LOS ANGELES — California’s influential prison guards union filed formal notice Tuesday that it would pursue a recall election against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger because it had lost faith in his leadership during one of the longest budget impasses in California history.A spokesman for the union, Lance Corcoran, said Tuesday that it had $10 million in a political action fund and that it would try to form a coalition of like-minded wealthy groups and individuals to contribute to a recall campaign. þþ“We understand that it’s going to be very, very expensive,” Mr. Corcoran said. “We know that we have some heavy lifting. We’re up against a multimillionaire with multimillionaire friends. But we have not been shy about putting what we think is necessary to run a successful campaign.”þþSchwarzenegger officials said that the recall attempt was an intimidation tactic by the union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, to force the governor to raise wages for its 31,000 members and suggested that it was timed to benefit the union’s incumbent leadership during the association’s election this month.þþ“The election and its impact is clearly part of the discussion here,” said Adam Mendelsohn, a spokesman for the governor.þþThe union says the recall effort is about the governor’s overall leadership style and credibility rather than any particular issue like salary negotiations.þþ“Long before he was an actor or a governor, the governor wore little tiny trunks and posed,” Mr. Corcoran said. “He’s a poser and he should stop posing and show some leadership and integrity.”þþMr. Corcoran said that the election next week, in which the longtime union president, Mike Jimenez, is up for re-election, is driving the governor’s hard-line stance with the union.þþ“We’re going to have partners on this recall election,” Mr. Corcoran said. “But I can’t talk about them yet.”þþPolitical observers in California estimated that it would cost about $3 million to $5 million to collect the roughly one million signatures necessary to force an election; the recall election itself could double the cost. þþRecall efforts have been common in California since Ronald Reagan was governor, but the only one to gather enough signatures to hold a special election was that against Gray Davis, whom Mr. Schwarzenegger replaced in 2003. Mr. Davis is one of only two governors who have been recalled. Mr. Schwarzenegger was re-elected in 2006 to a term that is to run until January 2011.þþThirty-eight percent of residents approved of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s job performance, according to a survey in August by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan research group. That was a decline of five points since July and 12 points since January.þþBy comparison, before his recall election in 2003, Mr. Davis’s approval rating hovered between 26 percent and 33 percent, according to the institute.þþIn a conference call on Tuesday, Mr. Mendelsohn, Mr. Schwarzenegger’s spokesman, said Mr. Davis had set himself up for failure for giving in to the corrections union’s demands for salary increases at a time when the state could not afford it, a mistake that Mr. Schwarzenegger would not make.þþ“The governor is not going to be intimidated into giving a pay raise,” Mr. Mendelsohn said.þ
Source: NY Times
