State of Perpetual Campaigning

California seems intent on trading in representative democracy for a perpetual campaign. Voters facing yet another election (the third of the year in Los Angeles) have every right to be dismayed and disgusted at the prospect of 148 days of all-out fundraising and nonstop television attack ads, all because the governor and the Legislature are unable to govern in the normal way.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pulled the pin on his political grenade Monday with his call for a special election coming in time for the evening news. Sadly for the governor, most Californians were too preoccupied with the Michael Jackson trial to pay much attention, but Schwarzenegger still invoked them: “The people are the ones who wield the power. The people are the ones who can cut through the chains of politics and the past.”

Public employee unions, which are financing the battle on the other side, accepted the challenge with Churchillian bombast: “We will fight this attack on our real-life action heroes in our streets, on the airwaves and at the ballot box,” said Art Pulaski of the California Labor Federation. The state teachers union is assessing members an extra $50 million for the fight. Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland) and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) acknowledged Monday that the Legislature had become “a sideshow” at the hands of the opposing forces.

Perhaps it was inevitable that a governor sent to Sacramento in a special recall election, with a mandate to take on the system, would favor another special election to push his prescriptions for the state’s ills. But most Californians will be alarmed by the degree to which legislating via initiative has become the new system. On both sides of the aisle, political consultants and power brokers, such as the public employee unions, have a financial and institutional interest in favoring permanent campaigning over governing.

The three initiatives qualified for the ballot through Schwarzenegger’s coalition of business groups and anti-tax activists would hand the governor much greater power to determine spending; make it more difficult for teachers to earn job security; and put a commission of retired judges, instead of the Legislature, in charge of drawing legislative districts. Independently qualified measures would restrict minors’ access to abortion and rein in public employee unions’ political spending.

The state budget may be the first victim of the new all-campaign regime in Sacramento. Republicans indicate they are in no rush to help majority Democrats pass a state budget by July 1, no matter how close it is to the governor’s own proposal. Democrats say they’ll mount a separate campaign pushing a tax increase for schools, which is like aiming Kryptonite at Republicans.

It’s not that Schwarzenegger’s proposals are all bad. This editorial board has strongly endorsed having an independent body draw political districts. We have criticized the teachers unions, in part for their outsized job protections. We agree that the state should live within its means, though the governor is putting the issue to a peremptory vote in simplistic form. And Schwarzenegger should be mindful that not all initiatives to rein in spending succeed. In 1973, Gov. Ronald Reagan called a special election to put his own tax and spending limits before voters. The initiative failed, 48% to 52%.

Schwarzenegger has raised tens of millions of dollars for the contest, in which he will be a central figure. And there is, of course, an element of political calculation in his determination to proceed now with the ballot measures. After all, if he’d waited until the scheduled primary in June 2006, when he is likely to be running for reelection, he could not appear in campaign ads for his own ballot measures.