Recall

After recounting signatures in response to a federal court ruling, state election officials have ordered that the bid to recall Michigan House Speaker Andy Dillon be restored to this November's ballot. Dillon is up for re-election on the same ballot. So he could be removed from office and re-elected to a new term on the very same ballot. What would happen in such an unlikely outcome? Dillon would be removed from office for the last two months of his current term. He would rejoin the legislature in January 2009 to begin his new term.

The official notice of recall against Gov. Schwarzenegger was filed today with the Secretary of State's office. The governor now has a chance to file his formal response. It will be interesting to see if he files it. By the current rules of the political game, every attack requires a response. But I'm not sure if that's the best strategy right now. If the recall proves to be serious -- and the jury is still very much out on that -- I argue that Schwarzenegger should embrace the recall vote and use a campaign to defeat the recall to win some new political capital. (He's awfully low right now). But he doesn't need an official response to do that. And filing a response that blasts back at the prison guards' union, which is backing the recall, might do little more than get more attention for the recall at a moment when Schwarzenegger needs to focus attention on the budget. It's an interesting call.

Attached to this post is a pdf file of the recall notice.

NOTICE OF INTENTION TO CIRCULATE RECALL PETITION

TO THE HONORABLE ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: Pursuant to the California
Constitution and Section 11020, California Elections Code, the undersigned registered qualified voters of the State of California hereby give notice that we are the proponents of a recall petition ( and that we intend to seek your recall and removal from the office of Governor of the State of California and to demand election of a successor in that office.

The grounds for the recall are as follows:

Catastrophic leadership failings and inept management, including, but not limited to, repeated acts of untrustworthiness, gross fiscal mismanagement jeopardizing funding for schools, infrastructure, public safety and other essential services; reckless borrowing, saddling taxpayers and future generations of Californians with billions of dollars in new debt; breaking your promise to "cut up the credit cards" and oppose new taxes; failure to reform California's correctional system, causing a federal takeover of prison health care and costing taxpayers an estimated $8 billion; using state workers as "scapegoats" for your leadership failure and threatening their rights and financial wellbeing; soliciting and accepting special interest money at levels never before seen in California history'; betraying voter trust and mortgaging our children's future; and leaving California in far worse shape than before your election.

The governor and his aides are hitting back at the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. -- the prison guards' union -- for its threat to recall the governor. A union official says the group is beginning the process of gathering 65 signatures on a notice of recall.

 So far, the Schwarzenegger strategy is to accuse the guards of using the recall to seek a contract that the cash-strapped state can't afford. According to the Sacramento Bee, Schwarzenegger said today: "I will not be intimidated by anybody that is demanding more money than the state can afford and that demands deals more than the state is wanting to give. So the prison guard union is not going to intimidate me with their kind of action."

The idea behind such a response is to try to keep the issue narrow--and focused on the prison guards' contract. Schwarzenegger and his team need to prevent others with grievances against the governor -- just about every interest group in the state has been at odds with him at one time or another -- from joining up. This response makes the recall seem narrow and small. It hints at what should be the first battle -- a behind-the-scenes effort by the union to build a coalition in support of a recall, and by the governor to prevent such a coalition from forming.

Just got off the phone with Ted Costa, the original proponent of the 2003 recall of Gov. Gray Davis that put Schwarzenegger in the governor's office.

Costa, who runs a small taxpayer group called The People's Advocate, hasn't made any decisions, but he expressed interest in the recall and said he had left a message for prison guards' union official Lance Corcoran offering to meet with CCPOA. When I asked him if he would support the recall of Schwarzenegger, Costa replied: "Anything's possible, including me support a recall. That's all possible. Yes it is."

Costa thinks that if a recall qualified for the ballot, Schwarzenegger could be in real trouble. Costa said he would expect potential successors who are planning runs for 2010 to run to succeed Schwarzenegger if he's recalled. "All they have to do is turn the signatures in, and the governor has to get more than 50 percent of the vote to stay in office. The other candidates only need to beat each other," Costa said. "You could get four or five candidates, you could wear them down."

"By no means do I see this as a slam dunk for the governor," Costa added. "He's pissed off everybody."

Costa said he thought the prison guards' union might have done better to wait a little before making public their interest in a recall. "They should have covered their bases before they went public, and maybe built a coalition," he said.

I'm going to need remedial math work. A correction to my post on basics: I was right about the required number of signatures being 12 percent of the number of votes cast in most recent election. But when I made a mathematical error in calculating that. The correct standard is 1,041,530 signatures, according to the Secretary of State's office. That's still very doable, and likely to be not that much more costly than a ballot initiative. One note: proponents of a recall will want to get at least 1.5 million signatures so they have a cushion. Typically, about 30 percent of signatures are found to be invalid for one reason or another. But with no other measures on the ballot, the recall should be able to qualify for less than $2 per signature -- so the total cost of qualification ought to be less than $3 million.

For more on recall procedures, the secretary of state's handbook is here.

In a quick morning canvas of signature gatherers and local coordinators in California, none of the half-dozen people I checked with around the state has been hired to do the Arnold recall as yet. This is the slow season for the signature gathering game. Many of California's gatherers are working on local initiative or referendum petitions -- there's a significant one in Stockton, and several in Southern California -- or are out of state. The good news for supporters of recalling Arnold is that it wouldn't be hard to hire signature gatherers fast, and with little else on the street, the price wouldn't be particularly high.

Recalls are different than initiatives and referenda. You don't simply file the petition itself first. When and if the prison guards' union launches the process Monday morning, they'll file a notice-of-intent-to-recall petition. That document will list the reasons for the recall. It has to have the signature of 65 voters. Gov. Schwarzenegger will then have the right to file a response to the notice. Then the actual recall petition may be filed and circulated.

Recalls require more signatures than initiatives or referenda. The standard is -- an amount equal to 12 percent of the total number of votes in the most recent gubernatorial election, in 2006. That number is currently 1,041,530 signatures about 950,000 signatures -- a very manageable figure. With little competition from other ballot measures (there are currently no statewide initaitves on the street), It's likely that the union could qualify the measure for less than $3 million.

More basics are available via the IGS Library at Berkeley. And at the Secretary of State's web site.

Lance Corcoran, a spokesman for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, tells a Sacramento TV station that paperwork will be filed Monday.

California's powerful prison guards' union, which has warred with the state over its contract for years, is taking a " very hard look" at the idea of filing a petition to recall Gov. Schwarzenegger, a spokesman tells the San Francisco Chronicle. If the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. were to pursue the idea seriously, they'd likely get it on the ballot. The union has the power to pay signature gatherers. Whether this is a smart political move would be debatable.

There would be reason for Schwarzenegger to worry. He's unpopular with state voters, and the ongoing budget stalemate won't help his ratings. He's been on the wrong side of any number of interest groups who might love to exact some revenge And Schwarzenegger's celebrity -- a major factor in his winning election in the 2003 recall -- could draw support for a recall from folks who simply want attention. Recall the governor who won in a recall. It's irresistible.