| Op-Ed: So you want to recall the governor |
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| Written by Jeff Garvas | |
| Saturday, 22 November 2003 | |
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Note: The following was published prior to Arnold Schwarzenegger's California victory. As fun as California's recall circus may look, Ohio is stuck with its answer to Gray Davis by J. Caleb Mozzocco Say you're the governor of a state that's experiencing economic crisis and, though you won reelection nine months ago, you're not terribly popular or especially well-liked, even among some members of your own party. And say that you're accused of misleading voters about a looming budget shortfall, having refused to venture an educated guess about the size of the deficit before the election while discrediting your opponent's (entirely accurate) projection so as to avoid mentioning taxes and cuts while on the campaign trail. What would your future hold? Well, if you're Gray Davis, governor of California, you'd find yourself the target of a special election that will ask voters whether you should be recalled and, if you are recalled, who should replace you-Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gary Coleman, the founder of Hustler, your own number-two man or one of 131 other candidates. If you're Bob Taft, governor of Ohio, the short answer is absolutely nothing. Click on the "Read More... link below for more. You continue to be governor for the remainder of your term, and there's nothing your constituents can do but grumble about pre-election deception. (Taft, by the way, refused to address the matter of a $4 billion hole in the budget while campaigning last fall and then oversaw the most dramatic tax increase in Ohio history.) Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent states, as candidate Coleman might say. California is one of only 18 states that allow for the recall of the governor, and it is by far the easiest in which to do so. Only 12 percent of those who voted in the last gubernatorial election are needed to force a recall (that's right, a tiny minority of voters can overthrow the election decisions of the majority). And they can recall the governor for just about any reason, including thinking it would be cool to have Arnold Schwarzenegger as their governor. Given the media coverage that's followed the recall, one wonders how many California journalists signed petitions in the hopes that they'd get the opportunity to use all their stupid "governator," Total Recall and Running Man jokes. In the other 17 recalling states-Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin-the percentage of displeased voters needed to force a recall is between 25 and 40 percent, and in several of those states the governor needs to be found guilty of specific wrongs, like actual crimes or malfeasance. Ohio, however, is safe (or, more accurately, Taft is safe), should any kind of crazy recall-mania spread across the nation. California is often seen as a trendsetter in American culture, and some worry this election will be no exception, notes Daniel Tokaji, a professor at Ohio State University's Mortiz College of Law and co-counsel in a lawsuit seeking to delay the California recall until March, when obsolete "hanging chad"-style punch cards will be updated statewide. "California is sometimes a trend-setting state, but it sometimes does things that a lot of states bend over backwards to avoid," Tokaji said. "I wouldn't be surprised if many people in Ohio and 32 other states breathe a collective sigh of relief once they've checked their constitutions and seen the mess going on in California right now." But what of Ohioans who see the mess in California and would like to get rid of their own governor? Well, there's nothing they can do without a recall provision in the state constitution. The only other way to toss Taft out of office would be to impeach him, but that's incredibly unlikely. As with the model of presidential impeachments, a majority of the state House of Representatives is needed to impeach an Ohio governor, and then it will be up to two-thirds of the Senate to hold a trial. The only grounds for doing so would be if the governor committed "any misdemeanor" while in office, and that happening (or being discovered) is incredibly rare. In fact, it's so rare that it's never happened to a single one of Ohio's 67 governors, according to Stuart Hobbs, a staff historian for the Ohio Historical Society. The ability for citizens to recall public officials, like the ability to place referenda and initiatives on ballots (rather than going through their legislatures) came out of the boss-busting progressive movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which took the strongest hold in California. "California and Ohio were both centers of progressive political action," Hobbs said, though the former went further than the latter. The Buckeye State did give the power of referenda and initiatives to its citizens during a 1912 constitutional convention, which saw a total of 41 other amendments made to the Ohio constitution, but statewide recall was not one of them. "I'm sure that there were people in Ohio thinking about recall [at the convention], because Cleveland, for example, has the ability to recall the mayor," Hobbs said. "But it just didn't get out of committee, as it were." Part of the reason Ohio never got statewide recall powers was likely the fact that governors served relatively short two-year terms until 30 years ago, when terms were expanded to four years. If someone was only going to be in office for two years, it wasn't worth the effort to recall him (or try launching a politically motivated impeachment process), Hobbs said. "A key argument that was always made against [recalls] is that, well, their term comes to an end and you can challenge them and you can vote them out of office," Hobbs said. That's also the argument the founding fathers would likely have made. Their first try at a ruling document, 1781's Articles of Confederation, had a provision that allowed for the recall of delegates (by state legislatures, not by voters in general). But such recall was considered and then rejected at the constitutional convention of 1787. America is a republican democracy ruled by representatives, not by the people themselves. Or at least 49 of the United States are. California's apparently a whole different story, where they can change governors pretty much whenever they want. Ohio will just have to wait till 2006 like a good little state. |