I am considering exactly how best to word a thank-you note to Arnold Schwarzenegger for keeping his mouth shut even when he couldn’t keep his pants zipped. Not that I approve – I surely don’t, but whether or not I approve is immaterial. It’s just that, had Arnold not so egregiously lied, I wouldn’t have met some of the dearest people in my life. I wouldn’t have had lunch with those dear people today. A whole series of “what ifs” different from the ones I have lived might have followed that one “what if” – had Arnold Schwarzenegger told the truth.
Talk show callers sputter in outrage and pundits continue thumb-sucking analysis of where the bounds of privacy should be drawn in a politician’s life (can we all agree that raping a chambermaid is not okay?) Whatever. I’m with the political analysts who conclude that even in blue-state California, voters would not have chosen Arnold Schwarzenegger to be Governor had they known about his love-child. They probably would have let my former boss, Governor Gray Davis, stay in office instead.
My coworkers and I wouldn’t have stood outside the State Capitol, futilely waving “don’t do to California what you did to those women,“ signs, after the LA Times’ exhaustive reporting about the dozen or so women who’d accused Arnold of groping and harassment on the job. We wouldn’t have been out of our own jobs, “swept clean” by the man who vowed to “blow up the boxes” of government in Sacramento. (For the record, in two terms no boxes were blown up. Nothing shrank, certainly not Arnold’s ego, as the state’s deficit ballooned to $26 billion.)
In August 2003, before all the Arnold Schwarzenegger jokes started in earnest, I was at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, camping on the last night of a spectacular rafting trip. Because I only had a week off from work, I planned to hike out of the canyon by myself the next morning and another woman named Ann would hike down, taking my place with the group for the remainder of the 18-day trip. Unfortunately, the other Ann brought with her a San Francisco Chronicle, the first news we’d seen in seven days. “Recall Set for October 7,” read the banner headline. I considered staying in the canyon. Why wake up at 4 a.m. for the most grueling hike of my life, when I could imagine the nightmare back home? But I did hike, and then for six weeks I walked precincts: “No on the Recall!”
People thought Gray Davis was dull– no SAG card for him -- but he was a straight arrow kind of guy. No boozing, no immoderation in anything, except seeking reelection. No one ever even hinted at him being a womanizer. When the Enron-engineered energy crisis hit, at the same time as the dot-com bust, Rep. Darrell Issa thought Davis weak enough to pump some of his car alarm fortune into the cockamamie recall election idea (“Step AWAY from the car! And Vote for Darrell Issa!”). No one took it very seriously. Then Arnold Schwarzenegger entered the race. Celebrity, money, Hollywood, Cinderella all in one. We could feel our doom, and I planned a “comfort and consolation party” for the night of the election. About two minutes after the polls closed, the announcement came.
The man who’d just a year earlier been reelected by a comfortable margin-- giving his staffers the confidence to buy their first homes, start families, feel settled – now was out, and so were we. We’d worked our assess off for five years, full of hope for better schools and cleaner air and all the other things we believed were possible to achieve. That night we were dumbstruck, and scared. The old Prince song, “Money Don’t Matter” blasted from my stereo and we drank wine and vodka and ate mac and cheese. Soon, we’d scatter. Some would be unemployed for many stressful months, while others would find soft landings soon.
Things worked out eventually, as things do. California was certainly no better off, though some of the tearful souls at my mac ‘n cheese party wound up being so.
I was “rescued” by the state superintendent of schools, the nicest boss there ever was, and my co-workers from his office became and remain close friends. Many on Davis’ old team also stay in touch, bonded by the surreal experience of getting the shaft from a bodybuilding action hero-turned governor.
Today, a few of us had lunch to catch up. It was wonderful to see everyone, happy in new phases of their lives. We spent only a couple of minutes talking about Arnold and the News. We felt sorry for Maria. Sorrier for our state. We did acknowledge, though, that if it weren’t for Arnold and his lies, we might not be enjoying friendship over lunch. So maybe a thank-you is in order, from a few survivors of an election we’d rather not recall.
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Patty Kane Horrigan
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Comments
You my dear.. well most excellent words..
CONGRATS ON THE EP
rated with hugs
That said, it is troubling to me that so many still don't seem to understand the fundamental reason for the recall of Davis. There is a terrible misunderstanding of basic economics not only among public employees in this country but the general public at large, and that is very troubling. I'm reminded of this misunderstanding almost every time I hear Obama speak.
