Burnt Orange Report

Recall Roundup 7/30

By Andrew Dobbs

Alright, here’s what’s old, new, borrowed and blue in the California Recall Roadshow.

First, the California Insider reports that the California GOP spokesman has said that Arnold Schwarzenegger will not be running for governor of California on the recall ballot.
Republican Party spokesman Rob Stutzman, speaking on Eric Hogue's radio show on KTKZ in Sacramento, says it's official: Arnold is out. "I had that confirmed late last night," Stutzman said.
For those of you keeping score at home, that means that Dick Riordan- the moderate Republican former mayor of Los Angeles- will almost certainly run now. Riordan has said that he would not run if the action star did, but now that the Austrian muscleman has decided that years of illegal drug use and making stupid movies probably doesn’t qualify you to head up the nation’s most populous state. If the Republican field shapes up like it likely will and Dems stand fast behind Gray, Riordan is likely to end up finishing first on line two and will be governor if line one passes. But Gray Davis isn’t going to take this lying down, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Gov. Gray Davis spent $7 million to blast Riordan out of the Republican primary last year. Now, the governor's team says those TV whacks -- over Riordan likening abortion to murder and Los Angeles' profiteering on the energy crisis -- were only a taste of what they would have hit Riordan with in the general election.
"We were just getting warmed up," said a Davis insider.
If there is one thing Gray Davis’ knows how to do, its sling mud. Thankfully some candidates are making it easy for him. Turns out that much of Darrell Issa’s bio is made up, the ”>LA Times is reporting.

In his short political career, Issa — so far the only declared Republican candidate for governor in the special election this fall — has faced both small and large questions about his record in business and the military and his brushes with the law. Republican and Democratic opponents have accused him of concealing arrests as a youth and embellishing his personal story.

The Times examined Issa's statements and campaign literature over the past 13 years and compared them with military records and other public documents. The review reveals a number of claims contradicted or unsupported by records and verifiable facts.
I think that it serves as poetic justice that a guy will shell out millions of dollars to push an electoral effort hoping to set himself up for an office he couldn’t win outright and it ends up that it ruins his career. A no name US Rep from a safe district like Darrell Issa could have spent his career away from the scrutiny of the press and eventually got enough influence in DC to be a mover and shaker, but now after just two terms he has put himself in a place where the microscope gets focused on his shotty record and he ends up without anything. How great is that?

Both Riordan, Issa and all the others are counting on the Democrats not running a candidate to succeed, but that looks less and less likely. US Reps Loretta Sanchez and Cal Dooley have both publicly urged US Sen. Diane Feinstein to put her name on the ballot. This is an interesting story by itself, two prominent elected Dems breaking ranks and calling on another Dem to run on line two, but add to it the fact that Loretta Sanchez suggested that she might run if Feinstein doesn’t and it might just be the story of the day.
Sanchez, one of the state's most prominent Latino politicians, was in San Francisco Tuesday, and appeared to be seriously considering a campaign of her own.
"We need to have a strong Democrat on the ballot. And the strongest would be Dianne . . . otherwise, I'll have to," she said in an interview. "Stay tuned."
But when pressed, Sanchez would say only that she is not ruling out putting her name on the ballot as a Democrat.
This would be an interesting development. With Michael Huffington, Dick Riordan, Darrell Issa, businessman and 2002 GOP candidate Bill Simon and State Sen. Tom McClintock all running as Republicans, Peter Camejo running as a Green and Loretta Sanchez as the Democrat, Sanchez would easily win line two. Chances are having any Dem on line two, plus Ward Connerly’s reactionary “racial privacy” referendum on the same ballot will mean a high enough Dem turnout to keep Davis in office in the first place. But this would up Loretta Sanchez’ name ID and put her in a good place for a future statewide run. Feinstein would be the dream candidate, but there is a significant chance that her candidacy would mean Davis was dead in the water.

Davis got some kinda good news today- the Assembly finally passed a damn budget. Of course it is a smoke and mirrors affair that really amounts to the state government writing itself a bunch of IOUs that will leave the state with at least a $10 billion for the next time around, but who’s keeping count? Gray has come under a lot of scrutiny for not being able to get a budget passed, but this particular monstrosity really had nothing to do with Davis- Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson walks away the winner here. His bold move of locking all the members in the chamber until something came out was the real force behind the budget passage. But actually having a budget frees Gray up to begin his campaign for his political survival.

So there you have it. The score card today: thumbs up for Riordan, Sanchez, Wesson and Feinstein; thumbs way way down for Issa; split decision for Gray. See ya tomorrow!