But sponsoring a ballot initiative is forever.

That lesson hit home last week as I interviewed former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger during a global forum on direct democracy in Mexico City.

Californians elected Schwarzenegger governor 20 years ago this October. His second term concluded at the end of 2010. But in a very real sense, he is still governing us, for two reasons.

First, because he is a singularly relentless person, who, once he starts something, refuses to let go. Second, because he has been among the most prolific backers of ballot initiatives in the history of the state and the country.

When it comes to ballot initiatives, getting the voters to enact your law or constitutional amendment is just the beginning. Every year brings new legislation, and every election brings new ballot initiatives that might affect or even cancel your ballot initiative.

So, you must defend it.

The best-known example of this is Proposition 13 and its late sponsor, anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis. Today, 45 years after Prop 13’s passage and more than 30 years after Jarvis’ death, there is still a Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association to protect Prop 13 and its limits on property taxes.

Schwarzenegger, now 75, has been actively protecting and extending successful measures for two decades, with a tenacity so unusual I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s arranged for the Terminator to travel through time to keep his initiative alive.

To understand the Sisyphean devotion that initiative protection requires, consider Proposition 49, which Schwarzenegger convinced voters to pass way back in 2002, the year before the 2003 recall that made him governor.

Prop 49 was a measure to reserve a piece of the budget to fund after-school programs, which had been a focus of Schwarzenegger’s charitable work. Back then, I was among a crowd of reporters and political observers who saw Prop 49 as little more than a showpiece to set up a future Schwarzenegger run for the governorship.

In retrospect, we badly underestimated Prop 49, and Schwarzenegger. As governor, he defended the Prop 49 funds for after-school programs against cuts and elimination, especially during the budget crisis of the Great Recession. Since leaving office, he has continued that defense work, while advocating for additional funding from other sources.

As a result, California offers more support for after-school programs than the other 49 states combined. Last fall, the Biden administration dispatched U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to California to celebrate Prop 49—and to tout it as a model for other states.

The other two initiatives that Schwarzenegger guards like a junkyard dog are a matched pair of political reforms: groundbreaking 2008 and 2010 measures that changed state redistricting. Effectively, the measures stripped the state legislature of the power to draft district lines for its own members, and for members of Congress. Instead, the initiatives gave that power to a bipartisan citizens commission.

Those were hard-won victories for a governor whose early attempts at redistricting had failed. (After a failed initiative on redistricting in 2005, I wrote that he should give up the cause. He didn’t take my advice.) Those wins for Schwarzenegger also won him constant opposition from political parties and leading politicians trying to undo the measures in the courts.

Schwarzenegger has not been content to fight off these challenges alone. He’s successfully backed ballot measures to enact similar redistricting reforms in other states, among them Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah.

I’ve long dismissed redistricting reform as too small a change to resolve California’s political problems. My columns have proposed, instead, wholesale constitutional change that ends our tradition of single-member districts in favor of a proportional representation system that would force the parties to share power.

But it’s easy for me to criticize. As I spoke with Schwarzenegger, I found myself thinking about how hard it would be for reformers, who have launched such an effort, to turn proportional representation into a reality.

They would have to get someone to write an initiative, raise millions of dollars to qualify it for the ballot, and then somehow convince voters to adopt it.

And even if they managed to do those things, their work wouldn’t be done. They’d have to spend the rest of their lives, and beyond, defending the proposal against court challenges and other initiatives.

In other words, they’d have to find their own inner Terminator.

The post In California Politics, You Must Find Your Inner Terminator appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

“The recall is about freedom,” said Costa, as he gleefully referred to himself as a “wacko” and “president of the Banana Republic of California.”

“Here,” he said, “the people are showing the world that they can kick the rulers out anytime they like.”

I thought of Costa as I watched Gov. Gavin Newsom give his inaugural speech this month in Sacramento. Newsom and Costa occupy opposite ends of the political spectrum. But Newsom, like recall supporters once did, couldn’t stop talking about California as an alternative American republic—a place to demonstrate what real freedom might look like.

“More than any people, in any place, California has bridged the historic expanse between freedom for some, and freedom for all,” Newsom said, adding: “California will continue to lead out loud, by advancing a far-reaching freedom agenda.”

Outside the Golden State, such messianic thinking is mocked as left-coast lunacy. Even inside California, political cognoscenti dismiss Newsom’s rhetoric as advancing national political ambitions. And they recall 2003 as a bizarre sideshow.

These cynics are wrong. Yes, this state has engaged in global hype since the Gold Rush. And yes, much talk about California as global leader is pretentious and over-the-top. But our pretensions have been repeated so long that they have acquired real weight.

In retrospect, and after reflecting on my own career observing California governance in the 21^st century, the 2003 recall looks less like a strange moment and more like the beginning of an era. The recall was an international event that elected a hyper-ambitious world-famous movie star as governor. Since then, state leaders have thought and acted as global agenda-setters, as if they were top diplomats at the United Nations or cardinals in the Vatican.

This shift goes unrecognized because Californians and Americans look lazily at politics, through partisan lenses. The recall, and the elevation of a Republican to the governor’s office, shifted the state right, then the state moved back left. Where’s the continuity in that? Here’s where: in the global scale of the rhetoric, ambitions, and policies of our governors.

While Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry Brown, and Gavin Newsom are very different characters, they all increased the power of an office that functions as a second American presidency. And they have talked in world-historical terms of California as a place apart, a model for America and other countries.

Schwarzenegger used the word “Armageddon” more than any politician I’ve ever encountered, and offered himself and his state as world savior. He pursued policies, especially on climate change, health care, and political reform, that were at odds with those of other states and the nation.

“We are the modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta,” said Schwarzenegger in his fourth State of the State address. “Not only can we lead California into the future … we can show the nation and the world how to get there.”

Brown was less messianic and more philosophical, but he was ambitious. He approved a series of protections and supports for immigrants—in the face of an anti-immigrant wave in Washington—that constituted a new, California form of American citizenship.

