How the hell did Ah-nold become Governor anyway?

[Bouncy Ball]

Curious minds want to know. Who voted for that POS SOB?

And WHY? He's always struck me as singularly unintelligent and lacking any kind of leadership skills. All he can seem to do well is mug for a camera.

Mind you, he's a rocket scientist next to bush, but then so is Lenny, the local man who wears bunny ears every day and skips to the Radio Shack, then sits outside that Shell station drinking a smoothie and talking to bugs.

But still, what gives?

[Burma Jones]

1. I think it was a joke.....

really, I think a lot of Californians thought it would be a hoot to have the Terminator as their Governor.....

[babylonsister]

2. LOL! Lenny for prez! nt

[Bouncy Ball]

4. Lemme tell you, Lenny would make a far sight better president

than this one.

a) he'd never start wars for no reason

b) access to smoothies for everyone would be an American right, and

c) HUGS ALL THE TIME!!!

[Ladyhawk]

29. What about rights for the arthropodic set? n/t

[Nikki Stone 1]

3. Many Dems were swayed because they didn't like Grey Davis

Davis had won a squeaker in 2002 after the power crisis (actually the rape of the California state budget by the power companies). A recall election was engineered by the repugs in 2003 and they ran their boy Arnie as a "moderate", pulling some moderate Dems in.

There was talk at the time that Ahnold had actually met with Kenneth Lay in 2001 and would protect the robber barrons in the energy market,

[hang a left]

5. 1000 different candidates and Diebold. n/t

[sandnsea]

6. macho mania

People wanted to think of themselves as bad-ass against the terrorists. Who better to reflect that than the Terminator. I think rational thought has returned, thank god, too bad it's a year late. Maybe a PTSD therapist would know if that's a consistent timeframe for recovery. :shrug:

[Bouncy Ball]

7. Wow.

My two biggest criteria are ethics and intelligence. Has the candidate proven themselves (by their actions, not their words!) to be an ethical person?

And are they intelligent?

He failed on both counts, but more distinctly on the intelligence question. I don't care how much he played a stupid freaking pretend robot in some movies years ago.

[sandnsea]

18. That's how I heard it where I am

We're in Oregon, so it was a very hot topic here. Intelligence? Experience? Nah. It was all "awesome", "The Terminator", "so cool". Kind of like the Rambo effect back in the 80's. I would ask some people, particularly young guys, about what it really meant to manage a state like California, the size of the economy, etc.. I either heard what a smart businessman he was or it doesn't take a politician to be smart enough to be governor. :shrug:

[tjwash]

8. The same reason Jerry Sanders just got elected mayor last night...

...in San Diego. The same reason Orange County decisively voted for all the gropers power grab propositions. California has enough dumb mother fuckers that don't think beyond the ends of their own dicks living there to sway an election if need be.

I am so pissed off at San Diego right now, my ears are bleeding. :grr:

[Bouncy Ball]

9. THAT doesn't sound good!

I take it Jerry Sanders is a fuckwad. I'm sorry about your ears. And your new.....mayor. :-(

[tjwash]

17. Yeah, he's bought and paid for by the same land developers that...

...owned Dick Murphy. If you don't already know, Dick Murphy was the mayor here that time magazine called "the worst mayor in history" who recently quit and caused this whole mess here.

So pretty much everyone in San Diego stuck with the same broken system. Hell, they even call Jerry Sanders "Jerry Murphy".

[Nikki Stone 1]

13. Some of those dumb mother fuckers were moderate DEMOCRATS

In 2003. THey were angry at Grey Davis.

[cascadiance]

24. I'm bummed about San Diego too!

Though I'm proud of the rest of California for how it stood against the props. I guess a big question I have for everyone out there is where in California one can find a decent "blue area" to live, that has both reasonably affordable housing and a decent community to get tech jobs? Is there anyplace? the Bay Area and parts of L.A. qualify for jobs, but are way too expensive. Or should I start looking at places like Oregon (or even Vancouver if things really get out of control under the Bushistas the next two years)?

San Diego still hasn't discovered the impact of not paying their bills yet! They've been living on "maxed out credit cards" for too long now. They will start to feel the pain when our city's credit rating continues to go down the tube and/or when we start getting city services wiped so thin by layoffs that we really start to suffer with no road maintenance, police protection, etc. that will happen. We are already at the bottom of the state's big communities in terms of the amount of city services per capita. I think that's just going to get worse under Sanders. They might have a big stadium for Charger fans, but these idiots won't realize that everything else is going to hell.

I'm tempted to replace my Donna Frye yard sign with the blown out tire and trashed wheel rim I have from running over a pothole earlier this year and have some sort of sign like "Pothole victim. PLEASE invest in our city, don't rape it!" Not sure the neighbors would like that sight though. If someone has a better place for me to put it, I might do so.

Short timer out...

[zbdent]

10. What? He hasn't single-handedly "terminated" the debt, as he

promised?

Wow, a Repuke who lies . . . who would ever conceive of that . . .

[Bouncy Ball]

11. I'm not totally convinced he's a repuke.

Mind you, I don't think he's a Democrat, either.

But he seems to "be" a repuke simply out of political expediency. Something he might be regretting soon, if he's not already. He just seems like a big ol' puppet.

