Thomas D. Elias

When all its candidates for statewide office lost in last fall’s election, most by large margins, it was easy to presume that the California Republican Party was left with no “bench,” no corps of promising potential future candidates from which to draw in future votes.

California has seen Jerry Brown the Roman Catholic seminarian and Jerry Brown the experimenter with Zen Buddhism and Jerry Brown the visionary (remember “small is beautiful” and the “era of limits”?). There also have been Jerry Brown the tough lawman and Jerry Brown the skilled political mechanic.

No California governor serving his last few days in office ever has been more concerned about his legacy than was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Perhaps this was because unlike Ronald Reagan or Pat Brown or Pete Wilson in their last days, he has few possibilities for future elected office.

As the California Republican Party heads into a much-needed rebuilding year, still reeling from the huge losses it endured while other Republicans were winning big in most parts of America, it is once again whistling past a graveyard.

As California’s smog-fighting Air Resources Board gets set to impose America’s first cap-and-trade rules for fighting the greenhouse gases most scientists believe are helping cause global warming and climate change, it is also considering imposing a “truth” rule on everyone who testifies in its hearings or submits reports to it.

Gnashing of teeth and expressions of chagrin were highly audible around California the other day, when the U.S. Census Bureau reported the state will not get an additional seat in Congress for the next 10 years.

As he campaigned last fall, new Gov. Jerry Brown made it clear that one key element in fixing California’s huge financial problems would have to be big changes in public employee pensions.

Walter Mondale was the last major politician who told Americans they would need to pay higher taxes if they wanted the government to keep doing everything it does for them. The 1984 Democratic Presidential nominee was swamped in that year’s election. Mondale’s honeymoon after winning his party’s nomination lasted 30 seconds after he gave that warning in his acceptance speech in San Francisco.

It’s easy enough to say the mess that is this state’s budget has little impact on ordinary Californians other than furloughed state employees or many of the elderly and infirm who have lost government-paid in-home care.

There’s bad news in the offing for America’s political immigrant bashers, beyond even the fact that the most egregious among those who sought to make hay by blasting newcomers in last fall’s elections all lost, to their consternation.