Thursday, August 14, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Backstory: California, here we come?

By Michael Green

Columnist Walter Lippmann once said, "The public produces only muddle when it meddles." Whatever the merit of his views, Nevada has less meddling than California, and for once it's less muddled.

This is based on limited firsthand observation. Each summer, we visit my mother-in-law in Berkeley, which right-wingers consider the last surviving communist state. Actually, Berkeley has its fair share of hypocrisy, but the population believes in diverse points of view, unlike certain legislators and journalists in these parts.

But even in Berkeley, where the abnormal seems normal, the recall is abnormal. Any election featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gary Coleman and Gallagher is abnormal, except, perhaps, in Nevada.

Nevada has a long history as an adjunct, perhaps even a servant or sibling, of California. The Comstock Lode owed a lot of its success to Gold Rush miners and entrepreneurs, who took most of the money back to San Francisco. Reno is a longtime stopover for Northern Californians and vice versa.

Las Vegas has seemed like a branch office of Southern California. A branch of the Old Spanish Trail went through here to the Los Angeles area. The Mormon Fort was part of the road from Salt Lake to San Bernardino. The railroad that led to Las Vegas' founding followed a similar path. Southern California gamblers migrated here when the heat was on. If you drive the freeway on a weekend, you know Las Vegas and Los Angeles exchange populations on a regular basis. If you drive on the freeway here during the week, you may think you actually are in Los Angeles.

Now another potential comparison with California looms, and we should hope to avoid it: not government by the people, but government by angry people.

The initiative and recall are remnants of the Progressive Era, two decades at the beginning of the 20th century. Among other measures--such as federal constitutional amendments that dared to change the wording of the original document in areas where it was wrong--the initiative allowed voters to bypass the legislature to change the laws while the recall let them remove the corrupt or stupid.

But in California, the circus came to town. Gov. Gray Davis inherited an energy crisis from his Republican predecessor and increased burdens thanks to Republican presidents Reagan, Bush I and II and Clinton (you read that right). Davis promptly made matters worse. Then his nasty campaign for re-election in 2002 barely defeated an incompetent opponent. With California's budget in an even greater shambles than Nevada's, Republicans saw an opportunity and put together a recall.

Democrats tried to unite behind Davis, who has as much popular appeal as a prostate exam. They agreed to oppose the recall but several of them declared for governor, just in case Davis loses--which is likely. Republicans seemed equally divided until Schwarzenegger declared for governor on a platform of encouraging business and improving schools--a radical approach if ever there was one.

So far, the only issue on which Schwarzenegger has demonstrated knowledge is the latest issue of Muscles Weekly. Thanks to anti-tax initiatives, he has no way to pay for his nonexistent plans. And California conservatives who backed those initiatives question his fealty to their views--which, considering he invited Nazi sympathizer Kurt Waldheim, the former U.N. secretary-general, to his wedding, is an irony no scriptwriter could concoct.

Then comes the next irony: Nevada shows signs of thinking more logically than California. In the wake of Nevada's recent legislative muddle, about 30 organizations claimed to be ready to strain every nerve to recall Gov. Kenny Guinn and the six Nevada Supreme Court justices who voted to throw out the two-thirds majority rule. They also want to pass initiatives requiring education to be funded first when a tax hike requires a two-thirds vote and banning public employees from holding office.

In the wake of this outbreak of jackassery, a poll announced a majority of Nevadans opposed recalling Guinn. The Review-Journal editorial page seems calmer, although that may be the rabies shots kicking in. Maybe they realized, as California's alleged fiscal conservatives didn't, that elections cost money--maybe $70 million in California, which can't afford it. Maybe it even occurred to some that one-third of the public shouldn't control the other two-thirds. Probably not.

But another common thread may link California and Nevada. The leader of the effort there was a businessman whose contribution to civilization has been to market car alarms, the sole purpose of which is to interrupt meals and sleep. In Nevada, the most famous or infamous recalls have been North Las Vegas Police forcing out a majority of their city council for denying them a pay hike; backers of Jerry Tarkanian trying to oust regents for backing the UNLV president against the basketball coach; and Venetian owner Sheldon Adelson seeking to unload a county commissioner tied to that most evil of organizations, the Culinary Union. Feathering your own nest or serving your own interests isn't quite what progressives had in mind.

Government by initiative is crippling California; government by recall may be about to elect someone whose sole political ideology appears to be making movies without dialogue. Maybe Nevada can learn something from its neighbor to the west. After all, those complaining are the ones who voted them in; the whole problem may just be in the mirror.