BY BARRY SHEPPARD
SAN FRANCISCO — The October 7 recall of Governor Gray Davis and the election of Hollywood movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace him was a massive repudiation of the pro-big business policies of Davis' Democratic Party. Voter turnout was far higher than in any California election in decades, reflecting deep anger at the status quo.
While 55% of those who voted backed the recall of Davis, Schwarzenegger received 48% of the vote to replace Davis, Democrat Lieutenant-Governor Cruz Bustamante finished a distant second with 32%, right-wing Republican Tom McClintock came in third with 13%, and Green Party candidate Peter Camejo followed with 3%.
The other 131 candidates polled 0% each when their votes were rounded off.
Schwarzenegger was very careful through the whole campaign to avoid taking positions on most issues, and no-one knows what he will do as governor. His large vote and the majority vote for recall were more an expression of public hostility toward Davis and his Democratic administration than they were votes in support of any particular policy agenda.
Schwarzenegger projected a vaguely "moderate" image on issues such as abortion and gay rights, without being specific, and the hard right among the Republicans dislike him.
That the election result was not the result of a shift of voters toward right-wing politics was indicated in the parallel vote that was held on a referendum question — Proposition 54 — that would have prevented the state from collecting data disparities between whites and racial minorities in employment and other aspects of social life. In spite of confusion about what the referendum proposal was about since its right-wing supporters, including McClintock, tried to camouflage it as being in favour of a "colour blind society", it was soundly defeated.
Speaking on a round-table radio talk show with three Democrats the day after the election, Camejo charged that the Democrats were in denial. "The majority of the people, 78%, oppose Davis", Camejo said. "That's 43% [of] non-Republicans. Republicans are only 35% in California. The people's judgement of Davis is [that] he is a complete and total disaster. He gave the energy companies $43 billion [during the fake energy crisis contrived by those same companies in 2000-01], just gave it away, to reward them for their criminal activity...
"In California, the rich have the lowest tax rate, because that's what the Democrats have done. The Democrats voted unequivocal support for George Bush on the [Iraq] war. They have demoralised ... and weakened the progressive currents in California. And people are so fed up with them, that in desperation, they were fooled by Arnold Schwarzenegger... There is an utter crisis in California politically, and it's a crisis of the Democratic Party misrepresenting the working people, misrepresenting the majority."
For their part, Davis, the Democrats and their traditional supporters in black, Latino and women's organisations, together with the trade union bureaucracy, campaigned for a "no" vote on the recall using the lesser-evil argument that the Republicans had to be stopped, no matter how bad Davis was.
Fifty per cent of union members voted for the recall, despite their unions' support of the $20 million anti-recall campaign. Forty-six per cent of Latinos voted to recall Davis, as did 51% of women. Only among blacks did the recall lose massively but even then, some 27% voted for it.
The vote for the recall by women was especially interesting in the face of credible accounts in the last days before the vote that Schwarzenegger has had a long history of sexual battery against women.
Davis was elected governor only one year ago, in a lackluster campaign with low voter turnout. His opponent was a right-wing Republican who opposed abortion rights, equal rights for gays, and other reactionary positions dear to the hearts of the Christian right. Because the election was so lopsided, the "lesser evil" argument wasn't persuasive, and Camejo received 5.3% as the Green Party candidate statewide, and 16% in San Francisco.
In the October 7 election, with the Democrats and their supporters going all out on a "lesser evil" campaign, Camejo's vote was less, in spite of greater media exposure this time.
Camejo's campaign broke important new ground. He was on six televised debates — the first time a third-party candidate was allowed into such debates in California's history. The daily press was compelled to cover some of his policies. Millions heard for the first time his proposals to raise taxes on the rich to balance the budget, to reverse the cuts in education and other social services enacted by the Democrats and Republicans in the recent state budget, his support for universal health care, his opposition to the occupation of Iraq, support for treating drug addition as a public health problem not a criminal one, and other pro-working class positions.
Camejo was able to speak up and down the state. In one meeting of about 230 people at the University of California at Berkeley that I attended, he was repeatedly interrupted with applause for his sharp attacks on the Democrats and Republicans, the war, the 2001 USAPATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act, and received a standing ovation at the end. The meeting was organised by the International Socialist Organisation, and was endorsed by the Solidarity socialist organisation and the Green Party.
While Camejo's state-wide vote was 3%, the Valley Times reported that a state-wide exit poll indicated that he received 5% support from African Americans, 5% among Latinos, 9% among those aged 18-29, 8% of those registered as "independent" and 6% among those who had rarely or never voted before this election.
The problems in California — the budget crisis, racism, cutbacks in social services, the jobless economic recovery — are national problems, too. In addition, the disastrous war in Iraq also weighs on people's minds. These are the problems which fuelled the voter revolt in California, and will shape voters' concerns as the 2004 presidential election approaches.
The drop in Camejo's vote from last year was due to many leftists and progressive liberals panicking and embracing the "lesser evil" in trying to stop the recall and by voting for Bustamante to keep a Democrat as governor. An example was the decision by Arriana Huffington, who had been running as a progressive independent, to switch over to the Davis camp in the final days of the campaign. She became one of Davis' most prominent spokespersons, reversing what she had been saying throughout most of the campaign.
Unfortunately, many leftists are already joining the "anyone but Bush" bandwagon for the November 2004 presidential election. These include nominally anarchist Noam Chomsky, Z Magazine editor Michael Albert, Angela Davis and other leaders of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, labour writer David Bacon, satirical writer Michael Moore, and New York library workers union president Ray Markey, who for decades had argued against the two-party "lesser evilism" con game.
Insofar as such figures — and there will be many more, including members of the Communist Party and the social-democratic Democratic Socialists of America — take the stand of "anyone but Bush" they have put themselves in the position of being taken for granted by the Democrats.
Peter Camejo spent the last weeks and days of the California recall campaign fiercely arguing against this "lesser evilism", and for the Greens to mount an independent campaign in 2004. How well the Greens do this will be an important test of their viability as a progressive force in US politics.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, October 15, 2003.
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