Reply #9: I think with it being this close to the election...

[cascadiance]

... we also don't have a lot to gain, and as I noted before, we already have one special election that we're bad-mouthing Arnold for spending money on. The only other one now we could use to do this recall without spending more money on yet another election would be the primary election, which as I noted above, would have a lot of problems associated with it being a recall as well as a primary for the governor's seat. In my mind, with Arnold's numbers so low, we should just hold on.

With the redistricting proposition likely off the ballot, and the others likely to fail, the damage that is likely to be done between now and 2006 is hopefully not that much by keeping him in office. At most we'd probably would have had about 6 months taken away from his term. And as you note we'd lose a lot of good will from voters.

If a recall makes sense, it would be after the 2006 election, especially if it is suspected that there was cheating involved in helping Arnold win (which if he does win, I might highly suspect at that point). It would also be worth getting him out then before 2008, in case Barabara wanted to run for pres or was called on to be a running mate for someone. I'd hate to have her seat turned over to a Rethug then in order for her to be able to do that.

With 4-5 years likely to "gain" by getting him out then, it would be more worth it at that time from that perspective too. The only thing having a recall on there right now would be some symbolic sense of revenge. We might feel good about it, but there are other voters we might lose doing so, and more for spiritual gain for us, not really anything substantive.