2006 June Primary Election: February 2006 Archives

There's been some very real danger that the June Democratic primary for Governor race was going to turn into a mud fest. Comments from both campaigns, bolstered in the press, seemed to indicate that they were going to try to make it about irrelevancies like personality, rather than ideas.

But today there is some excellent news on this front: Phil Angelides' campaign took a big step today in moving things away from that direction by releasing a bold vision for where this state can go, including a twenty-five percent reduction in gasoline consumption over ten years. After the state Democratic Party convention last year, I was thinking that someone running for Governor should run on energy independence, not just as an environmental issue but as a matter of national security. Just like this:

President Bush and the Republican Congress remain locked in denial about the security and environmental risks of our reliance on oil and about global warming. They have refused to raise vehicle efficiency standards or vigorously pursue clean energy alternatives. Governor Schwarzenegger has offered rhetoric about greenhouse gas targets and hydrogen highways but no real plan or substantial change of direction. His massive infrastructure proposal, rather than encouraging smart growth and reducing oil use, fuels sprawl as usual by directing less than 5 percent of its proposed $100 billion in transportation funding to transit.

- http://angelides.com/enviros/clean-california.html

This is exciting stuff. President Bush's paucity of leadership on this issue and Governor Schwarzenneger's pavement-filled vision for the future of our state have never looked more lame. To our friends in the corporate media: this is exactly the kind of thing we want this campaign to be about. Please do not impose your "personality" driven storylines (or whatever it's going to be) on this race.

The Governor's advisors are divided about Prop 82, the preschool for all initiative.

Richard Riordan, the governor's former secretary of education, and his wife, Nancy Daly Riordan, are among Proposition 82's leading supporters. Some of the big donors to the governor's campaigns - Robert and Elizabeth Lowe and Warren Hellman - are also lending their names to the campaign to tax high earners to pay for universal preschool.

On the other side, the campaign against Proposition 82 is relying on advice from some consultants who have worked for Schwarzenegger's political committees or Citizens to Save California, a coalition of business groups that supported Schwarzenegger's November 2005 initiatives. Two of the governor's staunchest allies are heading up the campaign against Proposition 82: California Chamber of Commerce President Allan Zaremberg and Small Business Action Committee President Joel Fox.

Hence the Governor can't take a position. Nevermind that very prominent pro-business groups, such as the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, have given him perfect cover by endorsing it. This guy just has no set of values guiding him when it comes to anything that's fundamental or important. He has very strong convictions about exercise programs. That's about all we've seen so far. He can't take a stand if any of his crony corporate contributors or right-wing advisors behind the scenes have a problem. That is not the kind of person who deserves to lead a state like California.