California Voters Say 'No Way!'

US News | Wed, May 20, 2009 at 4:56:25 pm PDT

All of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget measures and tax increases for California were shot down in flames yesterday, and now the question is: how will California dig itself out of its fiscal hole?

Federal bail-out time?

Well, he may have had a grand day in D.C. schmoozing with the Democratic president and exchanging warm words of mutual praise about car exhausts, but Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger got a different kind of message tonight from California voters.

Not that many came out to vote in local races and on six statewide propositions, as we reported earlier Tuesday. But the ones who did were resoundingly defeating the governor’s budget proposals, as opinion polls had predicted.

Which is probably why the Budgetnator was far away in Washington during the day, instead of being photographed voting locally and then sitting on a hotel room couch watching results roll in during a Sacramento photo op.

Of the day’s six fiscal propositions — the rainy day fund, education funding, lottery modernization, children’s services funding and temporary reallocation of mental health funding — all went down — and hard. The results were roughly 60-40 against.

The only proposition to sail through was one preventing pay increases to top elected state officials during years of budget deficits. That one was being approved about 76-23. Take that! (That doesn’t affect Arnold, of course, because he’s never taken a state salary.)