Back in the February budget battle, notorious right-wing SoCal talk show hosts John and Ken put the heads of Republican legislators who voted for the tax increases on sticks as a threat of grassroots wingnut revolt. Their primary enemy became GOP Assemblymember Anthony Adams (AD-59), who they targeted with a recall effort, gathering and submitting signatures to put a recall on the ballot. It was to be the biggest demonstration yet of the power the KFI duo have over California politics – and the Republican Party.
Except they failed.
We learned today that the recall effort will fall 11,000 signatures short of qualifying for the ballot, according to the random sampling projections. John and Ken turned in 58,000 signatures but the sampling projects less than half – about 24,500 – will be valid, short of the 35,825 they needed to make the ballot.
Chalk this up as a pretty big FAIL on the part of John and Ken and their own SoCal version of the teabagger movement. Armed with one of the West Coast’s most powerful radio signals and one of the highest rated shows in the region, they still couldn’t muster the signatures to even get this before voters.
On Twitter I noted that if they couldn’t get the recall on the ballot, maybe John and Ken aren’t so powerful after all. Anthony Adams agrees. Once again, the great anti-tax revolution of 2009 is a mouse that failed to roar.
John and Ken do a lot of stupid things, but this has got to be one of their more stupid endeavors. Why would you waste your time on recall when you could just challenge him in a primary?
#FAIL!
before submitting them? That has become fairly standard practice nowadays for initiative campaigns (mostly to root out forgers trying to get paid for fake signatures.) If they knew they didn’t have enough it might have been less embarrassing not to submit them at all. Under 50% validity is laughable; they needed to train their petitioners better and/or collect many more sigs. I worked on initiatives in the past where we had around 75 to 80% valid sigs, although that is easier with statewide measures where you don’t have to be sure they are in a certain district. But still that is totally lame…
I suspect that John and Ken got people excited from all over the LA Basin–they wanted to sign a recall petition even if it meant nothing.
If ACORN were organizing such a petition and got a 50% validity rate, we would be hearing about massive fraud and shrill calls for an investigation.
how much did they pay the signature gathering firm?
… pick who serves in the Republican side of the aisle in Sacramento.
Teabaggers = Texas Oil Money = State of CA crashing to give the jollies to a few neocon freaks who put Bush & Cheney in office. Bleep that.
Too bad, The Wingnuts don’t appear to be very invincible, I’m glad someone had the guts to do whats right, Sure It wasn’t popular, But It is right and did the increased taxes really hurt anyone? I don’t think so, Just a bunch of tightwad, skinflint, troglodytes who want to be able to pick and choose where their tax money goes, Well It ain’t gonna happen.
The California legislature in It’s infinite wisdom floated a weaker version that was just a 10% tax on oil.
What California really needs to help fix the budget or at least to buy time is a copy of the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend which You can read about it below and It hasn’t hurt the state of Alaska, It’s Citizens or the Oil Companies one little bit, ever. Everyone who qualifies gets an equal amount as long as they qualify, as Natural Resources are a common Human birthright We all share. Just like breathing air is a common Human birthright. California needs to duplicate the version Alaska now has as It clearly works, This oil and gas beneath our feet and everyones childrens feet belongs to the people of California 1st, We should not be giving away a precious natural resource that was in the ground, We deserve a 50% share just like Alaska gets from their Oil and Gas Revenues, Half of the windfall to be split evenly among those like in Alaska who qualify and the other half to go into the state general fund to reduce or eliminate the deficit as a permanent source of income or for as long as It shall last.
Alaska Permanent Fund on Oil and Gas Revenues