And he portrayed California as battling apocalypse, just as Schwarzenegger did. He traveled the world as if he were a president (he even met one-on-one with China’s Xi Jinping) to build a “network of the willing” of provinces and countries eager to prevent climate Armageddon and nuclear holocaust.

But for all of that work, it is not Schwarzenegger or Brown but the current governor, Gavin Newsom, who has been most aggressive in his California exceptionalism. Newsom portrays California as a free nation, providing protection against an America descending into fascism, hatred, violence, book-banning, and restrictions on the rights of immigrants, women, and LGTBQ people. He scheduled his second inaugural for January 6 and led a peaceful march to the Capitol in Sacramento—drawing a deliberate contrast between California and the insurrection of 2021.

In public, Newsom won’t stop talking about the national and global leadership of the “world’s fourth largest economy.” His second inaugural connected his personal and family history to the idea of California as a global bastion of freedom that is both “giving shape to the future” and “molding the character of the nation.”

“Whether your family came here for work, or for safety, California offered freedom to access it, not contingent on you looking a certain way, talking a certain way, thinking a certain way,” he said.

“California lights the territory for the rest,” he concluded.

There is an enormous problem with this sort of rhetoric, one that Newsom openly confronted. The state itself has enormous problems, and the lives of its people are defined by local struggles—especially the struggle to be housed—not by global ambitions.

The question for California now is whether the state can do more than enact progressive policies and ambitious goals. It must make major improvements in the lives of its people.

With recession looming and the state budget suffering, the limitations of California’s outdated governing system—first designed in the 19^th century—are evident. Newsom and other leaders know the system has to change to make it possible for action to match ambitions.

I’ve long been a dark-hearted cynic about the state’s willingness to change. But there are some green shoots. Civic groups have been quietly meeting to talk about making major revisions to, or even rewriting, the constitution, which dates to 1879.

And last week, a new organization, the ProRep Coalition, announced an effort to remake California’s election system. Their proposal, already endorsed by smaller political parties on the right and left, is for a multi-party system of proportional representation—allocating power and representation by the percentage of the vote to allow more diversity and more expertise in government, as the world’s most advanced democracies do.

Such efforts seek to transform the rhetoric of the last 20 years into reality. If they succeed, it would spark a new era for California, where we become not just a state but the next American republic.

The post How the 2003 Recall Created Today’s Republic of California appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

This closing comment of a political career—Koretz lost a bid for city controller—might have seemed inappropriate. But in the council chamber, it drew a wildly positive reaction, with council staffers jumping up and down and Koretz’s colleagues standing to applaud. It was as if “F—k you” had replaced “Eureka” as the state motto.

That moment showed the depths of the mutual contempt between public officials and the people in our state. It also demonstrated just how one-sided the narrative about anger in the public square has become.

Political violence runs two ways. Public officials often incite anger, threats, and worse against everyday people. But media reports typically focus on violence committed by the people against public figures. California has no shortage of such cases: the attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in their San Francisco home; prosecutions of men who threatened to kill U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell and state Sen. Scott Weiner; and the Southern California man charged with the attempted murder of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Those high-profile attacks can’t be dismissed as anecdotal. Threats against members of Congress have increased tenfold in the last decade. Polling has shown that about one in five Americans believe that political violence is sometimes justified—numbers that approach the percentages of people in Northern Ireland who felt the same way during the Troubles. The social costs of threats and violence are mounting. Facing harassment, public health officials retired in record numbers during the pandemic.

News media have been especially attentive to such violence for two reasons—because we cover political figures, and because journalists themselves are frequent targets. Your columnist has become so accustomed to threatening emails, texts, and social media posts that I no longer give them a second thought.

But in California, politicians have done little to protect journalists or everyday citizens who participate in the public square. Instead, they’ve been trying to protect themselves.

Around the state, that’s involved more security for public officials. And in many cases, local politicians have seized the opportunity to put more distance between themselves and ordinary Californians. Many officials restrict access to their buildings and offices, while lobbying for state laws that will allow them to participate remotely in meetings without disclosing their location.

One new law, Senate Bill 1100, empowers the presiding member of a city council or other local legislative body to warn and then remove an individual judged—by the lawmakers themselves, of course—to be disruptive.

This law isn’t particularly novel. State laws already essentially bar citizens from meaningful participation in the negotiations and contracting that are central to governance. In public meetings, citizens are typically limited to short statements or questions—“three minutes at the microphone”—that elected officials aren’t required to answer. The new bill goes further in this authoritarian direction, encouraging those in power to kick dissidents out.

But, it won’t make local meetings any quieter or safer. To the contrary, frustrated citizens will likely try to get themselves removed from meetings to demonstrate the depths of their protest and perhaps create legal causes of action against local governments because of their exclusion.

The underlying lesson is that keeping the public away isn’t protection. It’s perilous, because it inspires contempt. You can only hide from angry constituents for so long.

Which is one reason why people are increasingly choosing to protest at their representatives’ homes. Officials of all stripes have pursued regulations to restrict such protests and protect their families and neighbors from the noise, nuisance, and confrontations that come with them.

The impulse is understandable, but the restrictions haven’t stopped protesting near officials’ homes in Los Angeles, which passed such a law.

And such legislation is nakedly one-sided, because politicians haven’t stopped knocking on our doors in search of votes.

Our leaders aren’t just victims of anger—they are often victimizers, inciting threats and violence against ordinary people. Since November 2020, hundreds of elections workers have quit because of harassment by election deniers, many of whom are officeholders themselves. Political rhetoric also coincides with a rise in hate crimes since 2014. At the same time, public officials have sanctioned violence against protestors, many for progressive causes; three states have passed laws providing legal immunity to people who drive cars into protests.

“Political leaders’ rhetoric is particularly influential in normalizing violence among their followers, inflaming already angry people, and focusing those inclined to violence on particular targets,” Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the January 6 Commission.

In this context, we citizens are retreating from civic life, and from one another. A fascinating new study, Democracy Lives in Darkness, by Emily Van Duyn of the University of Illinois, shows how Americans are doing more of their civic and political participation in small, secretive groups to avoid retribution from politicians and their fellow citizens.

