Raising Arizona

Now that I think of it, I have something else to add about the California recall election affecting and possibly ending Gray Davis's career. You might recall (pun very much intended) that a similar election was to be held by petition in Arizona in 1988 after Evan Meacham, a Pontiac dealer who replaced Bruce Babbitt as Arizona's governor, proved to be a major embarrassment and a crook. In July 1987, six months after he took office, a recall drive was started after Meacham made racially insensitive comments about blacks and Asians, spoke at a John Birch Society convention, and rescinded the state holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. "He's been blown up by others," Meacham explained, "and he doesn't deserve a holiday."

That was only the tip of the iceberg. Meacham also became the target of various investigations involving financial improprieties and abuse of power as governor. Unlike his humble predecessor, Meacham was arrogant and self-absorbed enough to think he could do anything he wanted to.

If this is the kind of chap Pontiac gave dealer franchises to at the time, then they deserved to have the Fiero fail in the eighties.

Meacham, as you may have guessed, is a Republican. He's also a Mormon, and an unrepentant one at that. He continued to believe in the racial inferiority of nonwhites even after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dropped its racist doctrines in 1978, and he showed complete arrogance toward the tenets of charity and fair play that the Saints hold dear.

Anyway, a recall election was forced on Governor Meacham, and it was scheduled for the spring of 1988. It never took place. That February, Meacham was impeached by the Arizona House of Representatives. Though he vowed that his lawyers would tear the prosecution's case "to bits" in the state Senate, he ended up being convicted and removed from office.

My point is simply this: This is the kind of guy whom you have recall elections for, not someone like Gray Davis, who's merely a decent man who's way in over his head. In fact, the way the recall election in California is set up, Davis could be replaced by someone even worse, someone as bad as . . . Evan Meacham.

I hope this has been helpful.