[Originally posted 2/2/06 at NorCal Politics]

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign fund is $400K in the hole. He did it to himself, when he decided that he wanted to force his power-grabbing initiatives into the special election last November:

While Democrats and other Schwarzenegger opponents continue to complain about the millions of dollars last November’s special election cost California, the governor may have paid the biggest price. While Schwarzenegger’s California Recovery Team was raising and spending more than $45 million in the markedly unsuccessful effort to pass his package of initiatives, the governor’s re-election campaign was put on hold.

“Except for one dinner in Los Angeles, everything we did last year went into the special election,” Wilson said. “We really only began to raise money for the re-election last month.”

Schwarzenegger’s opponents spent at least $60 million against the initiatives, the finance reports showed.

One also notes that by one estimate, it cost the counties of California some $54 million for Governor Schwarzenegger’s failed putsch-by-initiative. Those are your dollars and mine, folks. Thanks, Governor!

So, I expect that nominal poverty is part of the reason for Schwarzenegger’s newfound humility and moderation. I’m thinking it’s a put-on, though. Does anyone seriously believe that Schwarzenegger has a humble bone in his body?

In that vein, note that Schwarzenegger recently hired two Bush-Cheney lieutenants to run his 2006 gubernatorial campaign. So, one should expect slash-and-burn politics, probably run largely through proxies, while Schwarzenegger plays the compassionate conservative. I’m placing my bet now: Schwarzenegger 2006 will look like Bush 2000, with some Swift-Boating of his Democratic opponent thrown in.

I’m curious as to whether Angelides / Westly will be prepared for savage, generally dishonest attacks right at what they think of (and they poll as) as their strengths. That’s a hallmark of Republican campaign strategy for the last decade. One hopes that California Dems won’t be as gormless as national Dems in dealing with entirely predictable Republican behavior.

I wasn’t going to weigh in on this particular subject.  I figured that killing a person is killing a person.  It doesn’t make much difference how you do it.  Well, as long as we can rule out stoning, dragging behind a car, and some other nasty ways to go.

But, I think I’m beginning to come around on that. By striking down the three drug cocktail that California used, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel has drawn the nation’s attention to the death penalty issue.  That alone would be sufficient to make it noteworthy.  We are the lone Western industrial nation to still carry out executions, yet there is a suprisingly small amount of public debate about the issue.

And now this is getting bigger, far bigger than I expected after the withdrawal of the anesthesiologists:

Fogel appropriately wants assurances that the state’s method of execution — lethal injection — does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The question is whether the three-drug “protocol” used in California and other states sufficiently eliminates pain during an inmate’s execution.

A widely distributed article appearing in the April 2005 issue of the British medical journal Lancet reported on a study by University of Miami researchers that indicated lethal injection may be more painful than the electric chair or the gas chamber. The study, which said inmates in a majority of cases received a lower level of anesthesia than is commonly used in surgery, has sparked widespread debate among medical professionals.

Morales was scheduled to die Tuesday. Fogel had ruled that the state should modify its execution procedure or delay carrying out the death-penalty sentence. The state responded to Fogel’s concerns by choosing one of his approved options: promising to have an anesthesiologist present to make certain that Morales was unconscious while he was being executed. At the 11th hour, anesthesiologists reasonably balked at being involved, fearing they were violating their profession’s ethical standards against doing harm. Their decision has since been backed by the American Medical Association and the California Medical Association.(San Jose Mercury News 2/23/06)

And it looks set to become bigger (on the flip)

California “is legitimately criticized for not doing enough homework on the protocol,” which calls for a three-drug cocktail of a sedative, a paralytic agent and a heart-stopping chemical, said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento.

The protocol was first adopted in Oklahoma in 1977, and “states just seem to copy [it] without much scientific backup for what they adopted,” he said.

Scheidegger, whose organization actively defends capital punishment in major court cases, said two events in the last year have given the issue momentum: an article in a medical journal and action by the Supreme Court.
***
Then, in recent months, the Supreme Court agreed to stay two executions in Florida until it resolved the question of whether death row inmates can bring last-minute civil rights challenges that execution by lethal injection is cruel and unusual.

Those cases are not a direct challenge to Florida’s execution procedure, but the Supreme Court’s action prompted immediate reaction from Gov. Jeb Bush.

Earlier this month, Bush said he would not sign any more execution warrants until the issue was resolved.

“We don’t know why the Supreme Court’s done what it’s done, so the uncertainty probably does create a need to wait,” he said.(LA TImes 2/23/06)

And if Jeb Bush thinks we need to wait, don’t we?  Can we really expect anybody to more gung ho on exections than a Bush?  But, we have him as our Governor.  Governor Schwarzenegger has so far refused to step in to stop the executions until we can determine if this is cruel.

While California’s case is really only symptomatic, it does turn the attention of the nation’s largest state to the issue.  And perhaps that’s one more step towards ending the death penalty.

So, why is Arnold Schwarzenegger the governor of California?  Apparently he would rather be the governor of Styria, a province of Austria. This is from SF Gate’s Daily Dish of all places:

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has pledged his allegiance to his native Austria, after a bitter fight with officials in his home city last year.
***
But the star appears to have softened after an official in the southern Austrian province of Styria — where he was born — wrote him a letter pledging his support.

