California: The Precedent - A

California: The Precedent - A liberal governor, with a landslide mandate, enacts a raft of interventionary and costly programs; then his state hits some economic troubles, a recall initiative passes, and he is faced with a European immigrant in the final showdown.

California? Nope. The state perhaps as far from California, socially, politically and economically, as can be.

My home state of North Dakota is an odd place.

Although North Dakota has voted Republican in virtually every presidential election in memory; other than 1912, 1916, 1932, 1936 and 1964, and a strange, split election in 1892, it has voted Republican in every single election since statehood (1889). And yet the state continues to send the likes of Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad to the Senate - tax-and-spenders that make Ted Kennedy run for the nearest Federalist Society meeting for protection. The state also runs the only successful state-run banks and mill/elevators in the country - socialistic institutions that are a vestige of the once-powerful Populist, Non-Partisan League and Granger traditions that had the plains humming with socialist cant in the first half of the last century.

And for Gray Davis, there's a portent that feels like the chilly, wet wind that signals a blizzard is creeping into Sacramento; North Dakota was the first and only state to recall a governor, under circumstances that, according to NRO's Lawrence McQuillan, should make Davis' supporters sit up and take notice:

In 1919, [Lynn] Frazier and the NPL [Non-Partisan League - a populist/liberal party that was later absorbed by the Democrats]-controlled legislature established state-owned industries: the Bank of North Dakota, and the State Mill and Elevator. They believed that a state-owned bank and state-run mill would protect farmers from private companies that they claimed paid bottom dollar for grain and then overcharged customers for flour. An Industrial Commission, consisting of the governor, attorney general, and agriculture commissioner, was created to govern the state enterprises.

In 1920, the year Frazier was narrowly reelected to a third term, farm prices tumbled, bad weather cut crop yields, and exports fell. The state entered an economic depression, exposing huge weaknesses in North Dakota's budget, which went into deficit. More North Dakota banks closed in 1921 than in any other year. The resulting contraction of credit caused many farm foreclosures.

The recall election in 1921 was a nasty one - as elections in North Dakota frequently were, and still are; the state's bucolic reputation wasn't earned on the campaign trail.

And the governor was recalled; narrowly, but finally. It's been done.

And the polls are looking more and more like it'll happen again - even if Tom MacMillan doesn't bow out, which I suspect he will.

I suspect we're as likely to see a prairie blizzard in Sacramento as we are a Democrat governor in 2004.

Posted by Mitch at September 29, 2003 06:02 AM