The candidates are starting to out themselves. I can already tell I'm gonna love it. Check out the pre-season warm up as reported in today's SF Chronicle:
State Attorney General Bill Lockyer and state Treasurer Phil Angelides became the first Democrats to say they will challenge Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should the popular Republican governor run for re-election next year.
Angelides became the first official Democratic challenger to the governor, kicking off his campaign Tuesday by charging Schwarzenegger has broken campaign promises and endorsed "Bush-Cheney policies of debt, division and diminished opportunity."
But Lockyer's comments, coming during a lunch with California reporters in Washington, D.C., caused the greater stir.
First, the attorney general said he plans to run for governor next year, adding "it's not a formal announcement, but that's what I'm working on."
Then, he criticized Schwarzenegger's leadership style, saying "I don't like to dwell on this. But it has a little bit of the sort of the odor of Austrian politics. There's a sort of arrogance of power that bothers me. You know, Arnold is still an Austrian citizen."
Asked pointedly if he were referring to Nazi-era Austria, the attorney general replied, "I'm just talking about the culture,'' he said, adding that there was a "long history from the Austria-Hungarian empire on, of sort of a more autocracy... it's a more elite system."
Karen Hanretty, spokeswoman for the California Republican Party, quickly responded, calling Lockyer's statements appalling and outrageous. She sought to tie Lockyer and Angelides together as out of the mainstream with state voters.
"We have two spokesmen for the California Democratic Party today, one of them promoting tax increases, and the other comparing the governor to the Nazis," she said.
With 15 months until the 2006 election for governor, and a full year before the Democratic primary, the efforts by Angelides and Lockyer signaled the start of an expensive and combative campaign to unseat the governor.
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Article comments
1 - NancyGail
Of course they're out. Elections are next year. And two years after that, Hillary just may run. Her term as Senator expires prior to. Then again, look at what happened to Edwards running after one term..
2 - RJ
Where's the Amazon link?
3 - mpho
Edwards who? That's a joke, son. RJ, shop away.
4 - Victor Plenty
Gotta give Lockyer props for the history reference. Wish he could have made it a bit more eloquently, of course, but it's so rare to see any politician with enough sense of history to even know about an empire that ceased to exist in 1918.
Anybody can compare their political opponents to the Nazis. Republicans do it all the time, for example. But critiquing your opponent because he seems to have inherited the arrogance of the Habsburg dynasty? Now that's frickin' awesome, dude.
5 - mpho
Victor, I definitely give Lockyer props. I just don't know that I'm ready to stomach so soon (still recovering from the presidential election). But I do appreciate a politician who can veer off the worn tracks and come up with something to get folks attention. Doesn't mean he's gonna win though.