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I'll probably be both shouted down and ignored for saying this, but thanks in advance to all of you who serve to perpetuate my lifelong Cassandra complex.
Gray Davis compounded a bad political situation that was arguably not all his fault by making multiple vain attempts to pander to large blocs of voters, in particular union workers and Latinos.
On Monday I overheard a conversation among some employees at a supermarket in San Diego. They are members of the United Food and Commmercial Workers or UFCW, which is poised on the brink of a major strike because their employers are trying to negotiate down their health benefits and pay. That's all business as usual in union shops, but something they said caught my attention: The UFCW had distributed video tapes encouraging people to vote for Cruz Bustamante as a replacement governor. I could not determine what the union's official position was on the recall question itself, but it was clear that the employees were in favor of recalling Gray Davis and scoffing at the suggestion that a vote for Bustamante was in their best interests. They were shaking their heads, and the names Peter Camejo and Arnold Schwarzenegger were mentioned.
The state legislature handed Davis a giant turd last month when it sent him the enormously unpopular SB60, a poorly thought-out bill that will allow illegal aliens to obtain California Driver Licenses effective January 1, 2004. Something like 70% of voters are opposed to SB60 because it diminishes the value of a California Driver License; if the new law goes into effect it will invalidate the Driver License as evidence of legal residence in the state. That will make it trivially easy for illegal aliens FROM ALL COUNTRIES to engage in many activities traditionally or legally reserved for legal residents. A Driver License is the only formal ID you need in order to buy a gun in California (in fact it's one of only three forms of ID that are acceptable for that purpose), and the bill lacks any workable guarantees to prevent illegal aliens from registering to vote. A lot of us including me are very pissed off about SB60. The Democrats in the legislature surely should have known that forcing Davis to either sign or veto the measure would cost him dearly. I question how much party loyalty really exists among Democrats at that level.
Davis could not avoid making a lose-lose choice on SB60, but the course he chose - Reversing his previous statement of non-support and then signing the measure into law with great fanfare - is seen by many Californians, including me, as a vain attempt to pander to an almost universally misunderstood bloc of voters - the "Latino Community". Another bill he signed at the 11th hour waives tuition at junior colleges for illegal aliens.
I've got news for the remaining Democrats in Sacaramento: The Latino Community is as diverse as the population at large. It includes religious conservatives who oppose abortion, business onwners, wealthy professionals, techies who grew up in white suburbs and don't speak a word of Spanish, business owners, and every other species of voter you can think of. Latinos as a group have little more sympathy for illegal aliens than anyone else does. Many Latinos have children who are getting ready to go to college. Most of us, including me, feel human compassion for distressed people, but many of us resent both their disregard for our immigration laws AND the federal government's failure to address the issue of non-resident labor and its failure to enforce the law. People who went through the proper naturalization process resent how Davis and the legislature have assumed they would buy into this obvious pandering.
Most Latinos in California are natural-born US citizens. Most Latino immigrants are naturalized US citizens who came to this country the right way. Tossing a few bones to illegal aliens is not the way to win the hearts of Latinos.
Davis screwed the pooch on the energy crisis two summers ago. He should have listened to US Senator Diane Feinstein, who in her usual wisdom advised him to keep his hands off and let the market take care of the situation. He didn't listen to her, and the result of his errors will cost us dearly for many years to come. I know a Latino family that owns a successfuly restaurant here in San Diego. Their monthly power bills went from about $1,500 to almost $3,000 in mid-2001. They spent many thousands of dollars having skylights installed into their building and replacing every incandescent light with a fluorescent, and some repainting to make the place more energy efficient. The patriarch and matriarch immigrated to the US from Mexico in the late 1950s and has handed the business down to the next generation, now in their mid-40s. FWIW they are all Republicans. Several of their employees live in Mexico and commute across the border daily to work, legally, and they do not hire illegals. They're glad to see Davis go, and they did not vote for Bustamante.
I know that family pretty well. I've been to a few of their family functions and see them around town at restaurants, house parties, etc. They're just a small snapshot but I think they illustrate the terrible miscalculation that Gray Davis and our Democratic leaders in the state legislature have made in recent years.
California has far more interest groups than most people imagine, and the state is deeply divided on the left/right, Republican/Democrat scale. This morning's San Diego Union-Tribune printed a map showing how each of our 58 counties went on the recall measure. The map looks very familiar to anyone who remembers the 2000 Presidential election - Almost precisely every county that went for Al Gore in 2000 voted against the recall of Gray Davis. And about every county that went for Bush in 2000 favored the recall. This time the right took it because the left failed to comprehend that people vote their personal interests and not their race, party, religion, etc. Pandering to class would be more likely to succeed than pandering to race, but in the long run I think that would fail as peoples' perceptions of what class they belong to shifts up and down with the economic tides.
My message to Democratic leaders: Stop trying to pander to special interests. Stop trying to legislate universal prosperity by fiat. Stop passing ever more onerous restrictions on personal liberty. Stop bickering along party lines. Debate every issue vigorously, but be willing to give up some ground if someone else has a better idea. Balance the budget. Make our schools work. Fix the damn roads. And have a nice day.
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