Recall on Arnold... Anyone else think this might be a bad idea?...

I certainly would like to see Schwarzenegger out of there, but I think the time to have launched a recall on him has come and gone. Should have been this November election, which it's too late to add to right now.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/dailyreview/localnews/ci_3074822

Matsumura, who's launching this recall effort says he could piggyback it onto the primary elections in June, but I wonder if it's such a good idea to have both a recall election and primary elections for the subsequent real election in the same election. What happens if different people get nominated from the same party than the person that ultimately wins the recall. Who runs then in the 2006 election. It would make it rather complicated for folks like Angelides to both campaign for the primary and for the recall at the same time.

If you decide to have a separate election instead of the June primaries, then you expose the Dems and those "against" Arnold to the same argument we are making against this November election. That is, why have the expense of an extra election and the state's in bad shape. We make hollow our criticism against his expensive efforts now, and might actually win more support for him from those that might see a lot of efforts against him being more partisan than honest efforts against hist agenda.

With us only gaining 5 months of him being out of office, I myself ask if it's worth that extra money for an extra election, or the confusion it will cause if it is done in June.

Anyone else out there? I vote that we all turn out en masse for this November election instead and make sure that none of his proposals pass. That will be the big vote of no confidence in him that will translate into him losing in 2006.

Now if for some reason he's able to cheat with Diebold or through some other chicanery win the 2006 election, I'm all for a recall effort afterwards. Don't think that should be necessary though.

That, in a nutshell, is it.

and the election in November 2006? I really don't think you'd find too many Californians interested in paying for another election when they're already pissed about paying for this ridiculous election.

Also, if you're ever gonna learn from a mistake, you have to suffer for it. Well electing a loud-mouthed, ignorant action hero puppet was a really stupid move and now Californians are paying the price. They may as well just suck it up and suffer through the next 13 months

Both a waste of taxpayer resources and Dem party/activist resources.

I get the sense that we're in a let-him-continue-to-hang-himself-while-we-get-ready-to-pound-him-in-the-next-general mode.

Bush must be recalled.

We need to recall the 2000, 2002, and 2004, "electronic" elections, too.

and he still came back and beat Brown.

I am not sure if the recall on Arnie is the best thing to do with the election so close. However, if we can make this last year a living hell hitting him from every front then I say lets do it.

I dislike Arnie intensely, and as a member of a public service union under attack from the GOP swine who pull his strings I doubley dispise him. But the recall process was meant as a last resort to remove an incompetent or someone worse-- not as a replacement for the democratic process. We really should not go there every time we dislike the governor.

When Californians aren't too happy with Conan for calling a special election, let's make the solution another special election.

In 13 months, we terminate him. Be patient.

I believe an attempt to recall Arnold would be
percieved badly by the (pay more attention to
reallity T.V. than current events) people.

I couldn't agree more. People need to shut up about recalling Arnold at this point...that moment is gone.

The electorate is mad as hell already about these special elections, so let's use that to our advantage, rather than start abusing the process like the GOP.

Furthermore, it takes a tremendous amount of money and resources to pull off a recall election at the Governor level. The time to do it is when the GOP did it...right after someone gets elected or re-elected. Why?

Well, after you jump through all the hoops to get your petitions approved by the Secretary of State, etc, you have exactly 160 days to get the requisite number of VALID signatures to get a recall election on either an upcoming election, or to call a special election. The number of valid signatures for a Governor is 12% of the last vote for the office. That means you will need 897,158 VALID signatures (per California Constitution Article II, Section 14(b); subsection 11221).

You'll need to collect well over 1 million to cover the percentage of invalid signatures you'll invariably gather. You'll need every one of those 160 days to gather signatures. And be prepared to pay signature gatherers. If you were to start right this minute, that means you have until the end of February to gather your 1 million valid signatures.

It takes time for the Secretary of State to validate the signatures. They then have 60 - 80 days to call the special or recall election, unless it can be fit into a regularly scheduled election.

In this case, it would be June '06. The regularly scheduled election for Governor is November '06, just 5 months later.

Are you going to tell me that after we've beat the drum about wasteful elections and campaigns, we should do a 180 and spend 10 million dollars to recall a guy that we can beat the crap out of 5 months later? No way.

Let's save the recall talk as the nuclear option. Let's defeat these worthless propositions next month, and then while we have Arnold & the GOP down on the ground, step on their necks and make sure he stays there.

the 12% is based on the last election for that office which would be the recall election.

People are getting sick of these special elections. He's awful and I want him out as much as the next person but we need to just bide our time. He's so unpopular right now. He'd have an extremely difficult time winning under normal circumstances. I think a recall would irritate Californians and end up blowing up in our faces.

This is a 10 on the stupid scale. Polls are showing people are pissed at the governor for wasting money on this special election and that is dragging his numbers down. Now we have some nimrod saying... the Democrats should also waste money on a special election? That will go over just peachy with voters. :shakes head:

Seems like everyone here echoes my sentiments that this effort is ill-concieved, the question is what to do, so that we can minimize it's damage and continue to keep Schwarzenegger at bay...

1) All of us to send out a message not to sign this petition - Have someone prominent release a statement advising Californians not to sign this petition, and say that we are principled and believe in voting people in and out in general elections unless wrongdoing/malfeasance is strongly indicated, unlike the Republicans. Indicate that we don't need to inflict the expense of another election on this state's finances if a special election is needed for this effort, nor do we want to confuse the June primary by piggybacking this on it.

Risk is that, without a strongly enough and public enough statement, many will perceive the rejection of this petition as a signal of support for Arnold. Whatever approach we take, it should be made clear that this DOES NOT translate to support of Arnold as governor, only rejection of the way that is being proposed to remove him.

2) Send a lot of feedback to this guy to withdraw and shut down this effort. Perhaps if he sees the logic enough, he'll understand that it is a bad idea and pull it back on his own.

3) Come up with a counter petition to sign to indicate that people stand against Arnold, but that we should wait to vote him out of office in a regular election, not a recall election at this time (reserve the possibility for doing it after 2006 if there are problems with that election or what he's been found to do later ).

Over a million signatures in less than four months? Unless some rich donor can be convinced to pony up a large wad of cash to pay for signature collectors, it is unlikely that this thing will get off the ground.

That's why I think we should stop this thing before it gets too far. If it goes further to the point that it actually is talked about a lot, and many like us are skeptical and don't sign it, Arnie might try and use that as a signal he'll talk about that "Californians want me, not a recall", or something like that.

I say hit him on as many fronts as we can, but on fronts where we can actually do some damage, and not damage our own arguments in the process (which the expense of an extra election would do).

Don't get me wrong, I was posting here right before the deadline for the November election wondering if we could campaign to get a recall measure on this coming election. Had we been able to do so, I think that would have been the "choice" time to do it. That's come and gone now though folks. Those that want it now should have responded to me back then and you would have had an avid supporter then.