ARNOLD TO ROCK CALIFORNIA...AGAIN!

This guy is the best thing to happen to California since Ronald Reagan, IMO. Make some popcorn, sit back and watch him make those bozos try to justify the status quo! My hero!!

Arnold vs. Gerry
Schwarzenegger takes on the incumbent-protection racket.

Monday, February 7, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

Today Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will launch a sweeping effort at reforming California, a campaign almost as audacious and ambitious as his 2003 race for governor. Signature gatherers are fanning out over the Golden State to collect 600,000 names on petitions on a redistricting initiative, the first of four measures the governor has submitted to the Democratic Legislature and promises to put before the voters this fall if the lawmakers spurn him, as they almost certainly will.

The battle may be even more expensive and contentious than the recall campaign. Mr. Schwarzenegger showed up at the tony Pacific Club in Newport Beach Wednesday to tell potential donors he planned a nationwide drive to raise $50 million to pass his reform package. One of them would allow merit pay for state teachers and tighten tenure laws. Another mirrors President Bush's Social Security plan by steering state employees into 401(k)-like personal pension plans. A third would allow the governor to make across-the-board budget cuts if the Legislature stalemates on passing a budget. The centerpiece is a measure that would do away with gerrymandering, the process by which politicians draw uncompetitive districts to ensure partisan advantage and, most of all, incumbents' survival.

All four of these ideas will be bitterly fought, but expect the most money to be spent on the esoteric issue of redistricting. That's because the stakes are high. The incumbent-protection racket to which both parties' leaders agreed in 2001 effectively fixed the races in all of the state's 173 races for state legislature and Congress for the next decade. In last November's election, every single incumbent won, and not even any open seats changed parties.

"What kind of democracy is that?" Mr. Schwarzenegger asked in his State of the State address. He noted that the current system allows special interests to dominate low-turnout party primaries, which thus favor rigidly ideological candidates in both parties. He vowed to repair this "rigged" system even though many incumbents in his own party don't want to put their own seats at risk.

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