I was in my car this afternoon (contributing to my carbon footprint) when my State Senator, Dick Ackerman, called me with the news — Senate President Pro-Tem Don Perata had "called off" of the recall of Jeff Denham.  Or, to be more precise, Perata announced the suspension of the political campaign to pass the recall measure. 

Now that I am back at my computer, I went online and was able to read Senator Perata’s "spin" on his decision… 

ENTER THE SPIN ROOM…

Perata’s statement reads, in part:

A long stalemate is the last thing we need. Without a budget – we run out of cash – the richest state in America gone broke!

We won’t be paying our bills – and we won’t be giving our schools, our emergency rooms and our police the resources they need.

So I met with Republican Leader Dave Cogdill – and I asked him how we could clear the decks and start making some progress.One issue kept coming up. The Denham recall.

So today – in the spirit of putting politics aside to solve problems – I’m ending the recall campaign.

You’re bound to ask, so let me tell you – there was no deal, no quid pro quo.

This is my call – and my best judgment about how to stop the long, slow slide into another long stalemate.

Well, here is my UNSPIN of Perata’s lame statement…

Let’s start out by remembering that Don Perata is one of the most selfish people in the Capitol (maybe topped only by the hubris of Fabian Nunez).  This recall was Perata’s idea and pet project.  Perata has made it clear along that he viewed the recall of Jeff Denham as an important step in setting the tone for budget negotiations — an important step to raising taxes…

So I will give you one guess as to why Perata is pulling the plug.

No, it’s not the namby-pamby "spin" he put out today about all working together…blah blah blah.

How about this — it’s called cutting your losses.  With many, many hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, Perata could read the writing on the wall.  His tracking surveys showed what Denham’s did — the recall simply wasn’t gaining traction with the voters in the 12th District.

But, of course, in the political realm of the State Capitol, you can’t just hold a press conference and say, "OK, we’ve decided that the millions of dollars we would have to spend over the next four weeks to even get into the hunt just is not worth it.  I admit it — we made a strategic and tactical mistake moving forward on this recall effort.  I screwed up.  So, we’re cutting our losses and as of today we aren’t going to drop any more money into the sinkhole…"

So Perata gives his "it’s all about love" speech — and tries to throw a bone to Senate Republican Leader Dave Cogdill, who put out a magnanimous statement.  But the reality is that Cogdill as Leader does get the credit — but for the real reason.  All of the work that he, Denham, the State GOP and others have been putting into raising a lot of money and bringing together a lot of activists to fight off the recall.

Make no mistake.  Perata pulled the plug because, plain a simple, he was losing in a big way.

Now, ironically, Denham does not get to fundamentally change his plans for the next month because of this announcement.  You see, the recall is still on the ballot, and this will still be one of the lowest turnout primary elections in California history.  This means that Denham has to take this recall vote seriously — a lot of money has already been spent tarnishing his good name.  And, of course, there are plenty of special interests (code for public employee unions) that could do polling a week out and decide to take a shot at dumping Denham.

Oh well, another day in California politics.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.