Recall date set....

On October 7, Californians will go to the polls to decide both if Governor Gray Davis should be recalled, and who should replace him. His fate could be decided by as few as one-third of the state's 15 million registered voters--that would be 5 million people, out of 35 million residents.

The article, in today's NY Times, blames the recall partially on the crazy political situation created by ballot initiatives in California during the last 25 years.

Proposition 13, which passed in 1978, not only cut property taxes in half statewide, but also required a two-thirds vote to raise new local taxes to replace them. Proposition 98, passed a decade later, required that 40 percent of state revenues go directly to public schools. When mandatory health care spending is factored in, there is little discretionary spending left for the governor and Legislature to adjust to produce a balanced budget.

Term limits, meanwhile, which were also imposed through public initiative, and gerrymandered legislative districts have produced a State Legislature that is inexperienced, highly polarized and seemingly immune to compromise. The result, many experts say, is a state that is virtually ungovernable.

The article doesn't let Davis off the hook.

Analysts from both parties say that many of Mr. Davis's problems are his own making. They cite his passive response to the energy crisis three years ago, his participation in a state spending spree during the boom years early in his governorship and his relentless fund-raising.

Trying to steer a political course down the center of the state's ideological divide, in part to attract donations from corporations, he managed to offend countless Democrats from the party's traditional base among blue-collar workers and minorities.

Robert Gnaizda, the policy director of the Greenlining Institute, a group in San Francisco that promotes the interests of low-income and minority communities, said Mr. Davis ignored the group for his entire first term and met with its leaders for the first time in April, as the recall campaign was gaining steam.

"Not meeting with the Greenlining coalition wasn't the problem itself, but it was symptomatic of how minority groups were viewed," said Mr. Gnaizda, who said he thought Mr. Davis had seen the error of his ways. "Many people believe it would have been best if he had won his second election by one vote so he would have understood the importance of courting the voters from the base."

And don't forget, while all this is happening, the legislature--confronting a $38.2 billion shortfall--still hasn't approved a state budget.

Insane.

Complete story here.