That’s tragic. The most reliable way of combating political violence is to build better personal connections between politicians and people. We need more spaces for public officials and regular people to get to know each other personally, and to talk freely.

The best model I know for this is a South Pasadena city councilmember who, accompanied by his dog, takes frequent long walks through the city, checking on every block and stopping to chat with people along the way. There’s no need to protest a politician like that at his house—he’ll come to yours.

Unfortunately, next door to South Pasadena is the district of Los Angeles City Council member Kevin De León, a paragon of bad relations between politicians and people.

De León is in the news for refusing to resign after being caught on tape in a conversation full of racist and bigoted comments. Over the holidays, De León and an activist had a physical confrontation at a toy giveaway.

The context for this fight is poorly understood; the conflict between the councilmember and activists started years before the tape leak. De León and his staff maintain they have been doxed, harassed, and attacked by activist groups who oppose their policies of housing the homeless.

In other words, the pressure and anger De León is facing now is not new. Which may explain his refusal to resign.  Could he even be sure that his conflict with activists would end even if he quit? Ask yourself:  if you were in his place, would you give ground? Would you step down?

Or would you just say: f—k you?

The post The Mutual ‘F—k You’ Defines California Politics Today appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

That’s the question that should be posed to California media and politicos who have responded with knee-jerk cynicism to Newsom’s many interventions on behalf of Trump’s targets.  These pundits describe the governor’s forays into national disputes over abortion, immigration, and LGBTQ rights as political ploys—performed in service of presidential ambitions.

The truth is the exact opposite. Whether he’s trumpeting a maximalist pro-choice stance on abortion on out-of-state billboards or banning state-funded travel to places that are unfriendly to LGTBQ people, Newsom is in fact throwing away whatever slight chance he might have had of being president.

Getting elected president, if you’re a Democrat, is about making friends with powerful Democratic players, soft-pedaling divisive issues, and building broad, diverse coalitions. That’s how Barack Obama and Joe Biden won the White House. But Newsom’s constant blasts into cultural politics divide the country and make him enemies.

Sure, picking fights with Trump and like-minded governors may be good politics. But Newsom is also calling out national Democrats, including Biden, for not being combative enough. (The president, in a bit of payback, recently put Newsom in a jam with labor interests.)

Newsom and his political advisors must know that these battles over social issues would hurt his chances, particularly in battleground states like Arizona and North Carolina (to which California banned state-funded travel). The real story is why Gavin Newsom, of all people, is engaging in acts of political self-sacrifice now.

I think there are three possible explanations—two that are peculiar to our very peculiar and poorly understood governor, and one that stems from California’s growing estrangement from the United States.

The first explanation is that Newsom simply can’t help himself.

The governor has always lacked discipline, ignoring basic rules of political communication. While he may look like the politician from central casting—tall, handsome, the styled hair—he is a campaign consultant’s nightmare.

He uses three big words when one short one will do. He’s often the best witness against himself, volunteering arguments against his own policies. He uses too much detail—going on like an overeager waiter at one of his restaurants, insisting on telling you about all the specials, when you wish you could just order. Newsom’s self-indulgence sometimes has verged into personal recklessness—this is a man who had an affair with a top aide’s wife, and dined maskless at the French Laundry during the pandemic.

That is the ugly side of Newsom’s undiscipline. But there is an admirable side to it, too—which leads me to the second explanation. While wise politicians try to avoid fights and fierce criticism, Newsom has a tendency to jump into disputes, and draw fire to himself. Why? I can’t read his mind or put this child of divorce on a psychiatrist’s couch. But, reviewing his record and his speeches, I’ve concluded that Newsom often jumps in to take fire when he feels someone needs protection.

Just go back and look at his endless budget press conferences—I dare you—where he explains almost every expenditure in the language of defense. He is constantly protecting—the climate, the environment, the homeless, children, this community, that interest group.

This protective instinct is why he’s jumped into national politics. If media and Democrats are going to give the Trumpists space to spew hate and nonsense, attack democracy, and pull stunts that spread fear among women and immigrants and gay people, how can he sit on the sidelines?

His recent decision to place billboards—paid for with his own campaign money, in seven states that have eliminated abortion rights—is a perfect example of the Newsomian mindset. The boards tell women that California will protect their right to bodily autonomy and to abortion (and provide a state website, abortion.ca.gov, where they can find out more). If such boards turn off voters in Ohio and Florida—people that a Democratic presidential contender will need someday—so what?

Let me be clear: these interventions don’t make Newsom a hero. Here at home, his national blasts are good politics, feeding his base. And contrary to The Atlantic, which suggests that Newsom’s national forays are designed to avoid his duties to Californians, the governor’s national fights actually help him do his job here. How? By keeping him in the spotlight, which has allowed him to make a public case for his wildly ambitious agenda of new policies and programs in healthcare, child care, housing, and homelessness.

But Newsom’s progressive California supremacy is poison in the other 49 states, where Americans sadly can’t accept the truth that we Californians really do know better.

That’s one reason why Newsom is not sacrificing that much when he throws away any White House prospects he might have had.  A Californian doesn’t have much chance at the presidency anyway, much less a Californian with Newsom’s baggage. And Newsom is demographically wrong for a Democratic party that desperately needs to nominate more women and people of color.

But Newsom is perfectly cast to call out while male political bullies and call in his fellow Democrats.

And who knows? While he’ll never be president of the United States, he still could lead a nation someday. If our state and the rest of the country continue to grow apart, it’s not hard to imagine Newsom as the first president or prime minister of an independent California Republic.

The post Newsom Isn’t Pursuing His Presidential Ambitions. He’s Trashing Them appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Ana Matosantos has announced she is departing the Newsom administration at the end of the summer, telling the L.A. Times that she needs to sleep.

Can state government survive without her?

Unless you follow state politics closely, you’ve probably never heard of Matosantos, who doesn’t appear on television or give many on-the-record interviews. But for more than 15 years she has been an indispensable insider of Sacramento—depended upon by politicians, parties, and agencies of all varieties.

