Burnt Orange Report

Recall Roundup 8/7

By Andrew Dobbs

So I spent all day yesterday traveling home from Burlington, isolated from the news for the first time in two and a half months and I was afraid I was going to miss something. Sure enough, I miss Arnold Schwarzenegger’s announcement that he will, in fact, be running for governor of California. I gotta hand it to the muscle man, he had us all convinced he was out of the race and then pow he runs. That was the only smart move here though- this guy’s goose is cooked and he promises to take the California GOP even further into, as Joe Lieberman might say, the “political wilderness.”

Why is that you ask? First off, he’s running against Gray Davis. Davis has never won a single race in his entire life- he’s only caused other people to lose. He can’t tout a record or a vision or a charisma or anything else worth electing him on, he can just make the other guy (or gal as the case may be) in the race look worse. Arnold has about as rich a treasure trove of embarrassing details as anybody- not all of them will stick with everybody but enough will stick with enough people to make this his last race ever. To wit:

1. Arnold’s drug use could be problematic. In at least one of his bodybuilding documentaries back in the day it showed him using marijuana (not a big deal necessarily but likely to alienate the conservative base he has to win as a Republican) and it is pretty clear that he used steroids for years. Pot people can handle, other drugs, particularly drugs that constitute cheating and make people violent are another story. This alone could kill his candidacy.

2. Violence, sex and profanity. All Gray would have to do is take a scene from one of his movies where he blows stuff up, curses or has some steamy love scene and ask if this is the example we want to be setting for our kids. The home of Hollywood probably won’t be as phased as a lot of places, but again, the base will be pissed and it does make him look rather non-governor like.

3. Sex in real life. Arnold is accused of being quite a womanizer and perhaps even an adulterer. Tabloids and other sources have been sitting on these stories for years as Schwarzenegger is known to be very litigious but all bets are off in this race. A couple of stories about a serial adulterer could hurt him- it didn’t hurt Clinton in CA but Arnold doesn’t have Clinton’s charisma or talent.

4. Lack of experience. Poorly mumbling inane lines in a thick Austrian accent as a cookie-cutter character in some mindless action film doesn’t make one qualified to steward the world’s fifth largest economy.

So Arnold has some skeletons and Gray knows how to get him on the defensive. This is bad news for the CA GOP because they wasted their only real prospect on a race he will walk away from in shame.

And now some Democrats have thrown their hats in the ring- namely Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi. Cruz is a much better candidate and Garamendi would be smart to drop out of the race while he still can and having one Democrat greatly increases the chances that we’ll have a friend in the governor’s mansion come October. Regardless of how it works out, Schwarzenegger will come under attack from his right flank by Bill Simon and Tom McClintock and Democrats will side with Bustamante or Garamendi leaving him without any real base except for people who want to vote for a celebrity. Those people already have Gary Coleman (yes, that Gary Coleman) and Larry Flynt, making this race what we all knew it was going to be all along- a circus of unparalleled proportions.

The smartest guy in this race so far might just be Darrell Issa, who announced today that he would not be running. This guy gets his name ID up, gets to claim the biggest Republican victory in about a decade as his own, avoids the degrading spectacle of the race itself and is the only Republican left standing with any kind of chance in 2006. If he can just come up with some answers for some of his past problems, rewrite his bio so that it doesn’t include outright lies and maybe do a bangup job in Congress for a few years he could be the CA GOP’s top dog in 3-7 years. If the party can just keep stoking the public’s resentment and disapproval of the state government and find a way to channel that into anti-Democratic and pro-Republican sentiment Issa has a real chance for Governor or Senate down the road, as much as I hate to admit it.

So here’s the tally so far- Simon, McClintock and Schwarzenegger for the GOP; Arianna Huffington and Peter Camejo as independents; Garamendi and Bustamante for the Dems and Flynt and Coleman just for fun. Definitely out- Issa, Michael Huffington and Diane Feinstein. Maybe in, probably not- Loretta Sanchez for The Ds. She’d just split the vote more and there’s already a Latino in for the Democrats. I think that the advantage lies with the GOP right now and Schwarzenegger but if Gray can make him look as bad as we all know he can then Bustamante has a real shot. Line one I still think passes until I see polls that tell me otherwise. Seeing as less than 10% of respondents said they were “undecided” don’t expect the numbers to change.

Have fun folks, it’s going to be a hell of a ride!