Like most of the California political community that has heard that the Secretary of State has said that the proponents of the Adams Recall did not have a high enough percentage of valid signatures in the random count to move forward with the election, or even to move forward with a manual count, I am shocked.

My initial thought was, "How could this happen?"

It seems like there are only three obvious possibilities, all of them extraordinarily lucky for Anthony Adams, who should by rights be facing a recall over his taking of the no new taxes pledge only to turn around and vote for the largest tax increase in the history of any state.

1)  A really unlucky pull of random signatures.  It’s not likely that all of the "bad apples" (invalid signatures) in the bunch would be all stuck together — but it is not impossible.  Probably more likely that the Governor’s veto letter to Tom Ammiano was a coincidence.

2) Fraud by one of both Registrars of Voters.  This isn’t likely.  From what I’ve heard, the ROV in San Bernardino is as honest as the day is long.  While I have little faith in the LA County ROV (this is the guy who was previously the Registrar up the Seattle area where "balloting  irregularities" cost the Republican candidate for Governor a victory, LA County actually had a much higher validation rate than SB County.

3) Something unfortunate occurred between the paid signaturegathering vendor (who had guaranteed a validation rate and who was being paid to validate the signatures) and the Recall Adams Committee.

I guess there are other, less likely explanations.  But assuming that some grave error wasn’t made by the ROV’s or the Secretary of State, extreeeemely unlikely that there will be a recall election of Adams.

So besides embarrassment for the people who advocated the recall, what is the political implication here?

The first question is what happens to Adams.  That will depend on whether someone wants to come forward and challenge him in his regular primary.  I think they would have a strong case to make if they chose to do so.  No doubt the issue of the recall election has kept Adams’ violation of his no taxes pledge fresh in the minds of voters.  One thing is for sure — it won’t be former Senator and Assemblyman Dick Mountjoy, who could have filled out the unexpired term of ex-Assemblyman Adams — but is not eligible to appear on the ballot for a full two-year term.

The second question is what does this mean in terms of Sacramento politics?  Most specifically, we are going into what will be a very tough budget showdown, with the honest liberals in the legislature teaming up with the union flacks to try and push for massive tax increases.  No doubt the apparent failure of this recall will embolden pro-tax forces to push for a "part cuts, part taxes" solution to what has been called a $21 billion shortfall.

Let’s hope that Republicans rally around the idea of protecting California taxpayers (residents and business-owners alike) from paying the price for years of advancing progressivism and collectivism in California state government.

I will close by saying that I heard from many that one criticism of the Adams’ recall was that it would take money needed to elect and re-elect Republicans in 2010 and divert it to defending Adams.  If there is no recall, then I suppose we’ll see those funds move quickly to GOP voter registration and into accounts to fund the efforts to keep Democrats from getting a 2/3rd majority in either legislative chamber.

But let’s remember why the Adams Recall started in the first place.  Depriving Democrats of a 2/3 vote in each house does not guarantee the safety of taxpayers.  As I said above, despite having enough Republicans to block tax increases, we all got hit hard by the biggest one ever — with six Republicans siding with the Democrats.

What assurance is there that Adams and the other Republicans who voted for higher sales income and car taxes won’t do so again?  I liked the idea that the next few months we would all be watching a potential recall play itself out, if for no other reason than its chilling effect on the talk of bipartisan tax increases.

We’ll see how the budget mess plays itself out.  Everyone — watch your wallets!

This entry was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.