What makes her so important? The answer lies in a paradox.

Because our state is such a kaleidoscopically diverse and complicated place, one might assume it requires a large and diverse set of people and institutions to govern it. In reality, the opposite is true. The machinery of government here is so complex, no mortals—and certain no elected official—can understand it, much less govern it.

So, real governing in California requires that one-in-40-million sort of person. She must be a wizard with a mind peculiar and powerful enough to comprehend the incomprehensible algorithms of state finance, to make sense of rules and regulations that make no sense, to conjure possibilities from our impossible system. And the wizard must do this quietly, so that politicians can pretend to run the place.

Each generation in Sacramento produces its own wizard. In the later 20th century, the wizard was a soulful and profane state educational official named John Mockler, the author of Prop 98, the impossibly complicated school funding formula that makes the state budget so maddeningly complex.  Mockler was so vital to California that I proposed, in the L.A. Times, that the state constitution be changed to require him to live forever. (Alas, he died in 2015.)

In the 21st century, the unicorn keeping California from cracking up has been Matosantos.

You may think of the last three governors—Messrs. Schwarzenegger, Brown, and Newsom—as very different men with very different agendas. But when it came to the most complicated governing and budgeting tasks, they were flashy figureheads, often doing whatever Matosantos advised them to do.

Matosantos has had different jobs and titles. But, relying on her off-the-charts intellect, a Stanford education, and a freakishly good memory, she developed the rarer-than-rare ability to understand the bizarro world of state budgeting.

Originally from Puerto Rico, she first gained notice on the political stage when she helped Schwarzenegger (who often referred to her “the genius”) negotiate complicated and contentious budget fights in the 2000s. In one such conflict, which has become Capitol legend, Matosantos is said to have drafted both the Democratic proposal and Republican counter-proposal that led to a budget agreement.

In the 2010 elections, Jerry Brown replaced Schwarzenegger, but Matosantos stayed on to direct state finances—and ingeniously found ways to turn the curious koans of the philosopher-governor into real policies. One veteran Capitol wag compared her to the Kyra Sedgwick character in the TV series The Closer, a brilliant LAPD investigator who solved the crimes that no one else could crack. Matosantos was considered so essential to the state’s governance that her 2011 arrest for driving under the influence was treated not like a personal scandal but rather like a near-death experience for state government. What would California do without Ana?

She left state service for a time. But Newsom, after winning office, coaxed her back into state government, making her cabinet secretary, which requires coordinating operations and policy across all departments and agencies.

It’s an impossible job, and Matosantos had missteps in everything from pandemic response to utility regulation. But she also was the administration’s great resource, able to answer seemingly unanswerable questions about state government. She also kept pulling rabbits out of hats—insiders say she was particularly adept at exploiting the details of Trump administration regulations for California’s benefit. She and her administration colleagues managed to make historic investments in new programs while protecting the giant budget surpluses of recent years.

Indeed, some progressives in California privately complained that Matosantos’ ability to manage our messed-up government machinery was too good—her skill at solving difficult problems in the short term allowed state government to postpone systemic reforms.

This may be an election year, but Matosantos’ departure from the administration is the most significant change in California governance.

Possibly, after some well-deserved rest, Matosantos will find a way to keep playing her essential role in governing California, for instance, as a consultant. But if Matosantos is truly departing, this time of transition raises all kinds of fears about what comes next. Without a government wizard, California could fall apart under the stresses of economic downturn.

But, maybe, just maybe, this absence of sorcery might force Californians to redesign our complicated state constitution. Without Matosantos to keep things going, maybe we will have no choice but to remove the formulas and remake how we budget. Maybe we will create a new governing system simple enough that politicians and even everyday Californians can understand it.

But such changes make too much sense to ever happen in this state. California, and Sacramento, will just have to find a new wizard.

The post What Happens When the ‘Indispensable Insider’ of Sacramento Steps Down? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I know a lot of you think this recall is pretty strange. But you don’t have to go far to find a recall that’s even stranger.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has spent the past couple years demanding a recall election. What makes his demand strange, and potentially historic, is the identity of the politician he wants to ask voters to remove: Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

When I first heard about López Obrador’s self-recall, I laughed. Then I asked myself: What constitutes a victory when you seek to recall yourself? Are you a winner when your self-recall succeeds and you are forced out? Or are you a winner when the people vote down your recall because they insist you remain in office?

That’s when it hit me: A self-recall is the ultimate win-win (which is why the Mexican president’s political opponents want to deny him a vote that might make himself look selfless and democratic). So why didn’t I—or at least my expensive team of political consultants—think of this self-recall thing first?

In retrospect, my biggest campaign mistake may have been resisting the recall so forcefully. By calling it a massive threat to California, I tapped into fear, not hope. I made the recall seem bigger, and that made it more real. And I made it about me—a big mistake, because I’m not always an easy guy to like.

Instead, I should have welcomed the recall, and what it says about the struggles of this state and its people.

Of course, I would have had to point out that the recall petition’s sponsors were weird Trumpers who hate my policies of supporting immigrants, the poor, and people caught up in the criminal justice system.

But I should have emphasized that I’m a huge believer in democracy and the right of the people to choose their own leaders.

I also realize that this isn’t the governorship I promised you, or that you voted for. It’s certainly not the governorship I imagined.

The pandemic, and the escalating crises in California, from homelessness to fire, are huge. They’re causing people an unprecedented level of pain. More than 65,000 Californians are dead of COVID. School closures have done long-term damage to our children. Businesses and jobs have been lost. Whole towns, plus thousands of homes and other buildings, have been reduced to ashes.

I’ve done my best to respond in big, creative ways. I’m proud of most of what I’ve done, and when I’ve screwed up, I’ve tried to fix my mistakes. But I understand if others feel new leadership is required. My fellow Californians are my boss, and have the right to make a change. So, I welcome the recall vote and the public’s verdict on whether I’m the guy you want to move the state forward.

