Crazy But Able

As most everyone knows by now, Arnold Schwartzenegger has entered the race in California. My friend Brandon said that he’s loving the whole ridiculous thing, and he claims that more elections should be like that: anyone can run (and almost everyone is), there’s very little lead time before the election, etc.

While I think the idea of surprise elections on a regular basis (electing a politician to a term of 2 to 6 years, with the new election to be held anywhere in that timespan) is an amusing thought experiment, I don’t think that it would really work out as a long term policy thing. The circus that’s going on over there in the far west is pretty darn funny, primarily because the state that I live in doesn’t have a 37 billion dollar budget shortfall.

The other thing I think is interesting is that a lot of these random candidates would get a pretty heavy Ventura effect if they were running in a regular two party race. Gallagher (Actual campaign slogans: “Why settle for amateurs? California deserves a Professional comedian.” and “If you are against gay sex, then let gay people get married, that kills the sex everytime!”) and Gary Coleman (my friend Jack suggested the slogan “WHATCHUTALKINABOUT REPUBLICANS?”) would both probably get a pretty high turnout rate if it wasn’t for the fact that so many other people are running.

Arnie really has to take the state by storm if he’s going to get anything accomplished. I agree with what an anti-recall group said in the WaPo article above about the proliferation of candidates: “The more candidates who join, the greater the likelihood that a small minority of voters will be controlling California’s future.” That’s why he needs to not just win, but win big. I think the fact that Arnie is already starting to push out some of the other conservatives who are running is a step in that direction (Latest news: Issa, the congressman who pumped 1.7 million of his own money into the recall, is dropping out). People just aren’t paying attention to a lot of the other random republicans who are running, and the fact that Schwarzenegger is pro-choice and pro-gay on a lot of issues can only help him in California.

I think Davis is out no matter what. The only thing that would keep the Dems in power is if Feinstein changes her mind about running. I have a sneaking suspicion that she based her “I’m not running” decision on the rumors that Arnie wasn’t going to run. Anyway, that’s it for now, I’ll post some updates as new fiasco news comes across the wire…

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2003 at 8:27 pm and is filed under politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.