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This Sunday John Heckathorn |
Please kokua California:
Try the lottery solutionhave the perfect solution for California's on-again, off-again recall election.
It's not a game show, though I have to admit that the game show gave me the idea.
In case you missed the news, the Game Show Network is planning to run a show called "Who Wants to Be Governor of California?" on Oct. 1. The show will air whether the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allows California to proceed with its Oct. 7 recall election or not. Adding stature to "Who Wants to Be Governor?" will be a half-dozen actual candidates in California's recall election. The line-up includes Gary Coleman, the former star -- if star is the right term -- of a sitcom called "Diff'rent Strokes." Also Mary Carey, who makes films like "Double D Dolls 2," advertised as "nude and natural."
Unfortunately, the winner of "Who Wants to Be Governor?" doesn't get to take office. That would at least get the whole thing over with, and end the embarrassment of all of us who grew up in the Golden State and still feel some residual affection.
California has become a joke. Not just for the New York media. Even places like Lansing, Mich., are getting into the act. I've been in both Lansing and East Lansing, and the difference between those places and California is that I'd go back to California. Still, The Lansing State mockingly suggests that the state elect Alex Trebek of "Jeopardy." Trebek is one of the few Californians not running for governor. He's got a better job already.
It's a bad job. The guy who has it now, Gray Davis, is in danger of recall because he created a $34.2 billion deficit. $34.2 billion is a lot of money, five times the entire Hawaii state budget. The election is going to cost another $67 million. The millions raised by candidates won't go to help the state coffers. Whoever wins, that monster deficit is going to have them for breakfast the first day on the job.
California doesn't need an election or a game show. It needs a lottery. The Kokua California Lottery.
You win and you're governor of California.
Yes, that would mean that anyone could become governor. However, the current field includes a billboard model named Angelyne who promises to paint the capitol hot pink; Gallagher, a comedian who smashes melons with a sledgehammer and whose campaign slogan is, "Finally a Governor you can get drunk with"; Kurt "Tachikaze" Rightmyer, who bills himself as a middleweight sumo wrestler; an actor called Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose best role was a robot; plus the current lieutenant governor, Cruz Bustamante, who proved he was a pro among amateurs by hustling a $2 million campaign contribution from an Indian tribe.
The law of averages says a lottery could do better, especially if we sell tickets nationwide, not just in California.
Kokua California lottery tickets would cost $117 each. There are 292,092,859 people in the United States. If everyone bought a ticket, goodbye California deficit.
Some people won't buy tickets, but others will buy lots. Schwarzenegger put $2 million of his own money into his campaign -- that's 17,094 tickets. Campaign contributors in California can chip in $21,200 apiece. (If Mayor Harris had had those kinds of limits, he'd be a happier man today.) Wouldn't those California fat cats rather buy $21,200 worth of lottery tickets and take a shot at Sacramento themselves?
The winner can paint the California capitol any color he or she likes. In fact, to sweeten the deal, the winner should get to name the entire state after him- self. Or his dog or favorite cousin or whatever.
If the winner is from out of state, he or she would need to relocate. That would be a plus for people in, say, Lansing, Mich., but for a winner in the islands it would be a downgrade. We will have to work something out. In these days of e-mail, you could run California out of an office in Kaimuki, with quick jaunts to San Francisco for the shopping and Hollywood for the Academy Awards.
Yes, yes, I know. Choosing a governor by lottery would throw the most populous state in the union into chaos, invalidate the democratic process, make politics a joke. But the Golden State has pretty much managed that on its own. I say let's give the Kokua California lottery a chance. The only thing California has to lose is its deficit.
John Heckathorn is the editor of Honolulu Magazine. He is one of four columnists who take turns writing "This Sunday."
