The Bee’s online comments and letters to the editor crackled with citizen outrage last week after Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez made one of his first official moves: Granting big raises to several of his aides, including a $65,000 boost for his new chief of staff.
Pérez joined a long line of electeds who have incurred public wrath for how they chose to spend the increasingly scarce dollars of a struggling California.
“They really don’t understand why the majority of us have zero confidence in them …” fumed one Bee reader in a letter to the editor.
We hear it over and over, in Field Poll results over the past week showing dismal ratings for Congress, the Legislature and the governor: We don’t like the way our elected officials are governing. We want change.
Don’t they get it?
One has to wonder, even as frustration with government boils and bubbles: Perhaps we citizens don’t get what’s really happening.
Temporary outrage aside, most people pay little attention to the details of government or of political platforms, candidate backgrounds or ballot initiative specifics.
The public attention span can be short. We’re not dumb, but we’re busy, and our elected officials fail us most significantly by displaying a lack of candor on difficult issues.
So big money and big influence continue dominating our political process. We move on. They stick around.
Californians, once delighted and now thoroughly disgusted with a political outsider named Arnold Schwarzenegger, will pick a new governor in November.
Moneyball politics has already ruled out many choices. We’re down to three: former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in the Republican primary, and former governor and current Attorney General Jerry Brown as the Democrat.
There’s still a chance to use this election for broad debate about California’s future. But if we as citizens want to influence that discussion, we’ll have to dig in.
Based on the early going, the cynical political culture will again hope that most of us won’t do our own homework – that gut-punch TV and radio advertising will cement our votes.
The Bee has an important role in providing substance for the many readers – and there are many – who want the truth beyond the TV ads.
We’ll ramp up fact-checking such as our Ad Watch feature. We’ll identify special interests behind candidates and offer an online data tool that lets you check up yourself.
Most of all, we’ll work to keep the concerns we’re hearing from voters, including outrage over spending, on the candidates’ agendas.
On Thursday, Whitman’s campaign turned down The Bee’s invitation to debate Poizner in Sacramento next month. Our editorial board had joined with Fox40 locally and Fox News nationally to issue the invitation for a debate at the California Museum, another co-sponsor.
The debate would have been moderated by Fox News national anchor Bret Baier and offered to Fox stations statewide for broadcast.
In declining, Whitman’s team noted that she had debated Poizner Monday (seen only by determined souls who watched a Web stream) and that the two will face off in a May 2 debate sponsored by Comcast on cable stations.
We wish Whitman had taken our offer, but the cable debate is better than none.
Let’s all tune in, not just to the governor’s race but to the othe big choices on our ballot. Some time spent now could save us from being outraged down the line.