One candidate is famous for her pouting lips, cleavage and pink Corvette. Another is best known as a hustling pornographer who survived an assassination attempt. A third is a former punk rocker who had a hit 20 years ago with a song called Property is Theft. And a fourth is a bodybuilder whose catchphrase is "I'll be back."
All would-be candidates for the governorship of California have to file their nomination papers by Saturday. So far, 344 people have taken out the necessary papers to run and pundits predict that at least 100 of them will have their names on the ballot when the matter comes before the electorate on Oct. 7.
What seemed like a clever move by rightwing Republicans in California to remove the unpopular Democrat governor, Gray Davis, and replace him with one of their own has turned into farce, reinforcing the old stereotype of California as the home of Goofy.
Last month, enough signatures were collected to put the recall of Davis to the vote but Darrell Issa, the multi-millionaire Republican congressman who financed the move and hopes to replace Davis, has opened a West Coast Pandora's box.
If Davis is recalled, for allegedly misleading the electorate last year about the state's fiscal deficit, a simultaneous vote for a new governor would give Californians such a choice that the winner could be elected with as little as 10 percent of the poll.
All it takes to stand is 65 voters' signatures and US$3,500 so, not surprisingly, everyone with a show to publicize is registering.
No California governor has ever been recalled so the arcane rules have never been clarified and are under challenge in court from Davis whose supporters warn that the current process could be as chaotic as the Florida election in 2000.
Today one of the best-known contenders and one who stood a good chance of winning is due to quit. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bodybuilder-turned-actor, who promises in his movies that "I'll be back," is indicating that he won't be. After weeks of coyly hinting that he would stand, he appears to have bowed to family pressure to stay out of the race.
There is no shortage of other candidates who are better known for their public personas than their political experience. Angelyne, a buxom blonde who has been appearing on billboards in Hollywood since 1984 for no reason that anyone can quite explain, has announced that she will run. Her Web site answers the question "what do you do?" with the reply: "I don't do - I AM!"
She is unlikely to run as efficient a campaign as Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine and the subject of the 1996 film, The People vs Larry Flynt, which told the tale of this Kentucky boy who made a fortune from pornography before being paralyzed by a shot from a would-be killer.
This week in Hollywood, he announced that he would run under the slogan "the smut peddler who cares" and said: "I may be paralyzed ... but not from the neck up, like Gray Davis."
An Orange County punk rocker, Jack Grisham, of the band TSOL, who once sang songs like Abolish Government and Property is Theft, has also confirmed that he will run. He is adamant that this has nothing to do with an album the band is launching next month. Georgy Russell, 26, who is running on a "clean energy" ticket, is selling "Georgy for Governor" thongs to finance her attempt.
A much more serious candidate, who is due to announce her intentions tomorrow, is Arianna Huffington, former president of the Cambridge Union, a "recovering Republican," as she calls herself, and a syndicated columnist who is best known for her libertarian/left positions on everything from campaign finance to the environment and corporate corruption.
Opinion polls are indicating that 55 percent support a recall but Davis is a prolific fund-raiser and is promising to spend US$20m to beat the bid.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS