California has now suffered through five consecutive Fall campaign seasons: the gubernatorial election of 2002; the gubernatorial recall election of 2003; the presidential election of 2004; the governor's special "reform" election of 2005; and now, another gubernatorial election. Most of the fun in following election night results was done in by the reapportionment of 2001 (hard to get excited when fewer than 20 of your 120 legislative races are competitive); just about all of the fun that was left has been drained away by election fatigue. There are critically important issues on the California statewide ballot next week, but the desultory tone of the entire campaign season has bled from the populace any enthusiasm for having a serious discussion about those issues. Just get it over with, everyone seems to be saying and/or thinking.
In the bluest of blue states, Democrat Phil Angelides is heading towards a defeat of historic proportions at the hands of Governor Schwarzenegger, and may drag several other statewide candidates down with him (which in some cases is not necessarily a bad thing, and I say that as a Democrat). At this point, one can only hope that he doesn't drag the infrastructure bond package down to defeat.
But even Angelides is not the most hapless candidate of 2006; that honor falls to former state legislator Dick Mountjoy, who will be annihilated on Tuesday by Senator Dianne Feinstein in the race for U.S. Senate. Tony Quinn, long-time political pundit and election analyst, penned a piece in today's Capitol Morning Report speculating on whether Phil and Dick will actually end up being the poorest performing gubernatorial and Senate candidates in California history. Discussing Mountjoy, he makes this highly amusing observation:
Mountjoy's non campaign is so hopeless that the right wing blogger Jon Fleischman, in one of his sillier blogs, asked his readers to pray for Mountjoy, including with his prayer appeal a picture of a kneeling George Washington entreating God before the Battle of Valley Forge.
I was so moved by the Mountjoy prayer request that I composed a prayer and sent it to some friends, begging a gracious God to bestow upon His servant Mountjoy sacred campaign contributions. Apparently God was deaf to my entreaties and Mountjoy has had no money whatsoever to run a campaign.
Quinn closes with the following: "...we might also ask ourselves, how is it possible that we ended up with candidates such as these for the top public offices in our state?"
Indeed.
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