davis needs is spoilers -- lots of them.
Media junkies want to know: Just how much of a carnival is the
race to unseat California governor Gray Davis likely to become?
Shock jock Michael
Savage may throw
his hat into the ring, Arianna is mulling a
run, the kindergarten
cop hasn't made up his mind yet, and, oh yes, Jack Kemp is being
"urged"
by supporters to step into the breach. We're in dancing bear
territory folks.
Or perhaps it's a quick game of Find the Lady. When
Drudge announced last Thursday night that Kemp was thinking of
running as a "consensus candidate," my immediate response was, "for
whom?", and I suspect that wasn't an unusual reply. Jack Kemp?? The
guy who got creamed by a human robot in
the 1996 debates? The man who blamed slow economic growth for
Roberto Alomar's rather Pavlovian
response to a bad call? The same Jack Kemp who's recently taken
to
shilling for Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez?
I assumed the Kemp balloon was either the result of some inner
party squabble, or someone's idea of a sick, sick joke. But in
truth it could represent something far worse. California is a state
whose politics are so dysfunctional it's practically
Canadian. Like their comrades
north of the 49th parallel, California Dems have managed to mop up
in statewide contests through a strategy of divide and conquer. So
long as they can keep the opposition at each other's
throats, they win in a walk.
This once-in-a-lifetime possibility of recall could take the
current political arrangement and dash it against the rocks. In
fact, at first glance, this seems like a decent bet. Davis's
approval ratings are in the
toilet. A bare majority of voters currently favors recall. Even
Davis's political friends don't really like him; they simply see
him as being necessary to continue the gravy train to teachers,
trial lawyers, unions, and other Democratic constituencies. If they
could toss him in favor of a less loathed candidate, they
would.
The reason that no major Dem has challenged Davis is simple: He
may be a lousy governor but he knows how to win
elections. Remember, there are two hurdles in the recall
process and Davis can use both to his advantage. First, over 50
percent of the voters have to pull the lever to toss him, and
second, the new governor has to be chosen from the list of opposing
candidates. The winner is whoever gets a plurality of the votes,
but only if 50 percent plus one tell Davis to take a hike.
Because the bar to entry to the gubernatorial race is set so
absurdly low (I'm fairly certain I could get on the ballot
if I got on a plane tomorrow), virtually anyone can run, and will.
So far, Tom
McClintock, Darrell Issa (the scoundrel
who financed the recall), and a few others have announced their
candidacies, with more to follow. The competing factions of the
Republican Party are not likely to unite behind a single candidate
because, as they see it, they don't have to. It's an open field and
whoever gets a plurality wins.
But that only comes into play if the people vote for recall, and
Davis can plausibly claim that a vote against him is a vote in
favor of God only knows what. This short election season is
basically a defensive game and should play right into the glove of
the
Glenn Hall of California politics. In fact, given (a) the
normal tendency of Golden State Republicans to self-destruct, and
(b) the unusually high minority turnout expected to protest Ward
Connerly's "Racial
Privacy Initiative," we may soon have to dust off an old, hated
moniker. Who knew this decade's Come Back Kid would be such a
stuffed shirt?
topics:
Law, NATO, Oil, Unions
