SACRAMENTO — It's Friday afternoon at one of Northern California's most popular conservative talk-radio stations and state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) is firing away on his favorite subject: the state's free-spending ways.
McClintock is explaining to host Mark Williams of NewsTalk 1530 why Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to borrow billions of dollars to address a state budget crisis is a ticking time bomb for California.
"If it was a bad idea when Gray Davis proposed borrowing $13 billion to paper over the deficit, why is it now suddenly a better idea to borrow $15 billion to paper over the same deficit?" McClintock asks rhetorically, eyes locked on his host. "If this was Gray Davis proposing it, the Republicans would be throwing a conniption fit, and rightly so."
As Tuesday's election nears, and Schwarzenegger barnstorms the state to sell Californians on his budget plan, McClintock is waging the sort of lonely opposition crusade that is the hallmark of his career.
In a scrappy effort reminiscent of his campaign to succeed Davis in last fall's recall election, he is making his case before newspaper editorial boards and civic groups and on talk radio, urging Californians to stand up to the governor and vote "no" on Propositions 57 and 58.
"I have to remind myself that the entire Sacramento political establishment, Republican and Democrat, was opposed to Proposition 13," the 1978 measure that curbed property taxes, McClintock said. "The entire Sacramento political establishment, Republican and Democrat, was opposed to the recall when it was first begun. They've been wrong many times in the past and completely out of step with the people in our state."
McClintock's critics from both parties suggest that the senator's views in favor of shrinking government and contracting for many state services put him out of step with a majority of Californians.
Although Sacramento politicians and powerbrokers tend to dismiss McClintock as an irritant with little legislative clout, he is respected around the state.
In fact, McClintock emerged from the recall as one of California's most popular Republicans, according to an internal GOP poll.
"I think he could be a very strong [statewide] candidate once again," said state Sen. Ross Johnson (R-Irvine), who has known McClintock -- and occasionally clashed with him -- since they served together in the Assembly in the early 1980s.