[tjwash]

21. He's a repuke all right...

[Bouncy Ball]

22. Oooo The Handshake of Death

[Maddy McCall]

27. Just like Reagan.

[no_hypocrisy]

12. Here we go:

1. "Special interests" (read, big business) decided it didn't need to wait for Gray Davis, the current governor, to finish his term. These interests started a publicity campaign to make it look like a citizen mandate to challenge the compentency of Davis. Darrell Issa was a major financial contributor to this movement. Next thing you know, there's a ballot in October 2003 to decide whether or not to keep Gray Davis as the governor of California by referendum by way of recall. (This, notwithstanding the fact he had been re-elected a little more than a year prior)

2. The next question on the referendum: if the voters didn't want Davis as their governor, then they could vote for someone on a slate during the same election.

3. Arnold was approached by the "coalition" mentioned in the first paragraph. They put out rumors, but Arnold played coy with "Maybe I am, maybe I'm not going to run." He had Terminator 3 coming out and nobody knew if he was just trying to get people into the theatres or what. So in July, he goes on Jay Leno, chews the fat, and then just casually mentions, "Oh yeah, I think I'm going to run for governor. California can really use my help." Or words to that effect.

4. So, Arnold was on a slate of 30+ candidates, including a former stripper and a former child actor. He was the best known and spent the most money. Sending Maria his wife onto the Oprah Winfrey's show may have sealed the deal.

5. Gray Davis was voted off the Island, so to speak. And Arnold was elected by a plurality, not a majority (less than 50% - maybe 23%, just like Hitler).

6. And thus, Arnold goes on TV and radio and proclaims California has spoken (yeah, 23% of the 50% that voted, making it like 11.5% of registered voters).

And that's how we got here.

[Village Idiot]

20. The ONLY good thing to come out of the whole recall mess...

was the fact that Darrell Issa, asshole extraordinaire, got absolutely pumped up the ass by his own party!!! No reacharound, either!!!

[hunter]

26. You forgot the "mainstream media."

"Ooooooohhhhhh Arnold!" they swooned.

Then they asked him to sign their naked breasts as they changed into their "Join Arnold" sovenir teeshirts.

Arnold was hired by the energy corporations to cover up their multi-billion dollar thefts during the California electricity "crisis." He's done his job well, since I don't see many energy company executives rotting in prison, and only a tiny fraction of the money they stole has ever been returned.

The election yesterday was simply Arnold going for the extra credit, but it's really no big deal to his masters that he lost. He accomplished the job they hired him to do.

[BiggJawn]

14. Because the Sheeple thought they were voting for THIS....

And THIS


"Whoa, DOOOD! That's one bad-ass politician! KEWL!!!"

[OnionPatch]

15. Well the recall was initially funded

by ONE man!!! One multimillionaire Republican, Daryl Issa, paid people to get signatures for the recall. Issa wanted to run for governor but they chose to run Arnie instead. I think the GOP used Issa to get the whole thing started. He was heartbroken. (I think I remember he actually cried!) Then Arnold used his celebrity and insults to campaign. Everyone was mad about the energy crisis, but, as usual, the public was very confused about the cause of it. They tended to blame Davis, who is not especially personable. Too bad they didn't realize that Arnie was in bed with Enron. This was known before the election but the so-called liberal LA Times did not run the story.

Related to your question, I always wonder how NYC can go so totally Republican with their mayor. But being in CA, I realize these things happen.

[oasis]

16. Every Home Depot, K-Mart and Best Buy had a recall Grey Davis petition

guy at its front door. Some San Diego Repuke congressman spent millions to get those signatures believing that he would get Davis' seat.

The party tossed the congressman aside and backed Arnie.

[fed-up]

31. They used paid non-California residents to collect sigs for the recall

I didn't know at the time that that was illegal. The young couple outside our WInCo (which normally has a policy prohibiting petitions) told me that they did not live in California, but were just passing through.

I am very happy with last night's vote!

[tjwash]

19. On the plus side though...

...all the gropenaters power grab props went down in flames last night. He even managed to unite the unions even stronger against him.

[cascadiance]

23. The only choice Dems had was Bustamante...

And through the election process, he really didn't show someone that people wanted to invest in to fix the problems that were deep in California and started to show some partisanship for issues that not all Californians cared about. Had he been elected, he would have provided a good avenue for Rethugs to win back in 2006 the governorship legitimately then, which would have been that much harder to unseat. I voted for Bustamante, but I know of some folks that voted for Arnold as the "best option" amongst those running that they also wouldn't mind seeing be blamed for what was going to happen over the next few years when the * hit the fan! Looks like they were right. Key now is kick his into the dirt in 2006.

[stanwyck]

25. He was packaged as a moderate Republican

actually a Democratic-Republican...you know, like Bloomberg.
Then it became clear Arnold was actually the puppet, like Bush, of his conservative masters.
The people saw what they'd done and turned on him.
He's as inept as Bush...he just is a little more adept at playing the crowd.
And being a celebrity never hurts in America.

[LibDemAlways]

28. He promised to repeal the

hike in the car tax that had kicked in automatically - unfortunately under Davis. Californians sold themselves out for a couple of hundred dollars yearly.

[AlCzervik]

30. Getting rid of the car tax, black outs blamed on Davis

no mention of Pete Wilson of course who helped to deregulate energy. Paid signature gatherers, all of the media having him on and prasing him as an "Outsider" and no equal time for Davis. Thats how.

[nicknameless]

32. According to Mark Crispin Miller, some election fraud took place:

http://www.opednews.com/miller1003_CA_Voting.htm