Jill Stewart: Rise of the Political Machines
Jill Stewart, in NYT (6-20-05)
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, may have electrified his supporters by deciding to hold a special election in November on his reforms for electoral redistricting, the state budget and teacher tenure. The trouble is that Mr. Schwarzenegger may have electrified his detractors even more, and his needless rush to enact his worthy measures through a $45 million electoral circus may doom them in the end.
Since January, when Mr. Schwarzenegger mounted a very public attack on the government employees unions that constantly manipulate the unpopular State Legislature in Sacramento, an ill wind has blown - right into Mr. Schwarzenegger's face.
For example, throughout the spring the nightly news was dominated by clips of furious nurses protesting the governor's decision to delay the imposition of a new California law requiring hospitals to reduce their patient-to-nurse ratio to 5-to-1. The coverage usually failed to note that Mr. Schwarzenegger was trying to preserve a patient-nurse ratio of 6-to-1, widely accepted in the United States, because a 5-to-1 ratio would be extremely hard to achieve. There is a nationwide shortage of nurses, and many experts believe that California hospitals could achieve the new ratio only by closing care units - thus hurting rather than helping patients.
Then Mr. Schwarzenegger became embroiled in protests by unionized state workers claiming he wanted to replace their pensions with 401(k)-like accounts. Night after night the local news featured state workers clasping hands to chests in grief, claiming their pensions were going to be privatized. It was quite a set of performances, especially considering that these workers had to know that Mr. Schwarzenegger's reforms would not have affected them in the slightest. Only workers hired after July 2007 would have had to accept the new program.
In both cases, the unions cleverly made the debate about "Arnold" rather than about the specific policy, and the news media lapped it up. Worse, the governor let them get away with it. Rather than remaining above the fray, he got caught up in name-calling, referring to the political leaders fighting his budget plans as "the Three Stooges." He failed to explain to voters what was really going on. He was on the defensive. His poll numbers plunged.
In these tough times, Mr. Schwarzenegger's vaunted political independence is a handicap. He has few allies in Sacramento with whom to form a coalition. Yes, he's a moderate who has created the most bipartisan administration since the days of Pat Brown and Ronald Reagan, appointing scores of Democrats to top jobs and judgeships. But the Democratic-majority Legislature is crammed with rigid ideologues on both sides who care little about the governor's evenhandedness. Of 120 legislators, I'd describe fewer than 10 as moderates.
And now Mr. Schwarzenegger is compounding his mistakes by pursuing his special election. Yes, reform is needed, but in opening a special-election season he's handing the unions a vast platform from which to pummel him. It's nice to know he's gutsy, but he should be spending his time fixing nuts-and-bolts problems, not gearing up a messy political campaign.
Besides, it's unclear what the hurry is. For example, one proposal would have future voting districts drawn up by a panel of retired judges. This would be a vast improvement over the current situation, in which the Legislature uses computer programs to painstakingly divide voters based on party registration and sticks them in bizarrely shaped districts controlled by one party. But even if the measure is approved in the special vote in November, the reforms won't be in place in time to improve California's 2006 election.
Another proposal is a budget-cutting tool that prevents spending from exceeding the average of the preceding three years. In lean years it will prompt modest, budgetwide cuts rather than the usual automatic growth. Known as the Live Within Our Means measure, it is vociferously opposed by the education lobby. The state schools superintendent, Jack O'Connell, a serial exaggerator, insists that it would eviscerate school financing.