It appears California will have an election next year that turns on the big questions of constitutional change, the budget, and the problems of the initiative process.
Which election is that? Not the governor’s race, which is unlikely to produce a debate of real substance. Ballot initiative reforms? It’s far from clear that the constitutional convention or any of the things produced by California Forward will make the ballot.
No, the election most likely to focus on the big questions is the retention election for California Supreme Court Justice Ronald George.
California Supreme Court justices are appointed to the bench. But every 12 years, they have to face voters, who decide whether to retain them. A justice facing retention is usually advised to be cautious and keep his head down. But George seems to be courting opposition.
His authorship of last year’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage had already made him a target. And this past weekend, he gave a speech in Massachusetts in which he touched more than one “third rail” of California politics.
According to news reports, George blasted the initiative process as contributing to the state’s political and budgetary dysfunction. That’s the first “third rail.” For all the criticism of initiative outcomes, surveys show that three in four voters want to preserve the process.
George then went even further, identifying Prop 13’s requirement of a two-thirds vote for tax increases as the main explanation for the state’s budget troubles. He’s right about that, but this is an enormously risky thing for a public figure to say, especially when that public figure goes before voters in the very near future. (Perhaps if he loses, he’d at least be free to serve as president of a constitutional convention, if there is one).
This is big stuff. George, a Pete Wilson appointee, is no wide-eyed liberal. I haven’t talked to George, but he seems quite willing to take on the big issues, even if it means attracting an aggressive campaign to remove him from his job. Good for him. It’d be nice if elected officials showed that kind of courage.