Voting Is Only Way to Thwart Governor

We all knew California politics could get wacky, but I think it’s fair to say we’re outdoing ourselves this time.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger insisted we had to have this special election next week. Despite a huge budget deficit, it couldn’t wait until next year, which would have saved millions. It had to be now, because his “reforms” were too vital to delay another minute.

So the governor got his way, ramming the election down our throats. And now what does he want? He wants most of us to stay home next Tuesday.

That’s right, he’d like us to skip the election he called for. Why? Because Big Boy knows the polls say that three of his four reforms are tanking and a fourth is a tossup, so his best chance of winning is to rally conservatives in a state with a vast Democratic majority. Prop. 73 could help his cause, since the parental notification proposal “defines abortion as causing the death of the unborn child, a child conceived but not yet born.”

You’ve heard of democracy run amok? This would be direct democracy run amok, and if Schwarzenegger prevails, I believe California would officially become a banana republic.

The governor has gotten so desperate he’s pulled some of the TV ads that featured him, realizing that his slumping popularity could blow his own agenda out of the water. Mr. Bipartisan is primarily limiting his staged public appearances to GOP strongholds and blabbing away on conservative talk radio.

On Halloween, he showed up at an Ontario junkyard with an aide dressed as Count Cartaxula and shared the stage with a car driven by a skeleton. I’m not sure about the cause of death, but the driver might have steered into a tree after realizing his pension was up for grabs and his car tax refund meant that schools and public safety would get stiffed.

“Kids, did the car scare you, huh?” Schwarzenegger asked the youngsters in attendance.

Something’s scaring us, all right. But it’s not the car.

It’s the thought of having to vote every 10 minutes in California because the people we elect can’t agree on the time of day, let alone have a civil discussion about anything.

Rolling back teacher tenure (Proposition 74), cracking down on political spending by public employee unions (Proposition 75), budgetary spending caps (Proposition 76) and redistricting (Proposition 77) are all ideas worthy of debate.

But thanks to Schwarzenegger and his corporate pals on one side, and the forces of organized labor on the other, the political process has degenerated into nonstop fundraising by bitter enemies who then dump millions into TV ads that are designed to simplify and distort the issues while generally lowering the state IQ.

And this is where we are two years after a special election in which we elected a governor who promised he’d terminate special-interest fundraising, partisan monkey business and big borrowing, three categories in which he now reigns as undisputed heavyweight champ.

We’re about to have an election that was entirely unnecessary and cost $200 million in political donations -- favors to be named later -- plus at least $50 million in election-day costs.

And the governor wants you to stay home?

I can’t think of a better reason to stop everything you’re doing next Tuesday, get off your duff, and run -- don’t walk -- to the polls, where your mission is clear as never before:

Vote early and often.

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Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com and read previous columns at www.latimes.com/lopez