Thinking about the Special Election

OK So the Terminator lost a big one. The voters pretty clearly said no to governing by intiative. So how did this happen - how did Arnold reverse his numbers in such a short time (73->37) and what should he do about it?

Jack Pitney, the astute professor at Claremont McKenna College, argued in a speech yesterday that the roots of the Governor's problem came from some missed signals. The public employee unions realized after the 2004 elections that not a single legislative seat changed hands and therefore the Governor was not as all powerful as he was once thought to be. The Governor's staff then compounded the problem by proposing poorly written intiatives especially in public pension reforms (the state attorney's unit just agreed to a change that is very close to what the Governor was seeking).

How does the Governor get out of this? I think his initial strategy is pretty good -admit your mistake and try to govern. Pitney suggested that offers him a pretty good set of options - if the dems stonewall him he can run against that next year. If they adopt the reforms he can claim credit.

Dan Weintraub suggested in his blog earlier in the week that the dems would be smart to propose solutions in all of the areas that the Governor sought reform - pensions, spending, employee political contributions (probably expand it to corporate checkoffs), teacher tenure, and redistricting (limited to the next census). From the initial responses by them Perata seems to get that. Nunez does not.

This seems to offer a pretty clear way for the political establishment to move forward. The ratings for the legislature are even lower than the Governor's so their apparent and real movement would probably bring cheers from all around. What a novel idea - the political players actually trying to craft not a position but a solution. Would it be too much to hope for?