Op-Ed: So you want to recall the governor

Note: The following was published prior to Arnold Schwarzenegger's California victory.

As fun as California's recall circus may look, Ohio is stuck with its answer to Gray Davis

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

Say you're the governor of a state that's experiencing economic crisis and,
though you won reelection nine months ago, you're not terribly popular or
especially well-liked, even among some members of your own party.

And say that you're accused of misleading voters about a looming budget
shortfall, having refused to venture an educated guess about the size of the
deficit before the election while discrediting your opponent's (entirely
accurate) projection so as to avoid mentioning taxes and cuts while on the
campaign trail. What would your future hold?

Well, if you're Gray Davis, governor of California, you'd find yourself the
target of a special election that will ask voters whether you should be
recalled and, if you are recalled, who should replace you-Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Gary Coleman, the founder of Hustler, your own number-two
man or one of 131 other candidates.

If you're Bob Taft, governor of Ohio, the short answer is absolutely nothing.

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You continue to be governor for the remainder of your term, and
there's nothing your constituents can do but grumble about pre-election
deception. (Taft, by the way, refused to address the matter of a $4 billion
hole in the budget while campaigning last fall and then oversaw the most
dramatic tax increase in Ohio history.)

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent states, as candidate Coleman might say.

California is one of only 18 states that allow for the recall of the
governor, and it is by far the easiest in which to do so. Only 12 percent of
those who voted in the last gubernatorial election are needed to force a
recall (that's right, a tiny minority of voters can overthrow the election
decisions of the majority).

And they can recall the governor for just about any reason, including
thinking it would be cool to have Arnold Schwarzenegger as their governor.
Given the media coverage that's followed the recall, one wonders how many
California journalists signed petitions in the hopes that they'd get the
opportunity to use all their stupid "governator," Total Recall and Running
Man jokes.

In the other 17 recalling states-Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho,
Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North
Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin-the percentage of
displeased voters needed to force a recall is between 25 and 40 percent, and
in several of those states the governor needs to be found guilty of specific
wrongs, like actual crimes or malfeasance.

Ohio, however, is safe (or, more accurately, Taft is safe), should any kind
of crazy recall-mania spread across the nation. California is often seen as
a trendsetter in American culture, and some worry this election will be no
exception, notes Daniel Tokaji, a professor at Ohio State University's
Mortiz College of Law and co-counsel in a lawsuit seeking to delay the
California recall until March, when obsolete "hanging chad"-style punch
cards will be updated statewide.

"California is sometimes a trend-setting state, but it sometimes does things
that a lot of states bend over backwards to avoid," Tokaji said. "I wouldn't
be surprised if many people in Ohio and 32 other states breathe a collective
sigh of relief once they've checked their constitutions and seen the mess
going on in California right now."

But what of Ohioans who see the mess in California and would like to get rid
of their own governor? Well, there's nothing they can do without a recall
provision in the state constitution.

The only other way to toss Taft out of office would be to impeach him, but
that's incredibly unlikely. As with the model of presidential impeachments,
a majority of the state House of Representatives is needed to impeach an
Ohio governor, and then it will be up to two-thirds of the Senate to hold a
trial.

The only grounds for doing so would be if the governor committed "any
misdemeanor" while in office, and that happening (or being discovered) is
incredibly rare. In fact, it's so rare that it's never happened to a single
one of Ohio's 67 governors, according to Stuart Hobbs, a staff historian for
the Ohio Historical Society.

The ability for citizens to recall public officials, like the ability to
place referenda and initiatives on ballots (rather than going through their
legislatures) came out of the boss-busting progressive movements of the late
19th and early 20th centuries, which took the strongest hold in California.

"California and Ohio were both centers of progressive political action,"
Hobbs said, though the former went further than the latter. The Buckeye
State did give the power of referenda and initiatives to its citizens during
a 1912 constitutional convention, which saw a total of 41 other amendments
made to the Ohio constitution, but statewide recall was not one of them.

"I'm sure that there were people in Ohio thinking about recall [at the
convention], because Cleveland, for example, has the ability to recall the
mayor," Hobbs said. "But it just didn't get out of committee, as it were."

Part of the reason Ohio never got statewide recall powers was likely the
fact that governors served relatively short two-year terms until 30 years
ago, when terms were expanded to four years. If someone was only going to be
in office for two years, it wasn't worth the effort to recall him (or try
launching a politically motivated impeachment process), Hobbs said.

"A key argument that was always made against [recalls] is that, well, their
term comes to an end and you can challenge them and you can vote them out of
office," Hobbs said.

That's also the argument the founding fathers would likely have made. Their
first try at a ruling document, 1781's Articles of Confederation, had a
provision that allowed for the recall of delegates (by state legislatures,
not by voters in general). But such recall was considered and then rejected
at the constitutional convention of 1787. America is a republican democracy
ruled by representatives, not by the people themselves.

Or at least 49 of the United States are. California's apparently a whole
different story, where they can change governors pretty much whenever they
want. Ohio will just have to wait till 2006 like a good little state.