This is a three part series on the Progressive Movement from 1892 to the election of Governor Schwarenegger in 2003. Part 1 is National, this part is California and part 3 is the statistical evidence.
The anecdotal irony: When the California progressives, who organized themselves in 1907 as the Lincoln-Roosevelt League, decided on a choice for governor in the 1910 election, they settled on the best known and respected progressive leader, Harris Weinstock (later of the California Weinstock department store chain). Weinstock deferred to his first choice, Hiram Johnson, the celebrity crusading San Francisco prosecutor who had put Boss Abe Ruef in prison a few years earlier. Johnson said he required his wife Minnie McNeal’s approval. Minnie hated Sacramento, but finally agreed to let her husband run for governor when it was argued she would end up in Washington D.C. with Hiram as senator. (And she did). Johnson ran for governor as a Progressive and won easily. Johnson did not carry San Francisco where the railroad interests he crusaded against were headquartered.
Nearly 100 years later, the incumbent governor, Gray Davis, was ousted in a grass roots recall election, only months after assuming office. The obvious grass-roots reform choice was the former mayor of Los Angeles, Richard Riordan, who was prominent and highly regarded as a progressive. Riordan was the man who had been cheated out of the governorship in a manipulated election by the incumbent, Gray Davis. Riordan was asked to run for governor, but like Weinstock, he deferred to his choice, celebrity Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger, like Hiram Johnson, said he needed his wife Maria Schriver’s approval. Maria, like Millie, hated Sacramento, but was finally convinced she wouldn’t have to live there. Arnold ran in an open field of candidates and won by a large plurality.
Both campaigns, Johnson’s and Schwarzenegger’s, were driven by a dissident group with Republican Party leanings. Both reform movements had the goal to overthrow the corrupt California government.
In Johnson’s day the worst corruption was the monopoly railroad interests, just as had been the case with the People’s Party in 1892. In Schwarzenegger’s day the corruption was rampant from multiple interests, including unions, who had been bribing the Democratic machine starting with Boss Jessie Unruh in 1964, then for twenty five years with Boss Willie Brown and ending with John Burton/Gray Davis. The utility regulatory body, created 100 years earlier by Johnson, had caused an energy disaster. Schwarzenegger, like Hiram Johnson, did not carry San Francisco where Boss Willie Brown, a leader of the corrupt Democratic machine, had become mayor.
Before Hiram Johnson got to Sacramento, the legislators who ran with him as a Progressive, had already crafted the legislation that made Governor Johnson famous. California promptly got the initiative, the referendum, civil service, expanded conservation, and the open primary. The Progressive legislators also created three interesting laws. One created a recall provision for elected officials. Another law created a regulatory body to control railroad and all utility company tariffs, the Public Utility Commission. The third created a Workers Compensation system.
One hundred years later, grass-roots reform candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger became a candidate because the 100 year old recall law had been used to oust the former governor, Davis. The three most blatant failings of incumbent governor Davis were his electoral corruption as demonstrated in the California Primary which was no longer open, his out of control Public Utility Commission which nearly destroyed the gas and electric utilities of the State and the out of control Workers Compensation system that was driving thousands of businesses out of California. Note, the recall, the open primary, the utility commission and Workers Comp were all created by the 1910 Progressives. Corruption had ruined each of these.
Once in office, Schwarzenegger promptly wrote and passed a major overhaul of the Workers Compensation system, re-created the Open primary and announced his intention to reform the Public Utility Commission.