Dan Schnur does mention illegal immigration in his analysis of why the Governor won the recall and what enable him to reach out to more voters.
What he doesn’t mention is that the Governor had a chance to help get an initiative on the ballot that would have dealt with this issue. The Save Our License Initiative promoted by CRA was in circulation until Feb. of this year.
It would have stopped licenses and other public benefits from going to illegal aliens except emergency medical and K-12 education. Despite great grassroots support, there wasn’t the money to qualify it.
The Governor’s consultants were all approached about this issue. They wouldn’t listen. Why? Because the Governor still talks of giving licenses to illegals under the "right" conditions.
Last month I saw a focus group of Democrats that voted for Arnold. In this key group they had turned on the Governor and his propositions. But, they were with us on illegal immigration.
Had Arnold supported this on the ballot, the talk wouldn’t have been about Arnold destroying teachers and nurses , it would have been about illegals. An issue easy to direct attention to budget problems and a legislature that needs to be redistricted because they won’t stop it. Turnout wouldn’t be a problem, our people would have come out. And there would have been more of our people!
He could of and by the way still should declare a border emergency as Democratic Governors have done. (Great political cover by the way)
There were of course other isues, the failure to fight back earlier, the constant talk of compromise that lasted through August that demoralized grassroots Republicans of all stripes.
The failure to address illegal immigration, one of the pillars of his recall campaign was more important and nedded more than photo ops of him cleaning beaches and recycling cans with disadvantaged kids.
