How angry are California voters?

10 June 2010 |permalink | email article

A New Poll released on Monday suggests that California voters “hate” most of their top politicians and give them negative ratings – whether officeholders or their challengers alike.

The Public Policy Poll, as reported by Politico, puts lame duck Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s approval rating at just 20 percent – so low that Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer nearly doubles it.

It gets only slightly better. Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO who is the Republican gubernatorial nominee, has a favorability rating of just 24 percent. And former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, challenging Boxer for her U.S. Senate seat, is viewed favorability by 22 percent of those polled.

Even former Democratic governor Jerry Brown, who won two terms nearly a generation ago and is now trying for a political “hat trick,” has just a 37 percent rating. While weak its 13 points higher than challenger Whitman.

One has to wonder whether such distaste for the current political arrangement had something to do with passage of Proposition 14 which unwinds partisanship and the requirement of a two-thirds vote to pass a budget or a tax increase.

Harry Reid’s basket of goodies

The upset win of Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle in the Nevada Republican primary ensures that her bizarre series of comments will be as interesting to review as those of the Senate Majority Leader.

From Talking Points Memo: Angle once “spoke out strongly against fluoride and as a Communist ploy to undermine Western democracy.” Plum Line’s Greg Sargent: Angle suggested support in a 2010 interview with Liberty Watch magazine that alcohol consumption be made illegal. Reid’s campaign, according to Sargent, was planning to paint Angle as, essentially, crazy. 

Absentee vote winning percentages: Jerry Brown (83.30); Boxer (80.96); Meg Whitman (68); Steve Cooley (64); Carly Fiorina (60.25); and Kamala Harris (23).

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