The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

California Governor’s Race:
“Three Peas in a Pod”

Sep 27, 2010

The California elections feature two candidates competing with each other to see who can mount the biggest attack on working people.

The Republican candidate, Meg Whitman, a former CEO of eBay, has already spent a record hundred million dollars on her campaign–much of it her own money. She plastered the airwaves with promises of cutting 40,000 state jobs, drastically reducing state workers’ pensions, and brutally slashing social spending for the poor. All so she can eliminate more taxes paid by the wealthy.

Democrat Jerry Brown is also calling for huge concessions from the state workforce. He told the San Francisco Chronicle that he will demand labor leaders “put everything on the table.” On his web site, he bragged that is exactly what he did when he was governor two decades ago: “I am the only governor to veto pay raises for state employees (I did so twice).... I was also the first California governor to propose pension reforms and a two-tiered pension system.”

Two parties, but the same anti-worker politics. And Brown and Whitman have much in common with the current governor, the highly unpopular Arnold Schwarzenegger. They are, in the words of the Los Angeles Times, “Three Peas in a Pod.”