Can A *Recall Ah-nold* Initiative Be Added To His Special Election?

[stopbush]

I mean, how hard would it be? He's already spending the $ to put his phony baloney power grab on the ballot. Why not get up a petition to put a recall on the ballot?

Your thoughts?

[GetTheRightVote]

1. sounds good to me, why not, done in the resist past

:kick:

[cascadiance]

3. I was hoping for the same thing, but I think it's too late now...

... for a November recall. I found some rules that an proposition needs to have signatures turned in a certain time frame before the election, and I think there might be an even longer window for recall propositions. The deadline was the beginning of July for this November's election. Since no other state-wide election comes up before the 2006 election where we're legitimately running against him, I have a feeling that a recall election isn't practical before the full election. We could try for a recall for the fall primary elections, but I think that might create more problems than it would solve.

1) Would Gubernatorial candidates for primaries for the 2006 race have to run both in the recall election and the primary election. When in one instance you're running against Arnold and the other you're running against others from the same party, it might be hard on the candidates to campaign effectively.
2) If a different person from the Democrats wins the recall election from who gets nominated in the primary, what do you do for the general election, run the new guy who won the primary or run the guy who won the recall. Same for the Republicans. If Arnold won the primary and just lost the recall, would they want to be forced to running him in the 2006 election still? If a different Republican wins the primary, but Arnold fends off the recall, do they run Arnold for reelection or the guy who won the primary?

I think a recall effort against Arnold (if needed) would be best served to him if he were somehow able to get elected in the 2006 election, much like the Rethugs waited until after Gray Davis won the general election before starting their recall effort. However, one hopes now that this wouldn't be necessary if they can clean Arnold's clock in 2006. The key now is shooting down all of his props in November, so he looks like a hollow leader (and a waster of taxpayers' money for an election the public didn't want) for the 2006 campaign.

[rinsd]

4. I would tend to agree...

...any recall of Ahnuld would have to wait till post 2006 if he were to be re-elected.

I do remember however that Capt. Sunshine submitted papers to collect signatures right after the 90 day window from the special election.

[TwentyFive]

2. No fan of Arnold - but we need to focus energies on SCOTUS appointments.

I really fear the animals Bush will be nominating for the SC. Progressives will need to help the Democrats to blunt the attacks that will be coming from the right.

I shudder to think how far right these fascist knuckle draggers plan to take the Supreme Court.

[stopbush]

6. I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Why not do both?

[mitchtv]

5. What would Rove do?(WWFD?)

That's what I'd like to know. Ya think we could get him? I think he'll be looking soon .

[democracyindanger]

7. Better to leave him and his crappy numbers in place. Why make a martyr?

[LeftyMom]

8. People seem to be sick of recall mania

Right now we can stay above the fray a bit as the party that opposed that whole fiasco. If we were to push one for anything less that a watergate quality scandal I think we'd lose a lot of goodwill, particularly with swing voters. It lends credence both to the defeatist argument ("why vote, they're all crooked assholes") and the equivlancy argument ("there's no differnce between dems and pubs, so vote for party x") both of which are bad for the long term health of the party in California.

[cascadiance]

9. I think with it being this close to the election...

... we also don't have a lot to gain, and as I noted before, we already have one special election that we're bad-mouthing Arnold for spending money on. The only other one now we could use to do this recall without spending more money on yet another election would be the primary election, which as I noted above, would have a lot of problems associated with it being a recall as well as a primary for the governor's seat. In my mind, with Arnold's numbers so low, we should just hold on.

With the redistricting proposition likely off the ballot, and the others likely to fail, the damage that is likely to be done between now and 2006 is hopefully not that much by keeping him in office. At most we'd probably would have had about 6 months taken away from his term. And as you note we'd lose a lot of good will from voters.

If a recall makes sense, it would be after the 2006 election, especially if it is suspected that there was cheating involved in helping Arnold win (which if he does win, I might highly suspect at that point). It would also be worth getting him out then before 2008, in case Barabara wanted to run for pres or was called on to be a running mate for someone. I'd hate to have her seat turned over to a Rethug then in order for her to be able to do that.

With 4-5 years likely to "gain" by getting him out then, it would be more worth it at that time from that perspective too. The only thing having a recall on there right now would be some symbolic sense of revenge. We might feel good about it, but there are other voters we might lose doing so, and more for spiritual gain for us, not really anything substantive.