One week till Satan's Primary

The State of California will hold its primary election next Tuesday, 2006-06-06, which is to say 6/6/06. Clearly the primary has the mark of the devil upon it.

Read more...The top of the ticket is the office of governor. On the Republican side, Arnold Schwarzenegger is running unopposed, but several candidates are vying for the Democratic nomination. If you've ever even heard of Barbara Becnel, Vibert F. Greene, or Michael Strimling, though, you are very much in the minority. The two "major" candidates are state treasurer Phil Angelides and state controller Steve Westly. Angelides is a career politician, which for some peculiar reason many people see as a handicap. Westly was part of the team that created eBay. It's pretty difficult to sift through the flurries of attack ads to discern any meaningful differences between the two.

Westly charges Angelides with proposing to add $10 billion in new taxes to "working families" in California, which is an outright lie. On the flip side, Angelides charges Westly with supporting tax breaks for the wealthy, which he hasn't done. Each blames the other for "going negative" first. Both candidates have been endorsed by the Sierra Club, never mind Westly's attack ads charging Angelides with being a nasty real estate developer who paves over wetlands and mangles cute fuzzy kittens for sport. Both candidates have solid credentials as environmentalists, pro-choice advocates, supporters of LGBT equality, and prudent fiscal managers. Unfortunately both candidates have discovered the value of slinging mud.

On down the ballot, we have two propositions, which I haven't even read yet. There's a proposal to provide public pre-school to all children in California — a laudable goal, but the devil is in the details, especially on 6/6/06. There's another proposal to issue bonds (i.e., borrow money) to improve our public libraries. There is a principled argument to be made against the proposal, but you won't see it in the voter's guide: the argument there is that we should fund our libraries by cutting welfare to illegal aliens.

We also have to vote for Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Insurance Commissioner, Controller, Board of Equalization, and Superintendent of Public Instruction.

I'll leave inscribing a pentacle in pig's blood for Cousin Curveball, but I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to vote on Tuesday. By the way, in addition to the Democrats and Republicans, five other parties will be holding primaries in California: Libertarian, Peace & Freedom, Natural Law, American Independent, and Green.

Technorati tags: Elections, California Primary, CA-Gov, Prop 82, Satan, Politics