Before Arnold, Californians elected democrat Gray Davis. Davis was the first democrat elected in a long time, following a bunch of not too good Republicans.
IMO, David did a lot of good things, but he wasn't too well known, despite being re-elected to a second term.
But early in Bush's presidency, after 9/11, Republicans sensed a political momentum and went aftrer a recall campaign.
The campaign had two main issues. One was the broad dissatisfaction with energy outages, now known to have been largely manipulated by Enron, and the other was a populist appeal to the tax haters because after the dot com crash, Davis had ended a temporary suspension of a DMV licensing fee because it was needed again to balance the state budget.
California has a bad culture on taxes - it passed Prop 13, a Republican measure to get rid of business property taxes which devastated state income, adding in residential property tax slashing to get votes. There was a legitimate issue with high property taxes as property values shot up, but Prop 13 was a hammer instead of a scalpel.
So, Davis faced some dissatisfaction because the companythat was Bush's biggest donor targetted democratic California, and because the right-wing noise machine screamed over the DMV licensing fee. It worke, the voters recalled the little-known Davis, and elected Arnold, who had been a close friend to Enron, one of a few invitees to meet with them on their 'California strategy'. Of course, he repealed the DMV fee.
The punch line to he story is that the FMC fee had revenue that matched closely the later deficits Arnold is dealing with. Had Davis remained in office with the fee - no deficits.
Of course, this s a big political embarrassment for Arnold if he just reinstated the fee, but I heard a report today some increase there is now part of his plan.
There was a third campaign issue, accusations that Davis took too much money from special interest donations. Arnold pledge he would take zero, since he was 'rich'.
On that issue as well, Davis wins. Arnold quickly defined special interests to only include donors to democrats like Unions, not business, and took more money than Davis had.
In short, IMO Californias screwed up by recalling Gray Davis. Arnold could be worse, but Davis was better. Once again, Republicans pursued power recklessly and harmed CA.
One other impact - CA would have gay marriage today had Davis been governor. The legislature courageously passed it, but Arnold vetoed it.
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