Honestly, if I had to do it again, I would have embraced the recall right after the French Laundry news broke. Perhaps that would have robbed it of the momentum it needed to qualify for the ballot, or to make the campaign as close as it’s been.

Perhaps it would have been enough if I had said: I take the blame for all the state’s problems. Now let’s focus on solving them. Instead, I’ve added to the political conflict that is making it so hard to convince people across the spectrum to come together to address all the crises we face.

It’s been a mistake to respond to the recall primarily by attacking the motives of those who support it. The more than 1.5 million Californians who signed petitions are not all Trumpers acting in bad faith. They are our neighbors, and we need them now—as partners in ending the pandemic.

I also regret discouraging any of my fellow Democrats from running to succeed me. I love California, and this state’s success means more to me than my own career, which is why I should have recruited a candidate of my own to run as my replacement. I should have given my supporters a clear choice on the second question on the ballot, and that should have been the person I would most trust to lead this state, if the majority of voters no longer want me doing the job.

My messaging—around the recall and the contest to replace me—has helped poison this election, making it more challenging to achieve the higher turnout I need to keep the governorship. When you tell people an election is an illegitimate trick, it’s harder to get them to vote in it.

Let me close with one argument for voting no, and keeping me in office, that you probably haven’t heard. But it’s the one that touches my own lived reality.

The truth is that my own personal life will be better if I get recalled. I could give up the endless headaches of dealing with California’s many crises, and go back to my fabulous home and loving family (who will no longer get criticized for their every masked or unmasked move). I’ll have no shortage of opportunities to make even more money in various business ventures across this state. If I am recalled by a tiny margin, and my replacement is ineffective and unpopular, I could attempt a political comeback—perhaps even in next year’s gubernatorial election.

I understand that many of you want to punish me. So, if that’s your goal, recalling me isn’t the best way to do it. The harshest punishment you could give me would be to keep me in this crazy job, and to force me to keep governing an ungovernable state and to keep presiding over a California apocalypse that never ends.

The post I Should Have Recalled Myself! appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

It is, of all people, Gray Davis.

Yes, perhaps paradoxically, Gray Davis, the former governor who voters recalled in 2003, may be the most important ally Gavin Newsom and California’s ruling Democrats have in defeating this year’s recall.

On Election Day this fall, voters will face two questions. First, they must choose, yes or no, whether to remove Newsom from office. Then, they will have the option to vote for one person from a list of candidates who would replace him.

The conundrum facing Democrats is whether they would be better off preventing anyone from within their ranks from running to replace Newsom, or whether the party should place one prominent Democrat on the ballot.

There are strong arguments on both sides. Newsom himself, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and most of the Democratic establishment don’t want a Democratic alternative. They argue that fielding an attractive Democratic candidate would give more Democratic voters permission to vote to recall the governor. They want to keep the Democratic base firmly behind the governor, and offer the voters a stark choice: support Newsom, or risk turning the governorship over to one of several pro-Trump Republicans who are running in the replacement race.

But other Democrats—notably former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, a Newsom mentor—say that’s reckless. They think the Democrats should rally behind an alternative of their own, which could keep the governor’s office in Democratic hands if Newsom is recalled. Without such a back-up in place, one of those Trump-backing GOP contenders—part of a Republican party that has turned hard against democracy itself—could end up as our next governor, at least until the November 2022 elections.

But what if there were another way—or rather, a way to have it both ways? What if Democrats could find the perfect replacement candidate?

That candidate is not an ambitious Democratic politician like former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, or 2020 presidential candidate Tom Steyer—too many Democrats might prefer one of them over the incumbent Newsom, making the recall a contest between different factions of Democrats. Gov. Newsom and the Democratic establishment are correct in arguing that to beat the recall, they need party unity.

What the Democrats need is to offer up a candidate with no political future, a back-up candidate whose opposition to the recall, and support for Gov. Newsom, would be unquestioned.

What if the Democrats called on Gray Davis?

Davis is 78 years old. He’s not charismatic or popular. Best of all for Democrats, his very presence on the ballot would reinforce opposition to the recall.

Davis bitterly fought his own recall in 2003. He knows, better than anyone, the defects of the process. And Davis, who has worked on governance reform efforts since leaving office, could remind voters that recalls actually don’t change that much in California. This is a state where most government decisions are locked in place by budget formulas, ballot initiatives, the constitution, and powerful interest groups.

To illustrate the absurdity of using recalls to force dramatic change, Davis could point to the fact that his successor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, relied on Davis’ own aides and doubled down on many of Davis’ own policies. Davis could recount how he and Schwarzenegger have become close friends, with Davis a frequent presence at Schwarzenegger’s institute at USC. The two men even saw each other over a recent Christmas.

Davis has been among those who oppose putting a replacement candidate on the ballot—which reinforces the fact that he would be the perfect replacement. He could campaign with Newsom, whose efforts the former governor has relentlessly praised. Indeed, Davis, by taking on all questions about the recall itself, could reinforce Newsom’s strategy of focusing on his job as governor, and what he can do for Californians. On recall matters, Davis already has been a media surrogate for Newsom on local TV around the state; in an appearance on KABC in Los Angeles, Davis even lapsed into referring to Newsom and himself as “we.”

In other words, Davis would join the ballot as a clear member of team Newsom, thus satisfying the strategic imperatives of both sides of this puzzle. Davis would keep up the attack on the recall while keeping it separate from Newsom, who can focus on bigger, more urgent issues. And Davis’ presence would provide a unifying Democratic insurance policy in case Newsom can’t get a majority to vote to retain him in office.

Gray Davis couldn’t save his own governorship. But he’s the perfect person to save Newsom’s.

The post I Know Who Can Rescue California Democrats (and Maybe Gavin Newsom, Too) appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

At the very least, I hope you’ll appreciate me if Gov. Gavin Newsom, who won office overwhelmingly in 2018 and remains popular in polls, ends up facing a recall election later this year.

Newsom’s team is already attacking me as an extreme or anti-democratic tool, and claiming that holding a recall vote would be a waste of money. But those attacks, while understandable, are misguided. When you go after me, you’re going after an essential feature of democracy.

