Dan Weintraub: Democrats Are Bottled Up

Happy family . . . Arnold Schwarzenegger walks through Sacramento’s Capitol building on the way to his inauguration as governor of California on Monday. With him are his wife, Maria Shriver, and their four children, from left, Christopher, Patrick, Katherine and Christina.

And despite poor poll results, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, should be smiling. Dan Weintraub in this piece in today’s Sacramento Bee, Surreal life of Capitol Democrats explains why.

These are strange times for the Democrats in the California Capitol. For them, it’s like being a kid with a hot sports car in the garage – but Dad has taken away the keys.

The Democrats control both houses of the Legislature, as they have for most of the past half century. They hold every statewide office but two.

One of those two is held by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But Schwarzenegger’s approval rating has plummeted, and his plan to make 2005 his Year of Reform is teetering. He has already abandoned one proposed ballot measure, on public pension reform, and now another, to change the way political boundaries are drawn, is facing a potentially serious legal challenge because of discrepancies in the way the signatures were gathered. His proposal to overhaul the state budget process, meanwhile, is trailing badly in early polls.

Yet somehow, the Democrats still find themselves on the defensive.

They are on the defensive despite an excellent media campaign, thus far unanswered by the Governor, because of Proposition 75, which Weintraub calls “A Dagger Aimed For Their Heart”:

Public Employee Union Dues. Required Employee Consent for Political Contributions. Initiative Statute.

Prohibits public employee labor organizations from using dues or fees for political contributions unless the employee provides prior consent each year on a specified written form. Prohibition does not apply to dues or fees collected for charitable organizations, health care insurance, or other purposes directly benefiting the public employee. Requires labor organizations to maintain and submit to the Fair Political Practices Commission records concerning individual employees’ and organizations’ political contributions; those records are not subject to public disclosure. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local governments: Probably minor state and local government implementation costs, potentially offset in part by revenues from fines and/or fees.

Remember what former California Assembly Speaker Jess Unruh called MONEY – the Mother’s Milk of Politics. Thus,

The unions, and the Democrats who depend on them for much of their political money, fear this provision could seriously weaken their campaign firepower.

As a result, Democrats have left open the possibility of negotiating a truce with the governor in which he would renounce the measures he already has qualified for the ballot, plus the union dues initiative. In return, they would help him place a new slate of compromise proposals on the ballot and campaign with him for those measures.

“We’re keeping an open mind toward negotiating with the governor,” Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez said Thursday. “We have been in talks with the governor about a peaceful solution.”

Make no mistake….. it is imperative for the unions to defeat this measure!

and…..

even if the Governor loses every measure in November 2005 – he still wins!and Weintraub agrees:

But even if they cut a deal with Schwarzenegger or defeat his measures in November, that still leaves Democrats with only the status quo, at best, from their perspective. And prospects for the near future beyond November are not much better.

Today’s best estimates show that in January the governor and lawmakers will be confronting another projected shortfall between revenues and spending, to the tune of about $5 billion.

The perpetual deficit – a result of the long hangover from the dot-com boom and bust early in this decade – means that, once again, Democrats will be fighting just to maintain the current level of state services, with any growth in spending going simply to provide the same services but to a growing population. Nobody is talking seriously about actually expanding government by adding significant new programs.

Núñez would like to raise income taxes on the most affluent Californians to increase education spending. But after floating that proposal in May and vowing not to pass a budget that didn’t include it, the Assembly leader quickly backed off, realizing that raising taxes, even on the wealthy, was not a winner in California’s current political climate. Any such move would likely have to come at the ballot box next year, after the dust settles from this year’s ballot fight.

The bottom line is that the Democrats are bottled up. Despite their superior numbers in the Legislature, they can’t do much to move their agenda forward in Sacramento, and they’ve been forced into a tactical retreat to defend their position in November. Until they regain the governor’s office, that speedy car of theirs is going to remain stuck in neutral.

Dan has it RIGHT and Flap will be looking to meeting and discussing these issues with him at the Bear Flag League Summer Conference in Pasadena next Sunday.

Won’t you join Flap and Dan Weintraub?