Yesterday, an apparent handful of California voters went to the polls to decide the fate of the budget deal struck between Governor Schwarzenegger and state legislators earlier this year.
As you can see, this one was a beating. All that time, and all that expense, and the only budget "fix" California voters found palatable was a freeze on legislative salaries during budget years where a deficit occurs. Way to go, fellow Golden Staters: your foresight is going to save us...I dunno...about $400,000. A few more bold measures like that, and that $15.4 billion budget deficit is HISTORY.
The other propositions, to be fair, were nearly as bad as the one gimmicky measure that DID pass. Indeed, Propositions 1A through 1E were not only opposed by the usual suspects in the Howard Jarvis camp, but many progressive groups and bloggers as well. In a diary which posted overnight, George Lakoff sees the fact that California now has to go back to the drawing board as a great opportunity.
Turnout was almost absurdly light. Though the overall turnout will certainly increase as absentees and provisionals continue to be added to the mix, turnout stands right now at just under four million votes. This equates to a mere 22.9% of the 17.1 million registered voters in the state of California.
Meanwhile, in CA-32, where Congresswoman Hilda Solis resigned earlier this year to move over to head President Obama's Labor Department, Democrat Judy Chu held off an increasingly negative challenge from Gil Cedillo, leading the all-party primary with 31.9% of the vote. Cedillo ran second with 23.4% of the vote, while twenty-something Democratic up and comer Emanuel Pleitez ran third at 13.5%. Chu takes on Monterey Park councilwoman (and, apparently, cousin-by-marriage) Betty Chu in June. The Democratic Chu should be considered an enormous favorite, as Democrats combined for 73% of the vote, while the three GOP candidates split around 26% of the vote.