I, the recall, am an exquisitely simple and direct democratic tool that allows citizens to petition for a vote to remove elected officials from office before their terms are over. My petitions and elections are quite valuable, even when the targeted official survives the recall attempt (as most do—I am merciful). The threat alone of petitions on my behalf encourages elected officials to pay more attention to constituents. And recall elections allow for swifter public challenges to failing leaders and difficult controversies.

The wisdom of providing angry citizens with a democratic and non-violent means of removing public officials has never been more apparent.

Since I’m not a legal instrument at the federal level in the United States, American voters just spent four years with no immediate and democratic way to consider the removal of a lawless, authoritarian, and dangerous president. Your weak constitutional tools for removal—the 25th Amendment and impeachment—depend not on voters but on supermajorities of elected officials acting against a president who may be their political ally.

Imagine if I had been available these past four years—could I have provided the checks and balances that Congress neglected? Would I have been a better way for Americans to blow off steam, as opposed to posting on Twitter? Could I have—dare I say—tempered or even removed the outgoing president? In my absence, your nation descended into anti-democratic rage, extremism, and political violence.

Other world democracies, with parliamentary or multi-party systems far more advanced than yours, allow the peaceful fall of prime ministers or governments at any time. But at the national level, Americans cling to the self-immolating paradox memorably satirized by the humorist Will Rogers: “On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.”

In this context, California’s long embrace of me is a difference worth celebrating. Since voters added me to the state constitution in 1911, Californians have considered recalls of hundreds of local officials, and attempted the removal of state officials 165 times. Here, people don’t have to wait until the next election to eject dangerous politicians. You have the right to use me to fire them at any time.

My biggest moment in the spotlight was in 2003, when California became the first state since 1921 to recall a governor. The recall campaign that threw out Gray Davis and elected Arnold Schwarzenegger was a huge spectacle, and a moment of real civic engagement; 99 percent of Californians told pollsters they were following news about me back then.

I’m flashing back to 2003 right now, as a petition slowly gathers signatures to recall Newsom. Once again, I originated with Republicans and right-wing activists who had passion but not much money or political experience. The original proponent of pulling the plug on Newsom was a retired Yolo County sheriff’s deputy named Orrin Heatlie, who decided to use me, the recall tool, after watching a YouTube video of Newsom supporting undocumented immigrants.

The effort Heatlie instigated, after fits and starts (there were also four other petitions against the governor), now has backing from Republican consultants and office-holders, too. These establishment folks are using me to raise money—and battling the grassroots proponents for control.

This time around, I’m an underdog because the politics of many of my backers are way too Trumpian for California. Some stated reasons on the petition knock Newsom for actions that are popular—like his sanctuary state protections for immigrants, his support for criminal justice reform, and his insistence that parents have their children vaccinated. The governor’s pandemic management mistakes and his French Laundry dinner don’t appear on the petition as reasons to remove him, because the petition was filed in February 2020, before COVID had shut down much of the state.

But none of this means I’m doomed. I can win again in California if support for me can grow beyond the right. All it might take is a candidate with broad popular appeal. That’s what California got in 2003, when the centrist Schwarzenegger essentially commandeered the recall campaign from the wingnuts and convinced Californians that he could take on their broken governing and budget systems.

Despite Schwarzenegger’s efforts, those systems remain broken, and Newsom, for all his ambitious proposals, hasn’t fixed them. He’s also struggled to respond consistently to the pandemic. So, if a top-notch crisis manager with a real commitment to systemic change were to emerge, I could once again throw out a California governor.

As of right now, that seems unlikely to happen. The best-known replacement candidate, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, couldn’t even manage the lease details of an office building.

And Newsom looks like the sort of deft politician who responds to the threat of me by making adjustments, and ultimately emerging more popular. I can improve politicians in this way. That’s why I take some pride in the fact that—in the weeks since it first appeared I’d be leaving South America (I’m popular in Peru) to come to California in 2021—the governor has shaken up his staff, and offered more focused plans to reopen schools and support idled businesses and workers.

Still, at the risk of appearing self-promotional, I would suggest that having a recall election might be healthy for your state. The pandemic has revealed many urgent problems with your governance, especially centralization of money and power in Sacramento that has left local governments too weak to respond effectively in emergencies.

And California has spent the last four years understandably focused on fighting off attacks from the Trump administration. It’s been too long since the Golden State took a hard look at itself, and whether its public institutions are strong enough to handle the challenges of this very tough century.

I, the recall, would be the perfect vehicle for that kind of self-examination.

The post Why Californians—of Both Parties—Should Embrace the Recall appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

No historic plaques mark the five-bedroom home at 515 N. Crescent Heights Blvd., which sits between West Hollywood and L.A.’s Miracle Mile. But this is where the famed anti-tax activist Jarvis lived, held meetings with Gov. Jerry Brown and other California players, and organized Proposition 13, 1978’s tax-limiting ballot initiative that still dominates California politics.

Another fall fight over Prop 13 is underway. The November ballot’s Proposition 15 proposes to lift Prop 13 caps on taxing commercial properties, thus creating—depending on whom you ask—either billions of dollars for education or new burdens for businesses. So, recently, I went over to check on the historic house—and got an unexpected lesson about how California and its homes keep changing, even if its initiative politics never do.

Jarvis’s undistinguished gray house is now Nechung Dharmapala, L.A.’s Tibetan Buddhist Center. The home has been painted a distinguished shade of orange associated with Buddhism. Above the front windows, two deer surround a wheel representing the Dharma, and a small stupa—a hemispheric structure representing the enlightened mind—rests outside the front door.

Inside, bedrooms are occupied by two monks, one an administrator, and the other the center’s spiritual director. The large, high-ceilinged living room where Jarvis once conducted the angriest California politics of the 20th century has been turned into a 21st-century sanctuary for lessons on the renunciation of ego, the development of compassion, and the possibility of enlightenment for all beings.