It may be too late for many to take a class in economics, but its not too late to realize that a healthy democracy depends on a healthy free market, and when our political leaders don't understand how a free market even works, as Davis didn't, then we are all in trouble. If Californians still have trouble understanding this, maybe they should stand at the border of their state and wave as businesses leave for Texas.
California is in crisis because nobody wants to pay taxes.
However, your allegiance to your former boss, Grey Davis, and defense of his "straight arrow' virtues is both specious and flies in direct contradiciton to the man's record in office. Simply put, Grey Davis was a consummately awful governor, presiding over a nakedly coin-operated administration that caved to every public special interest that came calling--most notably, the prison guard's union. Grey Davis signed "One-Bill-Gill" Sedillo's driver's licenses for illegal immigrants legislation into law, which would have instantly created the nation's largest uninsured motorist underclass. And I certainly hope, Ms. Bancroft, that your job in the Davis administration did not involve energy policy. I say this, because in the wake of the Enron scandal and subsequent prosecutions, we all learned (unless, perhaps, you were camping then too) that our governor had been bilked by a artificial power crisis orchestrated by Texas vulgarians. (Some of whom, mercifully, went to jail.)
So, the way that I rememeber the election of 2002, Grey Davis had extremely soft support, was quite vulnurable in nearly every poll--vulnurable, that is, until his smear-meisters knocked Richard Reardon out in the primary. The Republicans proceeded to nominate the one politician in the whole state (Bill Simon) who could actually lose to Davis, and then they ran him badly...a rudderless campaign marked by verbal gaffes and defensive whining.
Even lifelong democrats like myself were enraged at Davis's re-election, and that, my dear, is why Grey Davis became only the second governor in U.S. history to be recalled. It wasn't solely because his opponent was famous and charismatic. It was because Davis's incompetence left the door wide open.
However, your allegiance to your former boss, Grey Davis, and defense of his "straight arrow' virtues is both specious and flies in direct contradiciton to the man's record in office. Simply put, Grey Davis was a consummately awful governor, presiding over a nakedly coin-operated administration that caved to every public special interest that came calling--most notably, the prison guard's union. Grey Davis signed "One-Bill-Gill" Sedillo's driver's licenses for illegal immigrants legislation into law, which would have instantly created the nation's largest uninsured motorist underclass. And I certainly hope, Ms. Bancroft, that your job in the Davis administration did not involve energy policy. I say this, because in the wake of the Enron scandal and subsequent prosecutions, we all learned (unless, perhaps, you were camping then too) that our governor had been bilked by a artificial power crisis orchestrated by Texas vulgarians. (Some of whom, mercifully, went to jail.)
So, the way that I rememeber the election of 2002, Grey Davis had extremely soft support, was quite vulnurable in nearly every poll--vulnurable, that is, until his smear-meisters knocked Richard Reardon out in the primary. The Republicans proceeded to nominate the one politician in the whole state (Bill Simon) who could actually lose to Davis, and then they ran him badly...a rudderless campaign marked by verbal gaffes and defensive whining.
Even lifelong democrats like myself were enraged at Davis's re-election, and that, my dear, is why Grey Davis became only the second governor in U.S. history to be recalled. It wasn't solely because his opponent was famous and charismatic. It was because Davis's incompetence left the door wide open.
The state Democratic Party didn't take the recall seriously enough, was in denial that Davis might get recalled, and did not back a replacement candidate, apparently believing that to have done so would have been tantamount to admitting defeat. I voted for then-Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante (a Dem) in the recall election, but Bustamante was campaigning on his own, without the help of the state Dem Party.
The state Dem Party's second chance to beat Schwarzenegger was in 2006, but the state party awarded the nerdy Phil Angelides for his years of service to the party and endorsed him over the much more charismatic Steve Westly in the 2006 Democratic gubernatorial primary. That key endorsement cost Westly the primary.
Westly had a much better chance of beating Schwarzenegger than Angelides did. The uncharismatic Angelides didn't even break 40 percent against the "governator." (I remember unexpectedly seeing Angelides, who is Greek American, at the annual Greek Festival here in Sacramento in August 2006, and he couldn't even wow 'em at a GREEK festival!)
The only way the Dems could win the governorship again was when old timer Jerry Brown saved them from themselves.
But it's so good to finally be free of Ahhhnude. In retrospect we know that he was illegitimate from Day One, but, unfortunately, that doesn't reverse the damage that he caused to our great state.