There was a gubernatorial election last year during a prolonged economic downturn and Gray Davis won despite the energy crisis created in part by Republican-sponsored deregulation and unscrupulous gouging by unprincipled energy providers. The governor did the best he could to solve the crisis but did not look like Conan or Rambo in the process. The economic downturn continues causing very severe state budgetary problems. A wealthy Republican, unhappy with the election results and seeing a political opening, financed a recall initiative and paid people to gather sufficient signatures to place it on the ballot. His party not only applauded him, but joined in the “coup d’etat” effort.
Isn’t this merely a political end-run around a legitimate election in order to force another election this year instead of in 2006? Surely the recall initiative was instituted as a populist device to quickly remove from office elected officials guilty of malfeasance in office or other serious crimes, not as a political ploy by the party not in power to usurp the governance of the fifth largest economy in the world. Does our political future now hold a series of unending tit-for-tat misuse of the initiative process to promote unfair political advantage instead of promoting the common good?
Ray Singer