It took more than a year to redecorate the home into Nechung Dharmapala Center. Photograph courtesy of Nechung Dharmapala Center

At first, the home’s political past and religious present seemed discordant, but the more I contemplated the place, the more I began to see the continuities and connections. Indeed, 515 N. Crescent Heights Blvd. has become a double-monument to both the perils of revolutions and the paradoxes of protection. The house’s history asks: Why do humans suffer so much in their search for the safety and stability that this world only fleetingly provides?

Prop 13 was a great victory of a conservative California revolution that promised protection—against rising taxes, especially the property taxes that raise the cost of homes and thus displace people. The paradox is that the protector Prop 13 hasn’t protected us from California’s high taxes or extortionate housing prices.

Protection is also Nechung Dharmapala’s reason for being. This Buddhist center is associated with Tibet’s centuries-old Nechung Monastery, which is the headquarters of the State Oracle of Tibet, who embodies the deity Pehar, also known as “The Protector of Religion.”

How the living room looked when 515 N. Crescent Heights Blvd. was put up for sale.

Of course, the protector Pehar couldn’t stop Chinese communists from destroying Nechung Monastery and Tibet’s other religious sites after the 1949 revolution. But therein lies the paradox. The communists’ attacks on religion actually protected the faith. Tibetan Buddhists fled, spreading their teachings and establishing centers around the globe, eventually reaching Howard Jarvis’s front door.

Jarvis’s Tudor-style house was built in 1925, according to county records. Jarvis, a Utah native and “jack” Mormon (he drank cheap vodka he carried in his briefcase), bought it in 1941 for $8,000. He stayed there for the rest of his life, through at least one renovation and three marriages, the last to Estelle Garcia.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Jarvis held court in a big comfortable chair, smoking a cigar and eating Estelle’s corn soup, while distinguished visitors sat on simple sofas. The house was filled with energy and the conviction that a handful of people, without holding office, could upend the world.

“There were some curses, but no prayers,” recalls the Jarvis aide Joel Fox, who also served for a time as president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which remains a force, leading this fall’s campaign to fight Prop 15, and thus protect Prop 13.

Prop 13 governs modern California because it controls the money: Specifically, it requires a two-thirds popular vote to raise local taxes, and a two-thirds vote of the legislature to raise state taxes. But most Californians associate it with its property tax provisions, which cap overall taxes and allow for the reassessment of properties at market value only when they are sold.

When Prop 13 passed, Jarvis’s 3,000-square-foot home, on a 5,900-square-foot lot in a desirable part of L.A.’s westside—which he’d bought nearly 40 years earlier—was assessed at less than $60,000. Its annual tax bills, based on that low base, would stay below $1,000, even as neighboring homeowners paid 10 times that. In 2005, the home assessed value for tax purposes was $75,854; in 2006, after Estelle died (Jarvis himself died in 1986), it was reassessed at $1.25 million.

The house was sold in 2008 according to county records, and put up for sale again in 2013—as Tibetan Buddhists were growing desperate in their search for an L.A. headquarters.

The Nechung Kuten, who is also the Chief State Oracle of Tibet, had visited L.A. in 2007 and 2009 and called for the establishment of a center where Tibetans, Mongolians, and Westerners could study and practice Buddhism in a non-sectarian way. A donor stepped forward to fund a center, but finding the right place—with both a big gathering room and small bedrooms quiet enough for monks—was hard. Until a real estate agent took them to 515 N. Crescent Heights Blvd.

They bought the house in 2013 for $1.38 million. It took more than a year to redecorate the home in a Tibetan style, construct the shrine, and install the Buddha statues. In 2014, the center opened, and the space is often full.

In COVID, resident teacher Geshe Wangchuk has started conducting his lessons online. Photograph courtesy of Nechung Dharmapala Center

In Jarvis’s old living room, resident teacher Geshe Wangchuk now presides. He became a monk at age 12 (with ordination at the Nechung Monastery in Dharamsala, India) and arrived at Nechung L.A. in 2016. He’s skilled not only in explaining Buddhist philosophy but in the creation of sand mandalas and butter sculptures.

During the pandemic, Geshe Wangchuk shifted his daily practices and weekly teachings online. On Saturday mornings this summer, I watched him instruct, via nechungla.org, Zoom, and Facebook, a highly diverse group of Californians. The lessons leaned on a text, “The Three Principal Aspects of the Path,” by Je Tsongkhapa, a 14th-century teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. One passage presented a particular puzzle:

Furthermore when appearance dispels the extreme of existence,
And when emptiness dispels the extreme of non-existence,
And if you understand how emptiness arises as cause and effect,
You will never be captivated by views grasping at extremes.

I wondered if a mind could really be that open. Does avoiding extremes require feeling empty and uncertain about whether you actually exist? And how, I asked, might I apply such enlightenment to 515 N. Crescent Heights Blvd. or any of the extremes of today’s California?

The team at Nechung L.A. had no idea of the house’s history and knew nothing of Jarvis. In a conversation with Nechung L.A.’s board secretary, Tenzin Thokme, I found myself starting to explain Prop 13, and then why Prop 15 is in the news. But my explanations were mostly just questions. Might Prop 15 pull a few billion more dollars out of commercial property and into the schools? Or might the initiative’s many exemptions be exploited by wealthy property owners? Might this measure at the very least make a symbolic strike against Prop 13—or will the whole exercise just reinforce Prop 13’s power?

But if I understood Geshe Wangchuk, the recognition that I have more questions than answers is OK. Because uncertainty about what comes next, for me or for a proposition or for a house, might be the most powerful answer we ever get. Je Tsongkhapa taught it best 600 years ago: “If the entire object of grasping at certitude is dismantled, at that point your analysis of the view has culminated.”

The post How Tibetan Buddhists Helped Me Seek Enlightenment at Howard Jarvis’s House appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The scenario may be fictional, but the idea of California independence, once dismissed as a joke, is gaining both cultural currency and real-world urgency. Our own real-life governor, Gavin Newsom, frequently describes California as a “nation-state,” to make the point that the Golden State must act like an independent country to protect itself during the biggest pandemic in a century. In the absence of reliable federal assistance, California’s local and state officials, along with businesses, have scrambled to provide the protective equipment, testing, ventilators, and guidance that were once thought to be the responsibility of federal agencies.

