SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been hustling around California this week pitching reform. Again. And that's a wise thing.
There's no time to dally. This year offers Schwarzenegger his last realistic shot at making good on the reforms he loudly promised voters while running Gray Davis out of Sacramento nearly five years ago.
He failed miserably in 2005, calling an unpopular special election to push ill-conceived, partisan "reforms" that voters emphatically rejected. The next year he backed off reforms, compromised with legislators on a $37-billion public works package that voters approved and easily won reelection.
Schwarzenegger will be morphing into a political pumpkin in 2010, his last year as governor. He'll discover that special interests are far less eager than they have been to bankroll his favorite causes. Lame ducks lose loyalty.
So his final fat target, for anything requiring voter approval, is this November's election.
Some of those 2003 Schwarzenegger campaign promises never were worth anything.
Remember the broom? The one he carted around the state flamboyantly pledging to "sweep the special interests out of the Capitol." There are probably more now than ever.
"Money goes in," his TV ads lamented, "favors go out and the people lose." They still do and will until there's public financing of campaigns. But Schwarzenegger hasn't proposed campaign finance reform of any kind, except for some minor, misguided notion of outlawing fundraising by lawmakers during budget discussions.
Schwarzenegger has narrowed his desired reforms to two: eliminating the power of legislators to draw their own district lines and forcing more discipline in budget-writing.
Redistricting reform especially is significant and doable -- a legacy builder.
The last legislative gerrymandering in 2001 showed how self-interested, incumbent-friendly redistricting leads to political polarization, ideological extremism and legislative gridlock. All but a handful of elections are decided in party primaries, with the most far-left or far-right candidates normally winning, depending on whether the district is shaped to guarantee victory for a Democrat or a Republican. There's rarely competition in November.
"People complain in America about how set up the system is in Russia," Schwarzenegger told a group of local officials in Riverside on Tuesday. "Well, what do you think has been happening in California? . . . The system is rigged.
