Aug. 18, 2003
Recall Provides Platform for Campaign Critic
By J. Barlow Herget
RALEIGH - It’s tempting to join the comic crowd in commenting on the mad, mad, mad, mad California Recall Election. The spectacle will surely occupy us during the final dog days of summer.
The movement to recall California’s unpopular Gov. Gray Davis and possibly elect his replacement is currently generating more entertainment than enlightenment. There are, however, some serious political points to make about the West Coast sideshow.
As in most American elections today, it’s instructive to follow the money. The recall, for example, would not have happened without the personal fortune of a vengeful Republican Congressman, millionaire Darrell Issa who ran and lost a race for governor in 2002.
He spent over $2 million to organize and hire people to collect signatures for the recall petition. In effect, he bought a new election for October 7th, less than 11 months after California voters selected Davis for a four-year term. Issa, by the way, quit the replacement race when movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger began.
One of the 100-plus candidates who knows about California elections is Arianna Huffington. Her former husband spent about $60 million and lost an election for the U.S. Senate. Huffington is among the candidate mob who will be on the endless ballot to succeed Davis, should he be recalled.
Huffington rose to fame as a partisan Republican author, columnist and television personality. Interestingly, she is running for governor as an Independent. Her change, one suspects, comes from her belated outrage over campaign finance practices and their corruption of American government. Practices, by the way, that are employed by both major political parties.
Huffington, who has a master’s degree in economics from Cambridge University, compiled a book of screaming examples of such corrupt -- but often legal -- politics. She titled her book, “Pigs at the Trough.”
She begins by detailing the shameless greed of corporate CEOs such as John Rigas of Adelphia, Gary Winnick of Global Crossing, Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco, Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom, and Ken Lay of Enron. None of which is yet in jail.
Much of their ill-gotten, bloated gains came as a result of ineffective oversight by regulatory agencies hamstrung by Congress. Writes Huffington, “Over the last 10 years, corporations have doled out more than $1.08 billion in soft-money contributions. This down payment on preferential public policy has extended across party lines, with $636 million going to Republicans and $449 million to Democrats.”
These preferences translate into what the late Sen. Everett Dirkson, R-Ill., would call “real money” for the Lays and Ebbers amidst us.
“They are people who use political money and connections as levers to free themselves of all accountability to laws, regulations, and responsibility -- even to their own employees. And when the lives of others are destroyed in the process, they just look the other way and hope that the law does, too,” she says. Again, none of the above including those who have been arrested has even gone to trial.
This political money also paves the way for lucrative legislation for its contributors. Huffington calculates, for instance, that since President Bush took office in 2001, the President’s supporters in oil, coal, nuclear and gas companies have seen their energy industry receive about $1 billion in tax incentives, credits, and other deductions. She sniffs, “To announce those, by the way, there was no press conference.”
Huffington doesn’t spare you or me in her analysis. “Before we get too comfortable, pointing our Monday morning fingers at these white-collar crooks without a conscience, we need to admit that their anti-social behavior couldn’t have flourished in a vacuum. We allowed it.” Her recommendation is to reinvigorate our democracy.
Maybe that explains her willingness to be a California gubernatorial candidate. From here, it looks like she’s wasting her riches against opponents such as the far wealthier and well-known Schwarzenegger and the more politically experienced Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, among the hundreds.
California’s recall election, despite what you’ve heard, is not a weird Hollywood joke. Consider: California’s economy is the largest in the country. It surpasses those of many nations. Its $38 billion state budget deficit alone is twice as large as North Carolina’s total budget. We all have a vested interest in California’s economic recovery, and that will require thoughtful, stable government leadership.
Barlow Herget is a writer and consultant who served two terms on the Raleigh City Council.
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