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Guest Observer
Calif. in Context: Recall Opens Door to New Voters
By Kenneth D. Ackerman
Special to Roll
Call
September 16, 2003
Even before Monday’s dramatic developments, the recall
process being unleashed in California against Gov. Gray Davis (D)
was doubtless riddled with problems; the statute will deserve a good
rewrite once the dust settles.
But the carnival it has spawned — with 135 certified candidates,
including movie actors, porn stars, a sumo wrestler, artists and
eccentrics of every stripe along with the regular businessmen and
pols — fits the best American tradition. Californians have made
excellent lemonade from this lemon, a festival of politics drawing
wide public interest, a crop of fresh candidates, rousing public
debate on serious issues, and potentially the largest voter turnout
for a statewide contest in decades.
From a historian’s viewpoint, the raw ambition, showmanship,
glitz, money and audacity on display are as American as cherry pie.
Our modern democracy bears the fruit of two centuries of such
experiments. The federal constitution our Founding Fathers gave us
in 1787 left small room for voters or voting. It excluded voters
from choosing Senators until 1913, and even presidential electors
were named by legislatures in most states through the 1840s. Women
remained disenfranchised until 1920, slaves until after emancipation
in the Civil War, most Southern blacks until the civil rights laws
of the 1960s and draft-eligible 18-year-olds until 1971.
In fact, most state laws, which set voting qualifications in
federal contests, originally excluded even many adult white men
until the 1830s, limiting the franchise to wealthy property holders.
Each step to expand democracy has met with gasps and dismay from
detractors of the time. Critics prophesized doom when President
Andrew Jackson’s generation won votes for urban laborers and
frontier ruffians, when Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall gave unwashed New
York Irish immigrants leading roles in the 1860s, and when
post-Civil War reconstruction governments began registering freed
black slaves. Women were ridiculed and patronized during their
50-year struggle for suffrage, and black civil rights marchers faced
police dogs, billy clubs, intimidation and worse in fighting to
reach the ballot box.
California’s recall has now provided a new opening. And given the
chance, the state’s political culture has rushed in, embraced it and
transformed it.
The recall has opened the door in two ways: First, candidates
could get their names on the governor’s ballot with a mere $3,500
and 65 signatures — a virtual free pass compared to the normal
process of winning nomination from entrenched party establishments.
As a result, 50 Democrats and 43 Republicans are listed instead of
one each, let alone four Green Party candidates, three from the
National Independence Party and two from the Natural Law Party. Two
immigrants — Schwarzenegger and columnist Arianna Huffington (I) —
and Latino Cruz Bustamante (D), the state’s lieutenant governor, are
among the leaders. Whether any of these three could have won
traditional party nods is questionable; now, all could be important
voices in state affairs for years to come.
Second, the recall has created an unprecedented forum to debate
what are among the driest issues imaginable — the state’s budget and
economic crises. Now these have become the stuff of celebrities and
high drama.
Driving the process is a piece of fantastic political theater —
complete with quirky personalities, glamour, flip-flopping polls,
tactical puzzles and suspense galore. The fact is, good theater
begets good government. Voters get hooked on the horse race and
glitz and, by osmosis, soon learn the issues, the policy options and
even the dreary budget numbers. A whole generation of young
Californians today is finding itself fascinated by civics and
politics — a healthy outcome by itself. And this too fits solidly in
our tradition.
American politicos have been using showy carnivals to hook voters
from the start. As early as 1840, the Whig Party shocked its era’s
establishment by repackaging its lackluster presidential candidate,
67-year-old retired Gen. William Henry Harrison, as dashing
“Tippicanoe,” hero of a military skirmish 29 years earlier, the “log
cabin and hard cider” candidate. They held parades, songfests,
picnics and bonfires while burying Democrat Martin Van Buren at the
polls.
Starting in the mid-1800s, parties began staging national
conventions that often blossomed into passionate brawls mesmerizing
the public for days. In 1880, for instance, Republicans fought 36
ballots between two factions — “Stalwarts” and “Half-Breeds” —
before stampeding to dark horse James Garfield, a noncandidate
career Congressman from Ohio. The sheer drama fueled Garfield’s
winning campaign, backed by brazen use of celebrities — in his case
Gen. Ulysses Grant of Civil War fame. That year, 80 percent of
eligible voters cast ballots, almost twice the level of presidential
contests today.
Theodore Roosevelt, waging an insurgency in 1912 against
incumbent President William Howard Taft, went further. Snubbed by
Republican insiders, he appealed directly to the people using a new
innovation, the primary. Rabble-rousing voters shocked party bosses
by handing Roosevelt nine victories out of 10, including in Taft’s
home state of Ohio. Roosevelt lost the nomination — insiders still
controlled state conventions that chose most of the delegates — but
he’d kick-started the modern presidential nominating system.
In the 1960s, it was a cause — opposition to the Vietnam War —
that forced new openings in the political process. Anti-war
campaigns by Sens. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.) in 1968 and George
McGovern (D-S.D.) in 1972 exposed a generation of young volunteers
to public life and forced party reforms making delegate choices more
transparent and diverse. In 1978 another cause, opposition to high
property taxes, prompted California’s last major dramatic innovation
in democracy — Proposition 13.
Ironically, California’s latest experiment may produce a
thoroughly old-fashioned result: a mature decision by well-informed
voters. Californians considering the issues, keeping open minds,
delving beyond first impressions, and hemming and hawing. Even the
media have shown healthy skepticism — for instance, in pressing
movie-star Schwarzenegger to show actual knowledge of complex policy
issues.
If California’s recall fails because it descends into confusion,
becomes obscenely expensive, or produces a new governor with no
mandate or no substance beyond a pretty face, the fault will lie not
with the voters or the political culture. They have given this
process its best shot. And in a country where democracy is our
life’s blood, we should enjoy the carnival to the hilt.
Kenneth D. Ackerman, counsel to the law firm Olsson, Frank and
Weeda in D.C., has authored two books: “The Gold Ring: Jim Fisk, Jay
Gould, and Black Friday 1869” and the recent “Dark Horse: The
Surprise Election and Political Murder of James A. Garfield.”
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