Edwin Garcia
San Jose Mercury News
September 12, 2008
SACRAMENTO — He stalks the Capitol hallways with the hairy, disheveled look of a homeless man. Mike Jimenez, the leader of one of the state's most powerful public employee unions, vowed to the 31,000 members of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association two years ago that he wouldn't cut his hair until settling a labor contract with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But this past week, with no contract in sight, Jimenez and his union upped the ante considerably by threatening to recall California's governor for the second time in five years.
It's too early to determine if the recall drive launched this week will succeed — many experts call the effort a media spectacle that will fizzle, while others dare not rule anything out because of the organization's tremendous campaign account.
But one thing is clear: The CCPOA's move has pushed special interest politics to an unprecedented level in Sacramento, part of a continuing saga that shows the tight grip that a handful of labor unions and business groups hold on state government.
"Special interests have either ruled the roost or will continue to try that in the future," said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles. "It's just all about what politics — not only in California but politics in state capitols across the country — has been all about, and that is, money and power."
Unlike the recall drive that booted Gov. Gray Davis from office in 2003, which was started by an anti-tax crusader, the current effort appears more self-serving — coming from an influential union that despises the Schwarzenegger administration because the two sides have been unable to agree on a new labor contract for prison guards and parole agents.
But the union, which collects in excess of $29 million annually in members dues — with much of the money supporting and opposing political campaigns that can make or break candidates — downplays the contract's role in the recall effort.
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