last essay of the year!
i finally finished it! and surprisingly i didn't do it at midnight the night before.
Megan Laffey
AP United States History
Mr. Taylor
2 May 2006
Research Paper: The 2003 California Gubernatorial Recall
In the fall of 2003, Californians did something that had only been done once before in American political history: they removed their governor from office through the recall process. (1) The recall, a special election by which voters can remove an elected official from office, was introduced alongside the initiative and referendum in 1921 as a part of the electoral reform, which was advocated by the Progressives. However, the recall is currently prohibited in 32 out of the 50 states and has only been used twice in American history. (2) Despite its lack of popularity or use, Californians in 2003 resorted to the recall method in order to remove their governor, Gray Davis, from office shortly after reelecting him to a second term. (3)
Gray Davis won the race for governor of California in 1998 by a landslide victory and was reelected to a second term in 2002. Throughout his first term, Davis had a 60% approval rating and despite some less than perfect decisions, his approval remained at 50% by the end of his first term. However, by the end of 2001, Davis’s approval ratings plummeted into the 30% range and never recovered thereafter. But how exactly does one’s rating go from 60% approval to 65% disapproval in such a short amount of time?
There is no single answer to this question as each group that disapproved of his actions did so for a different reason. First, Davis succeeded at losing support from both his base and his opposition. Davis began politically pursuing a centrist policy. While he was already unpopular with the Republicans, these actions now made him increasingly unpopular with the Democrats as well. Not only did Davis succeed at driving his opponents further away, he also began to lose his base in the process. California’s electric crisis, which hit in 2001, did not help Davis’s governorship either. Many Californians disapproved of Davis slow and ineffective response to the crisis. Then, after the crisis calmed down, the Davis administration found itself in the middle of a scandal involving the Oracle Corporation. It was found that California had a $95 million contract with the corporation that was highly overpriced, and after Davis signed the contract, the corporation donated $25,000 to his reelection campaign. In addition, many Californians distrusted Davis’s ability to manage the budget after he announced in December of 2002 that the budget deficit was estimated to be at $38.2 billion, which was higher than all other 49 states combined and 13.7 billion higher than just the previous month’s deficit. For these reasons, and many others, including the widespread opinion that Davis lacked leadership skills, the people of California became very dissatisfied with their governor. (4)
But even with his 30% approval rating, how did Davis end up being removed from office by a recall? Many governors in California’s history had had low approval ratings, but never had the public sought to remove them from office before their term had finished. (5) In early February of 2003, a Republican by the name of Ted Costa announced a plan that would start a petition to recall governor Gray Davis. (5) In the state of California, the recall process begins with a notice-of-intent-to-recall petition, which requires 65 signatures. (6) After that has been completed and approved by the state, a recall petition is needed and has to be signed by a number of people equivalent to 12% of the number of ballots cast in the election by which the official being removed was voted into office. Based on the number of people that voted in the 2001 gubernatorial election, 897,158 signatures were needed for the petition. However, it was advised that 1.2 million signatures be collected to assure that enough were valid. In addition, there was 160-day time frame in which the signatures had to be collected. (7) Thus, because signatures began being collected on March 25, 2003, organizers had until September 2, 2003 to collect the necessary amount of signatures. (8)
The recall movement started out extremely slow and was criticized by Davis as being “partisan mischief by a handful of right-wing politicians.” Although numerous committees were formed to collect signatures, the Recall Gray Davis Committee, headed by Howard Kaloogian, was the only organization approved by the state to submit signatures. While the movement claimed to have 300,000 signatures by May of 2003, the recall effort did not seriously take off until Darrell Issa entered the picture. (9) Issa, a Republican representative from San Diego, donated over $1.6 million of his own money in May of 2003 to the recall effort. This money, which was used to finance advertising and professional signature gatherers, jump-started the recall effort. In addition, Issa started a website called “Rescue California…Recall Gray Davis,” which advocated the recall of California’s governor. (10) Other major advocates of the Davis recall included Paul Gann and Ted Costa of People’s Advocate; Shawn Steel, the Republican Party Chairman; Sal Russo, a Republican Party strategist; The Republican Party, The Libertarian Party, and the Independent Party. Despite this immense amount of support for Davis’s recall and his disapproval rating in the 60% range, there was still a sizable amount of opposition to the recall effort. Steve Smith, a Democratic Party activist and leader of a group known as Taxpayers Against the Recall, led this opposition to the recall. (11) By May of 2003, what had started out as slow grassroots campaigning and rumors of a recall turned into a heated debate and a race to collect 1.2 million signatures before the deadline was up.
