Total Recall
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Arnold Schwarzenegger struck Reaganesque notes last night in announcing that he will run for governor of California in the election being held along with the effort to recall the Golden State’s governor, Gray Davis. “I am an immigrant,” he said, “coming here with empty pockets but full of dreams.” He spoke of returning the state to its status as a place of opportunity and economic growth. “The most important thing is that we bring business back to California,” he said. He might also have mentioned that during the 1990s, for the first time since the government started keeping track, more people left California for other states than moved there from other states.
It will be illuminating to see whether Mr. Schwarzenegger can build a winning coalition and whether he stays faithful to these positions as the campaign wears on. His main political achievement so far has been leading the successful ballot proposition campaign for after-school programs in California schools. He billed it in part as an anti-crime measure. A recall cam paign has its downsides. There is something to be said for the stability of a system where terms are predictable and where governments can’t fall mid-term by a lack of confidence vote. In some ways the recall seems more akin to something
that would happen in Europe than in America. If an executive is truly guilty of malfeasance, there is always the option of impeachment. But if Mr. Davis is to be replaced mid-term, it seems to us that the voters of California could do a lot worse than to choose as his successor a pro-immigrant, pro-business, tough-on-crime Republican.
All of this is of importance to more than just California, because for Republican presidential candidates in recent elections the trick has been to find out how to win the country without New York and California. If Mr. Schwarzenegger proves that California can once again vote GOP, and President Bush makes an impression during the convention at New York City, we could see quite the deterioration of that great Red-Blue divide of which pundits made such a big deal last time around.
