Governor for a Day?

Sacramento, California, November 7, 2006 —“Can’t we all just get along?”
Governor-elect Rodney King’s effective tagline swept through the remaining California electorate Tuesday as he beat challenger Hollywood Maddam Heidi Fleiss by a single vote. The final vote of three to two reflected the possibility that the nation’s largest state is growing weary of going to the polls and electing a new governor every 90 days.

King who will be California's 10th governor since 2002 barely had time to finish his inaugural address before a citizen's group bought enough signatures to force still another recall vote. "I want to thank my mother for actually going out to vote in this election, " King said. "My mom will do just about anything to keep me out of prison."

Since California voters recalled Gov. Gray Davis in 2003, and replaced him with Arnold Schwarzenegger each party has launched a recall of his successor just weeks after his or her inaugural. Gov. Schwarzenegger was recalled early in 2004 as Democrats cited critical reviews of his most recent motion picture, “Terminator 3.” Democrats also slyly lured right wing Christian extremists to vote against Schwarzenegger by sponsoring free showings of the governor’s 1994 film, “Junior,” in which he plays a pregnant man.

California Democrats successfully elected Kathryn Hepburn posthumously in the next recall election, after polls showed that voters were not aware of the death of the Oscar-celebrated actress during 2003. However, then-outgoing US Attorney General John Ashcroft said it wasn’t fair for the man who lost the last regularly scheduled gubernatorial election to lose to a dead woman. “I’ve lost to a dead man before, “Ashcroft ruled, “but it would be very embarrassing to lose to a dead woman.”

Some Californians, remembering that Bill Simon lost to Gray Davis in 2002, said this wasn’t the first time the lackluster Simon had lost to someone who was life-challenged.

After another governor’s race, it seemed like the new governor showed some legs, as he served for four months before he was recalled. Martin Sheen, who had played the fictional President Jeb Bartlett on NBC’s West Wing — a character that had earlier served as governor of New Hampshire — felt he was ready to serve his real-life home state. As the fictional West Wing completed its run, he and the West Wing production company had an idea for a new television reality show that was being pitched to Fox Television. “I Want to Marry the State of California,” was all about a politician who dates the people of California for a series of one-night stands. Sheen, meanwhile, would serve as the real governor in the background, getting suggestions from each of the one-night stands. It seemed like a way to please the people of California while having Fox pick up California’s $38 billion deficit. Unfortunately, the rerun season and the fickle nature of the California electorate proved too much for the reality show approach.

As California continued its gubernatorial flavor of the month, newly elected President Howard Dean — a former governor himself — suggested that California secede from the Union and become a banana republic. This created an international incident as traditional South American banana republics felt insulted in Dean’s comparison of their republics to California.

At the same time, Ralph Nader, appointed by Dean as the US Ambassador to the United Nations, called California’s electoral upheaval “unsafe at any speed,” and asked that the international body send peacekeepers to Sacramento. Descendants of progressive California Gov. Hiram Johnson, who had initiated the recall process in California a century ago as a means to sift corrupt state officials from the state government, demanded that the recall process be recalled.
Newly elected Gov. King, who says he still has headaches he suffered from earlier beatings on behalf of California law, said he will do his best to bring an end to the bickering among the state’s politicians.

If it had not been for the forces bringing in hundreds of thousands of recall signatures to the secretary of state’s office during King’s inaugural address, King might have been able to move on with his promise.