On July 23, 2003, the Recall Gray Davis Committee announced that it had collected 1.6 million signatures and submitted them to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. Shortly after, Shelley declared that nearly 1.4 million of the submitted signatures were valid, which was enough to force a recall election to take place.(12) The decision on when the special election was to take place lay in the hands of Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante. By constitutional mandate, Bustamante was required to set that date within 80 days of the signatures being validated. He eventually set the date for October 7, 2003, which was 76 days after the signatures were approved. (13) During this 76-day period, Davis supporters made numerous attempts to stop the recall election. The main way that they attempted to do so was through a series of petitions that were brought before the Supreme Court. These cases included Eisenberg v. Shelly, Frankel v. Shelley, Byrnes v. Bustamante, Burton (Mark) v. Shelley, Davis v. Shelley. In all of these cases, Davis supporters were attempting to find flaws in the recall process in order to halt voting. (14) On August 7, 2003, the Supreme Court declined to hear all five of them. (15) Consequently, the special election date remained on October 7, 2003 as planned.
Based on specifications in the laws of California, recall ballots have two parts. In the first section, voters select either “yes” or “no” for the recall, and the second part is a list of names of replacement candidates, which are selected by the nomination process. If a majority vote “yes” for the recall, then the most popular replacement is chosen; even if that person only receives a plurality. (16) Because of California’s low requirements to run for governor, many Californians tried entered the race to become California’s new governor if the recall should go through. To run for governor, one only needed to collect 65 signatures from their own party and either pay a $3,500 or gather 10,000 signatures from members of any party. Gubernatorial hopefuls were given until August 9, 2003 to submit their signatures and pay their fees, and as of the due date, there were 135 eligible candidates in the race. (17) Initially, the Democrats did not nominate anyone to appear on the ballot in an effort to support Gray Davis. However, they eventually decided to nominate Cruz Bustamante in case the recall went through. (18)As of September 24, 2003, two weeks before the election was to take place, the top five candidates were independent Arianna Huffington, Cruz Bustamante of the Democratic Party, Peter Camejo of the Green Party, Tom McClintock of the Republican Party, and Arnold Schwarzenager of the Republican Party. (19) However, as the election date neared, Arianna Huffington dropped out of the race in order to help Davis save his job, which left the race between the remaining four. But even with Huffington throwing her support behind Davis, the situation was not looking good for the governor. The Field Research Corporation reported in mid-September that only 39% of Californians opposed the recall (20) and a poll taken by the New York Times just one week prior to the election showed that still only 42% of Californian’s opposed the recall. Furthermore, just one month before the special election was to take place, KABC-TV in Los Angeles reported that only about half of Californian Democrats supported Davis as governor. (21) With so many people opposing the idea that Davis should continue as governor, including half of his own party, it was almost certain that he would be removed from office. At this point, the question was not whether or not Davis would keep his job; but rather who would become his replacement. (22)
The recall election was finally held on September October 7, 2003 and the recall passed with 55.4% of people voting “yes.” Because the recall went through, the most popular choice for a replacement was to succeed Davis as California’s next governor. Based on election results, in which Schwarzenager received 48.7% of the vote, Bustamante received 31.6% of the vote, McClintock received 13.4% of the vote, and Camejo received 2.8% of the vote, Arnold Schwarzenager was declared to be California’s 38th governor and was sworn in on November 17, 2003. Although Schwarzenager won the election with only a plurality and 4,206,284 voters chose Schwarzenager while 4,007,783 voted to keep Davis in office, Schwarzenager nonetheless became California’s next governor as a result of the recall process.
According to the petition that circulated for the collection of signatures to recall California Governor Gray Davis, those signing wanted to remove their governor from office because they believed he was guilty of “gross mismanagement of California Finances by overspending taxpayers' money, threatening public safety by cutting funds to local governments, failing to account for the exorbitant cost of the energy, and failing in general to deal with the state's major problems until they get to the crisis stage.” (23) Despite accusations of a lack of leadership, Davis and the Democrats claimed the recall effort was simply “partisan mischief” right until the very end. (24) Whether Davis was a sufficient governor or not is debatable. However, in October of 2003, Californians had made up their mind: they wanted Davis out of office. And thanks to democracy, that is exactly what happened.
