Shooting themselves in the ballot box

SACRAMENTO — It's ironic that the politicians who brought Californians their most exciting and important presidential primary in 36 years wound up the election's biggest losers.

And it didn't have to turn out that way, as the voting showed.

Californians were allowed to participate in Super Tuesday -- casting meaningful presidential votes in the national spotlight -- because legislative leaders desired an early primary in hopes of changing term limits in time for them to file for reelection this year. Otherwise, they'd be termed out -- and now will be, because Proposition 93 failed.

But Prop. 93 was rejected on a close-enough vote -- by roughly 7 percentage points -- to prove that the leaders' coveted term limits flexibility was within their grasp. They stumbled all over themselves, however. They had only to look like they deserved the term limits tweak and weren't trying to pull a fast one. But they didn't and they were.

Virtually all legislators lost. They could have served 12 years in one house, rather than a max of six in the Assembly plus eight in the Senate. But the biggest losers were Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles), who potentially could have held onto his powerful speakership for another six years, and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland), who could have stayed four more years.

Their original lofty strategy was a winner: Team the term limits measure with redistricting reform that stripped legislators of the power to draw their own districts, an indefensible conflict of interest. Meanwhile, chalk up some significant achievements in 2007: reform healthcare, upgrade waterworks, pass an honestly balanced budget on time. But Democratic leaders arrogantly and timidly reneged on their promise of redistricting reform. And they failed to deliver major accomplishments.

"It's very clear that the people felt the legislators have not performed well enough that they deserve a change," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told reporters Wednesday.

Schwarzenegger, who belatedly endorsed Prop. 93, added that "people came up to me on the street [and] said, 'Why would you want to change the term limit [law] when they haven't really produced anything last year? They haven't really made the kind of progress that they should have made.' It's really the legislators themselves" who killed Prop. 93.