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I, Schwarzenegger

Everyone seems to have a suggestion why Arnold Schwarzenegger won the special recall election. Latinos carried him, Jews (in the Jerusalem Post) said they won it for Arnie. Tare nice thoughts, but Schwarzenegger won the election on one issue alone: abolishing the vehicle registration fee. If you doubt this...look at the counties that voted for the recall on October 7 that also voted Gray Davis in 2002. And don't forget how Los Angeles County, usually a liberal bastion, split on the issue. And so the question remains, who wanted the Governator? The answer to that is those people that drive. As southern California relies less on public transportation than the "Bay Area" it was clear that this vote was really just a referendum on the unpopular maneuver by Davis raising the vehicle registration fee to its pre-1997 level. In fact, the higher the car ownership percentage in the county (with the exception of Los Angeles) nearly correlates to the success of the recall. And so Schwarzenegger tells us he will abolish the "car tax" and all will be right with the world.

Except he sort of can't. Sure, he can write the idea of a vehicle registration fee out of law, and have the Legislature pass it, but what the fee pays for (you know, roads, license plates...) can't exactly well...I mean it's not like they repave the roads around here for free. So, the attitude would be able to cut other programs in the state budget ... except ballot measures already truncate much of a governor's flexibility in parsing out different dimensions of the state budget. The short answer: by law Schwarzenegger can't really do anything but sell the highways (or start charging tolls which is highly unpopular) the state owns and literally can't do anything to the federal highways that crisscross Los Angeles but regular maintenance.

But the story doesn't end there. The federal government hands out a copious amount of aid to maintain the interstate highways, (after all, they feds built them back in 1957) but under President Bush most of that funding, at least in California, has been curtailed because of the need to allocate funding for the Department of Homeland Security. So surprise, surprise, surprise. California's robust economy wasn't hiding a massive spending orgy by Davis, but rather the steady decline of return from the money California sends to Washington DC.

Schwarzenegger believes that a federal bailout is evident, not just for the "car tax", but for the entire budget. Bush certainly would like to help him. Unfortunately, the President can't spend the people's money...the Congress has to. And if such a thing occurs, expect other states that are battlegrounds for the 2004 election to line up. It's so unlikely, that even former California governor Pete Wilson or Sen. Diane Feinstein don't think it's possible.

Feinstein and Wilson opposed each other in 1990 for the governor's race, and while DiFi rebounded to become Senator in 1992...Pete's designs on becoming President himself exploded when he had vocal chord surgery in 1997. As for the current President, he became Governor of Texas in 1994, and thought he might have to face Davis as the Democrat party candidate in 2004. And while he seemingly killed Davis' political futurestarving the federal highway transportation fund, so too may Bush have sealed his own fate.
posted by Thomas at 9:58 PM 0 comments