Megan Laffey
AP United States History
Mr. Taylor
2 May 2006
Research Paper: The 2003 California Gubernatorial Recall
In the fall of 2003, Californians did something that had only been done once before in American political history: they removed their governor from office through the recall process. (1) The recall, a special election by which voters can remove an elected official from office, was introduced alongside the initiative and referendum in 1921 as a part of the electoral reform, which was advocated by the Progressives. However, the recall is currently prohibited in 32 out of the 50 states and has only been used twice in American history. (2) Despite its lack of popularity or use, Californians in 2003 resorted to the recall method in order to remove their governor, Gray Davis, from office shortly after reelecting him to a second term. (3)
Gray Davis won the race for governor of California in 1998 by a landslide victory and was reelected to a second term in 2002. Throughout his first term, Davis had a 60% approval rating and despite some less than perfect decisions, his approval remained at 50% by the end of his first term. However, by the end of 2001, Davis’s approval ratings plummeted into the 30% range and never recovered thereafter. But how exactly does one’s rating go from 60% approval to 65% disapproval in such a short amount of time?
There is no single answer to this question as each group that disapproved of his actions did so for a different reason. First, Davis succeeded at losing support from both his base and his opposition. Davis began politically pursuing a centrist policy. While he was already unpopular with the Republicans, these actions now made him increasingly unpopular with the Democrats as well. Not only did Davis succeed at driving his opponents further away, he also began to lose his base in the process. California’s electric crisis, which hit in 2001, did not help Davis’s governorship either. Many Californians disapproved of Davis slow and ineffective response to the crisis. Then, after the crisis calmed down, the Davis administration found itself in the middle of a scandal involving the Oracle Corporation. It was found that California had a $95 million contract with the corporation that was highly overpriced, and after Davis signed the contract, the corporation donated $25,000 to his reelection campaign. In addition, many Californians distrusted Davis’s ability to manage the budget after he announced in December of 2002 that the budget deficit was estimated to be at $38.2 billion, which was higher than all other 49 states combined and 13.7 billion higher than just the previous month’s deficit. For these reasons, and many others, including the widespread opinion that Davis lacked leadership skills, the people of California became very dissatisfied with their governor. (4)
But even with his 30% approval rating, how did Davis end up being removed from office by a recall? Many governors in California’s history had had low approval ratings, but never had the public sought to remove them from office before their term had finished. (5) In early February of 2003, a Republican by the name of Ted Costa announced a plan that would start a petition to recall governor Gray Davis. (5) In the state of California, the recall process begins with a notice-of-intent-to-recall petition, which requires 65 signatures. (6) After that has been completed and approved by the state, a recall petition is needed and has to be signed by a number of people equivalent to 12% of the number of ballots cast in the election by which the official being removed was voted into office. Based on the number of people that voted in the 2001 gubernatorial election, 897,158 signatures were needed for the petition. However, it was advised that 1.2 million signatures be collected to assure that enough were valid. In addition, there was 160-day time frame in which the signatures had to be collected. (7) Thus, because signatures began being collected on March 25, 2003, organizers had until September 2, 2003 to collect the necessary amount of signatures. (8)
The recall movement started out extremely slow and was criticized by Davis as being “partisan mischief by a handful of right-wing politicians.” Although numerous committees were formed to collect signatures, the Recall Gray Davis Committee, headed by Howard Kaloogian, was the only organization approved by the state to submit signatures. While the movement claimed to have 300,000 signatures by May of 2003, the recall effort did not seriously take off until Darrell Issa entered the picture. (9) Issa, a Republican representative from San Diego, donated over $1.6 million of his own money in May of 2003 to the recall effort. This money, which was used to finance advertising and professional signature gatherers, jump-started the recall effort. In addition, Issa started a website called “Rescue California…Recall Gray Davis,” which advocated the recall of California’s governor. (10) Other major advocates of the Davis recall included Paul Gann and Ted Costa of People’s Advocate; Shawn Steel, the Republican Party Chairman; Sal Russo, a Republican Party strategist; The Republican Party, The Libertarian Party, and the Independent Party. Despite this immense amount of support for Davis’s recall and his disapproval rating in the 60% range, there was still a sizable amount of opposition to the recall effort. Steve Smith, a Democratic Party activist and leader of a group known as Taxpayers Against the Recall, led this opposition to the recall. (11) By May of 2003, what had started out as slow grassroots campaigning and rumors of a recall turned into a heated debate and a race to collect 1.2 million signatures before the deadline was up.