While conventional wisdom remains that California would never leave the union, who can put faith in conventional wisdom anymore? Polling has showed for three years that one-third of Californians support their state’s peaceful withdrawal from the nation. And Californians’ anger at the federal government is high, with relentless and nasty fights between the state and the White House over California’s attempts to protect its immigrants, women, health care, water, housing, environment, and elections.

Those fights can be partisan, but the differences between California and the U.S. run deeper than mere party lines. And they aren’t temporary. Even the election of a Democratic president is unlikely to bring state and nation together. The cause of the rift between Californians and America goes well beyond the political to the structural, the cultural, and the constitutional.

California is a future-oriented modern democracy with a powerful initiative process that allows its highly diverse population (60-plus percent identifying as non-white) to make laws and amend its constitution directly. The U.S., on the other hand, is a majority-white country that clings to a 1789 constitution that famously permitted slavery, is nearly impossible to amend, and prohibits election of the president by popular vote.

While California’s system encourages a constant give-and-take between citizens and leaders, the power of the U.S. presidency is vast and largely unaccountable; one person in the Oval Office could start an apocalyptic nuclear war without permission from voters or other branches of government.

Those other branches are also sheltered from democratic interventions. Too much power lies with a U.S. Senate that makes a mockery of equal representation, with California’s 40 million people receiving the same two senators as Vermont’s 625,000. And the most difficult decisions in America are made by an unaccountable Supreme Court of highly politicized, life-tenured judges.

None of this makes California’s departure from the union likely. But it does guarantee that our state will be in constant conflict with the U.S.—and that there will be repeated attempts by California to escape the union, for at least as long as the current American Constitution remains in place.

So what is the best way to pursue and manage California’s efforts at independence in the years ahead?

The essential answer to that question is: peacefully. And to make independence peaceful, Californians must hew to the principle that any Calexit must win the support of majorities in both California and the United States as a whole.

Reaching such a double consensus means that any healthy process of considering independence must be about more than the narrow questions about how California would create its own country. Instead, an independence process must start by reconsidering the systems and the future of the entire United States. In essence, if California ever decides to leave the United States and form a new country, it must try to transform the United States into a new country first.

Right now is an auspicious time for just such a reconsideration. With protestors toppling statues of the Founders and institutions pledging to end systemic racism in the U.S., the place to start is by reconsidering America’s original system—the Constitution.

This suggestion will make some Americans crazy, because people in this country have come to deify their Constitution. Americans also assume—after hearing such rhetoric for all our lives—that the end of our current Constitution would mean the end of freedom and democracy.

But that’s not true: Ending one republic does not mean the end of a nation. It means starting a new republic. The French are on their fifth republic. Switzerland, a multicultural and multilingual state that has remained stable and peaceful for 500 years, routinely remakes its constitution, most recently in 1999.

California, the nation’s most creative and populous state, is the perfect place to remake the American republic.

A California-led constitutional rewrite would fit our history. While other states went through a process of becoming a territory and then negotiating statehood with Washington, California hurriedly convened an unauthorized convention in 1849 and declared itself a state, leaving the U.S. no choice but to ratify the self-admission in 1850.

In that spirit, California should convene scholars and representatives from as many states as possible to draft a new American Constitution. Such a body would look at constitutions all over the world with the goal of creating the most advanced 21st-century governing system possible.

A new constitution offers the opportunity to re-found the United States with present-day values of equality and justice. Instead of a constitution that started in slavery and persists in discrimination, we could have a constitution that barred discrimination of any kind. Women could finally be made officially, and constitutionally, equal.

A new constitution also could provide for truly national elections, and could include modern devices like national referenda for major decisions (like going to war) and proportional representation to end our polarizing, winner-take-all political culture. The two-house Congress, a breeding ground for corruption, could be replaced with a single parliament. The power of the American executive could be limited, and distributed to more than one person, to prevent one deranged president from blowing up the world. A new constitution could commit the country to environmental protection and make the passing of international treaties easier, to allow America to fight full-force against climate change.

Once that new constitution is drafted—and the draft is translated into all of the world’s languages, so anyone can read it—California voters would decide whether to approve it. If they turn it down, the convention would have to keep revising it until it gets something that meets voter approval.

Once approved in California, the proposed constitution would be sent to the other 49 states, asking them to adopt it. This is an idea grounded in our current national constitution’s Article V, which permits the calling of a convention to amend or even redo the Constitution by the approval of 34 states. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 85, wrote that Article V was included because we might need to change the Founders’ system; they couldn’t have confidence it would always be the best one.

The other states could accept our constitutional proposal. Or they could amend it, in consultation with California. In either event, California would have helped give the United States a 21st-century governing document that, presumably, would be more democratic, and more supportive of equal rights and environmental protection. Free of the old Constitution, the United States could stop endlessly measuring today’s policies against centuries-old legal precedents, and would have more time to plan for the future.

In that scenario, the Golden State would stay in a more perfect union. But it’s also possible that other states would reject the document, and even the entire exercise. That would leave California with the choice of whether to stay and suffer within the U.S., or to negotiate a peaceful exit from the union.

The nation of California would face some of the same challenges the state of California has struggled to manage—water, education, infrastructure, and taxation. But it also would give the world an alternative American nation with governing rules that aren’t compromised by the sins of the 18th century. Perhaps we could finally conquer our rampant gun violence. Or perhaps California could limit its military and adopt a policy of neutrality, thus demonstrating that Americans actually can organize a nation that doesn’t pursue constant warfare.

The good news: If California sought independence, it wouldn’t have to draft a new constitution. It could simply use the constitution it drafted for the U.S. as the governing document of the new Golden Nation.

In this scenario, California could walk away in good conscience, having done everything it could to save America from itself.

The post Could <i>The Politician</i>‘s #Calexit Fantasy Bring Real Change?  appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.