RACINGMIX WORD

The Wrath is Long-Lasting
Will the anger last post-recall?

Now they're mad as hell. And the question isn't just whether an electorate stirred to take such a drastic action will stop when it's over. The answer may not be known for some time because voters, like earthquakes, are notoriously hard to predict. But the way pollsters are describing the voters' mood these days, it sounds as if they're ready to run for cover.

"This one is more like the end of the 19th century, the Depression or periods of great tumult where change starts to germinate for different reasons and it ultimately bubbles over into a big change," said Paul Maslin, the Democratic pollster for Gov. Gray Davis and presidential frontrunner Howard Dean. "This isn't just another garden variety brushfire."

Political seismologists like Maslin believe the anger touched off in California isn't aimed only at an individual, like the governor, or even an event, like the state's enormous budget deficit. It's deeper and broader than that. It's a feeling that "they are shut out of the system and nobody is representing them," said GOP strategist Don Sipple. It's on display in California, but the angry tremors are also seen nationally in the unexpected grassroots surge for Howard Dean. America's pulse has been racing since the September 11 terrorist attacks and its fear has been heightened by the global instability of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Workers are concerned about the economy, but they're also outraged by a corruption scandal on Wall Street that dashed the retirement plans for thousands of employees even as it paid millions to the corporate chiefs.

In California, voters have tensed in the last year over stories about lobbyist-paid trips to Hawaii, luxury state cars for politicians, top-level firings for an influence peddling scandal and more news that the costly energy crisis was avoidable. Meanwhile, lawmakers cut spending for education and health care, but hard-line posturing by Democrats and Republicans forced them to borrow much of the money for a $38 billion deficit.

Even the sponsors of the recall petition say they've tapped into something that goes far beyond Davis. He's blamed in part for the latest budget problems and the energy crisis. But polls also show record-low ratings for California legislators, leaders in other states and the outlook for the future. Just three years ago, 62 percent of Californians said the state was moving in the right direction. Today, an even higher percentage believe it's headed in the wrong direction.

"The budget deficit clearly precipitated the anger," said Sal Russo, a Republican consultant to the recall effort. "But then it was like pulling a thread on a sweater. The more [voters] thought about it, the more they realized how bad the schools were and that there weren't enough jobs and that they were stuck in traffic and that it was smoggy. Gray Davis is the titular head, and he gets the brunt of it, but this is really an indictment of the whole process."

In some measures, polls have never found this much disaffection. Last week, an independent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California in San Francisco reported that trust in state government has dropped to its lowest level since the survey began in 1998. Now, barely 1 in 4 California adults say they trust government all or most of the time, a drop of 20 percent since January last year. "This is a tremendous challenge for state leaders who really bank on the public's faith - or at least its tolerance - during troubled times," said Mark Baldassare, director of the PPIC survey.

What's fascinating for political watchers is that democracy provides voters with plenty of power that they rarely-if-ever-use. For nearly a century, even through depression, war, riots, scandal and grassroots uprisings, Californians never summoned their ability to recall state officers. Now voters, particularly those laid-back Californians, aren't sitting back anymore and blankly watching the political process as if it's a bad sitcom.

If you listen to the opening lines of the television commercial that introduced actor Arnold Schwarzenegger as a candidate for governor, it's clear that all of the internal polls, focus groups and expert analysis in the GOP are measuring the kind of grassroots anger that has fueled times of political change.

"This historic election has come about because there is a tremendous disconnect between the people of California and the leaders of California," Schwarzenegger says, facing a camera and walking toward a wood-paneled office. "We, the people, are doing our job; working hard, raising our families and paying taxes. But the politicians are not doing their job."

Sipple, the veteran Republican media consultant who made the ad, is using language from the American Revolution to reach a voter who may not have participated in politics before. Perhaps the viewer knows Schwarzenegger from his movies, but the ad maker's hope is that the candidate will strike a chord with his understanding that voters have lost touch with Sacramento and that politicians don't care any more.

Good government experts are uncertain about the ultimate impact of mobilizing these disconnected voters. 

On one hand, consultants like Sipple and Pat Caddell believe the recall is a healthy revolution. "You have to wrap yourself in wonderment at the unconventional nature of this and the terrific byproducts for the electorate and their sense of involvement," said Sipple.

On the other hand, some worry that too much direct democracy - power in the hands of the electorate - is a fearful thing. They worry about the backbone of lawmakers who have to make necessary, but politically unpopular decisions. And they're concerned that a disconnected and untrustworthy electorate is vulnerable to distortion campaigns by high-dollar interests.

"What's happening goes to the heart and soul of whether or not a republic can in fact continue to govern in this country or whether we are going to so undermine the ability of people to exercise leadership that we are going to resort to what our forefathers feared the most, which is democracy run amok," said Leon Panetta, former White House chief of staff. "At some point, people have got to restore [voters'] trust in how the process of government is supposed to work."

It isn't only anger, though, that's creating today's electoral movement. That's the old-fashioned motivation that sponsored historic uprisings like proposition 13. This recall has at least a trio of contributing fuels including Schwarzenegger's celebrity, the prospect of Democrat Cruz Bustamante being the first modern Latino governor and the full-throttle intensity of high technology.

Thanks largely to schwarzenegger, the saturation television coverage on morning shows, afternoon cable programs and nightly network news has created a virtual campaign for a nation that is vicariously sharing in the California revolt. Local television news is far more interested in the recall than a regular election. And nationally, strategists are aware that televised glimpses of uprising in California could germinate elsewhere.

At the same time, the Internet has become an awesome power for grassroots communication and organization. Arguably, the surging Dean campaign and the recall would not be possible without it. Dean, a one-time long shot, shocked the political world by outpacing the frontrunners and raising $7.6 million during the second quarter of the year, most of it in small contributions on the Internet. And in California, Russo said talk radio and the Internet provided the essential framework for the recall.

"It was those two elements," he said. "We had over 20 million hits to our Web site and 450,000 downloads of the signature petition from our web site. We definitely hit a nerve. But you don't get that unless people are angry."

Like the last "Great Movement," Proposition 13, it may take a decade or more to see the changes being wrought today. Right now, the electorate is angry and it's been empowered. It is also being introduced for the first time to new tools of direct democracy and it is being armed with the power of the information age.

"This is the era of the push-button revolution," said Democratic consultant Kam Kuwata. Small activist groups "are ignored now at the politicians peril. It really will change the dynamic of how governmental decisions are made."

"Are we at the beginning?" he asked. "We certainly are at the beginning of something."

Essay by: David Lesher, San Francisco Chronicle, September 28, 2003
Published online by: Racingmix, October 2, 2003

RACINGMIX WORD