Schwarzenegger replied to Herman Schuetzenhoefer, “I always have been, and always will be, a Styrian at heart.”

Interesting data from Rasmussen, a robopollster. I’m not sure how important the polling data against Angelides and Westly is though yet.  Westly has pretty low name ID, which is pressing his numbers down.

The golden state’s movie-star governor has scrounged a narrow lead over State Comptroller Steve Westly (D). Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) is still neck and neck with State Treasurer Phil Angelides (D).

The latest Rasmussen Reports California election poll shows Schwarzenegger leading Westly 39% to 34% in his bid for reelection. The Governor trails Angelides 41% to 40%.

Since January, Schwarzenegger has lost one percentage point when matched with Angelides. This is the third straight poll showing the gap between Angelides and Schwarzenegger as smaller than the survey margin of sampling error.

But against Westly, the governor has been gaining ground. In December, Westly had a modest lead. In January, they were essentially even. Now, the Governor has a five point advantage.

The governor, once very popular, is now viewed unfavorably by 50% of the state’s voters. Just 41% view him favorably.

No, really, I am serious.  The Governator has done more to tear the GOP apart than any Democrat could hope to do.  And for those of you who were paying attention, in “My Ode to Gray Davis”, my first post on here, I remarked that he would do that.

While the GOP establishment remains supportive of Schwarzenegger, the rank and file are disappointed.  Disappointed enough to attempt to yank their pre-primary endorsement of the governor:

SACRAMENTO – Republican activists are gaining ground in a bid to get their party to denounce Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s spending policies, but there’s no agreement between factions on their most contentious proposal: getting the state GOP to yank its endorsement of him in the November election.

The chairman of the state party has agreed to help get three draft resolutions against the governor’s budget, public-works and minimum-wage-increase proposals a “full and fair hearing” at the Feb. 24-26 GOP convention in San Jose.

Of course, the regular primary will be held, and Schwarzenegger.  But it certainly would be a bizarre outcome for the party apparatus to not support their own nominee, especially a standing governor.

More on the flip…

I’m not sure what these people wanted.  Did they want a Bushian conservative governor.  For the foreseeable future that is not possible.  It’s why Bill Simon got trounced by Gray Davis.  Conservatives just don’t have the traction in the state to have such a candidate win a statewide election.

And, unsuprisingly they are disappointed by the lack of appointments of GOP judges.

A second controversial draft resolution – chastising Schwarzenegger’s appointment of dozens of non-Republican judges to the bench – gained a key endorsement Wednesday by the California Republican Lawyers Association. “As the only chartered Republican lawyers organization in the state, we had to take a position,” said association president Steve Baric of Rancho Santa Margarita. “We believe the governor as a Republican should be appointing more Republican judges.

Amongst the laundry list of their complaints:
The Bond packages
The budget
The minimum wage increase
Susan Kennedy
yada
yada
yada

Oh grow up people.  If you can’t have everything you’re going to take your marbles home with you.  Well, let’s see you do that.

So, the governor wants to let the people decide on assisted suicide:

Sacramento — As lawmakers prepare to debate whether to legalize physician-assisted suicide in California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday that the controversial issue should be decided by voters instead of politicians.
Schwarzenegger refused to describe how he feels personally about allowing doctors to help terminally ill people die and seemed to suggest he would be uncomfortable signing legislation that may land on his desk this year.
“I personally think it’s a decision that probably should go to the people, like the death penalty,” the governor said. “I think let the people of California make that decision. I don’t think that we, 120 legislators and I, should make that decision.”

The governor seemed very decisive in his movies (except my personal favorite Shwarzenegger movie: Total Recall, where he forgets who he is), a quality which seems to be failing him in politics.  He wants to leave this to voters? Well, what the governor does not apparently realize is that we, like the rest of the nation, and most of the free world, have a representative form of government.  That is why we call them leaders, rather than say, “listeners” or “pollsters” or “followers”.  Our leaders need to lead.

However, this is not what the Governator is doing right now.  Now, he is pursuing a course of trying to please everybody.  He spends time in Napa pretending to help rebuild from the floods, and doles out pork.  But when it actually comes to stating his own positions, his words fail him. He doesn’t want to piss anybody off.

And that’s the real problem with having a governor that’s out of step with his electorate and wants to win again.  He has to make EVERYBODY happy.  He can’t afford to upset any possible voter.  He already lost a big percentage of voters due to the fact that they are partisan Dems.  Contrast that to the Mayor of SF.  His approval rating is around 85% (Don’t have a link right now, but I can get one).  If he feels like pissing a few people off in the City, he can afford to do this. (Example: That stupid Cable car hubub that he got himself involved in…what’s up with that?)  Another example? Hillary Clinton…she’s cruising towards reelection, and moving away from her electorate (left) towards the national electorate(right).  Very slick those Clintons are….

At any rate, the Governator needs to grow a spine.  He should have signed the gay marriage bill if he believes in the right of gays to marry.  If he didn’t then he should have said that, instead of this voter crap.  If he wants to veto the assisted suicide law, then veto it and tell us that your Catholic heritage or some crap like that makes you veto.  Or you just don’t like it.  Tell me who the hell you are.  I’m rather sick of this vaguery of who our governor is.  I think that we have a right to know what this governor believes.  He shouldn’t get this free pass on all these social issues.