Now that voters have rejected Sacramento's budget fix, everyone's going back to the drawing board.
Karen Bass and Darrell Steinberg are meeting with reporters
this morning to begin discussing the future. And the
governor is in D.C. ready to relaunch.
Capitol Weekly reports, "It remains to be seen what type of political phoenix
emerges from the ashes of the governor’s latest initiative defeat. Schwarzenegger has been
known to reinvent himself after ballot box losses before.
"But if the comments of Schwarzenegger’s political strategist Adam Mendelsohn are any indication,
Republicans who liked the first version of Arnold Schwarzenegger
might find something to like in Schwarzenegger 3.0.
“In some instances, a loss is as much a mandate as a
win,” said Mendelsohn. “It’s clear that he carries a mandate to cut the California
budget down to the bone.”
Senate leader Darrell Steinberg said he was "wary of such broad
pronouncements," but acknowledges that cuts will have to be a big part
of the next phase.
So, just how bad was it?
Well, you can check out the running carnage tally here, but so far:
Prop. 1A: Yes - 34, No - 66
Prop. 1B: Yes - 37, No - 63
Prop. 1C: Yes - 35, No - 65
Prop. 1D: Yes - 34, No, 66
Prop. 1E: Yes - 34, No, 66
Prop. 1F: Yes - 74, No, 26
Ouch.
The LAT's Michael Finnegan says voters get some of the blame for the state's budget problem.
"By rejecting five budget measures, Californians also
brought into
stark relief the fact that they, too, share blame for
the political
dysfunction that has brought California to the brink
of insolvency.
"Nearly a century after the Progressive-era birth of the state's
ballot-measure system, it is clear that voters' fickle commands, one
proposition at a time, are a top contributor to paralysis
in
Sacramento. And that, in turn, has helped cripple the
capacity of the
governor and Legislature to provide effective leadership
to a state of
more than 38 million people."
But once the finger-pointing stops, the budget axes will come out. The
Chronicle's Andrew Ross looks at where the cuts will come from.
At least, that's the governor's plan...
The governor, of course, decided to miss his own funeral,
playing Environmental Savior on the White House lawn.
Heck, he didn't even update his Twitter page when the results came
in.
But he did issue a brief statement after the votes were in. "Today we have heard from the voters and I respect the
will of the
people who are frustrated with the dysfunction in our
budget system,"
the governor said in a written statement that was handed
out to
reporters less than an hour after polls closed. "Now we must move
forward from this point to begin to address our fiscal
crisis with
constructive solutions," Schwarzenegger said.
In other news, Curren Price is officially heading to
the Senate, and Judy Chu appears headed to Congress.
"I'm really excited, and I feel so honored by the votes
of the people
in the district," Judy Chu said at her victory party at Nick's Taste of
Texas restaurant in Covina as the ballot tallying neared
an end," the LAT reports.
"Chu, a Chinese American, campaigned on her experience
and deep
roots in the district and worked to build coalitions
across ethnic
lines. She will face a Republican and a Libertarian
in a runoff."
That should be as suspenseful as last night was...
But it's not just the Legislature that has to go back to the
drawing board. Looks like a certain dad in London needs to look for a new birthday
gift for his son.
AP reports, "A man who tried to hire a prostitute to take his 14-year-old son's virginity as a present was spared jail by a court
on Friday.
"The Polish national took the boy out in his car and
allowed him to pick
out the prostitute, who was standing at the side of
the road in the
red-light district of Nottingham.
"But the 42-year-old father was arrested because the teenager had chosen
an undercover police officer."
Nicely done, kid.