On July 23, 2003, the Recall Gray Davis Committee announced that it had collected 1.6 million signatures and submitted them to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. Shortly after, Shelley declared that nearly 1.4 million of the submitted signatures were valid, which was enough to force a recall election to take place.(12) The decision on when the special election was to take place lay in the hands of Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante. By constitutional mandate, Bustamante was required to set that date within 80 days of the signatures being validated. He eventually set the date for October 7, 2003, which was 76 days after the signatures were approved. (13) During this 76-day period, Davis supporters made numerous attempts to stop the recall election. The main way that they attempted to do so was through a series of petitions that were brought before the Supreme Court. These cases included Eisenberg v. Shelly, Frankel v. Shelley, Byrnes v. Bustamante, Burton (Mark) v. Shelley, Davis v. Shelley. In all of these cases, Davis supporters were attempting to find flaws in the recall process in order to halt voting. (14) On August 7, 2003, the Supreme Court declined to hear all five of them. (15) Consequently, the special election date remained on October 7, 2003 as planned.
Based on specifications in the laws of California, recall ballots have two parts. In the first section, voters select either “yes” or “no” for the recall, and the second part is a list of names of replacement candidates, which are selected by the nomination process. If a majority vote “yes” for the recall, then the most popular replacement is chosen; even if that person only receives a plurality. (16) Because of California’s low requirements to run for governor, many Californians tried entered the race to become California’s new governor if the recall should go through. To run for governor, one only needed to collect 65 signatures from their own party and either pay a $3,500 or gather 10,000 signatures from members of any party. Gubernatorial hopefuls were given until August 9, 2003 to submit their signatures and pay their fees, and as of the due date, there were 135 eligible candidates in the race. (17) Initially, the Democrats did not nominate anyone to appear on the ballot in an effort to support Gray Davis. However, they eventually decided to nominate Cruz Bustamante in case the recall went through. (18)As of September 24, 2003, two weeks before the election was to take place, the top five candidates were independent Arianna Huffington, Cruz Bustamante of the Democratic Party, Peter Camejo of the Green Party, Tom McClintock of the Republican Party, and Arnold Schwarzenager of the Republican Party. (19) However, as the election date neared, Arianna Huffington dropped out of the race in order to help Davis save his job, which left the race between the remaining four. But even with Huffington throwing her support behind Davis, the situation was not looking good for the governor. The Field Research Corporation reported in mid-September that only 39% of Californians opposed the recall (20) and a poll taken by the New York Times just one week prior to the election showed that still only 42% of Californian’s opposed the recall. Furthermore, just one month before the special election was to take place, KABC-TV in Los Angeles reported that only about half of Californian Democrats supported Davis as governor. (21) With so many people opposing the idea that Davis should continue as governor, including half of his own party, it was almost certain that he would be removed from office. At this point, the question was not whether or not Davis would keep his job; but rather who would become his replacement. (22)
The recall election was finally held on September October 7, 2003 and the recall passed with 55.4% of people voting “yes.” Because the recall went through, the most popular choice for a replacement was to succeed Davis as California’s next governor. Based on election results, in which Schwarzenager received 48.7% of the vote, Bustamante received 31.6% of the vote, McClintock received 13.4% of the vote, and Camejo received 2.8% of the vote, Arnold Schwarzenager was declared to be California’s 38th governor and was sworn in on November 17, 2003. Although Schwarzenager won the election with only a plurality and 4,206,284 voters chose Schwarzenager while 4,007,783 voted to keep Davis in office, Schwarzenager nonetheless became California’s next governor as a result of the recall process.
According to the petition that circulated for the collection of signatures to recall California Governor Gray Davis, those signing wanted to remove their governor from office because they believed he was guilty of “gross mismanagement of California Finances by overspending taxpayers' money, threatening public safety by cutting funds to local governments, failing to account for the exorbitant cost of the energy, and failing in general to deal with the state's major problems until they get to the crisis stage.” (23) Despite accusations of a lack of leadership, Davis and the Democrats claimed the recall effort was simply “partisan mischief” right until the very end. (24) Whether Davis was a sufficient governor or not is debatable. However, in October of 2003, Californians had made up their mind: they wanted Davis out of office. And thanks to democracy, that is exactly what happened.