Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up

For months now, it's clear there's been an effort on California Talk Radio to push illegal immigration to the top of the stack of hot-button issues. For example, Mark Williams at Sacramento's KFBK AM-1530 has done his best over the last three months to push the issue forwards. Illegal immigration does frustrate numerous Californians, and can periodically be tapped as a source of political heat. Nevertheless, despite Arnold Schwarzenegger's invitation to the Arizona Minutemen to come to California to patrol the Mexican border, there's little sign that populist fervor has been raised much in the electorate. The campaign is very much a top-down campaign.

Campaigns become populist crusades when the popular voice is frustrated in one way or another. A perfect example is when Gray Davis successfully interfered with the 2002 Republican gubernatorial primary, securing the nomination for Dick Simon, who proved weak in the fall 2002 campaign. Populist rage, boiling everywhere since the 2001 electrictiy deregulation debacle, boiled over when it could not be vented at the polls. The boiling was most evident in the Republican camp, of course, but extended to Democrats as well. The 2003 California Recall Election, very much a bottom-up sort of campaign, resulted from voter frustrations.

Numerous propositions regarding immigration restrictions have made it to the polls in recent years (most notably Proposition 187 in 1994). The campaigns generally fail at their task of slowing illegal immigration, however, because the only really effective tool (levying severe penalties on employers of illegal aliens) is never presented as an alternative to the voters (too hard on the business community that sponsors most of these campaigns). Nevertheless, the issue HAS made it, repeatedly, to the polling place, and will assuredly do so in the future, in one guise or another. True populist rage on the issue can't really gel, however, unless it is frustrated. The unsatisfactory status-quo simply continues.

So, it's interesting to read Mark Chapin Johnson, a member of the Board of Overseers at the Hoover Institution, and CEO of Chapin Medical Company, discuss the issue in today's Wall Street Journal. In a curious, passive tone (very curious, passive tone, since he surely knows better), Johnson indicates that *things, you know, stuff!* will happen shortly in crazy California that will make illegal immigration the next populist crusade:

And now, ever so quietly and subtly, I sense that possibly another sea-change may come about. For all the flak Pete Wilson took for promoting Proposition 187, and for how it alienated the Latino community, his push resonated with a very large and frightened WASP middle class....I sense a deep and intensely growing concern and fear that illegal immigrants are completely overwhelming our state infrastructure.

Same as it has ever been! But surely, Johnson knows that the only leverage the business community and others will have to exploit this fear will be pour money into a campaign: by definition, a top-down campaign. Johnson continues:

The daily drumbeat of proposed higher taxes being needed from hard-working citizens to support medical services and K-12 education for a flood of illegals is enraging the average voter.

That's funny, I thought the recent daily drumbeat was that higher taxes, at least at the state level, weren't going to be required, at least this year. According to The Sacramento Bee:

The budget for the 2005-06 fiscal year avoids the borrowing that has plagued the state in recent years and does not raise taxes. It sets money aside to pay off some of the state's debt and increases funding to most programs, including $3 billion more for schools and $1.3 billion for road projects.

Damn inconsistent drum! Rhythmless Johnson then engages in wishful thinking:

This issue is one of those occasional, unique circumstances that can so suck all the air out of the other political discourse in California that budgets, education, and infrastructure may simply fade to the back pages while the "stop the illegals" debate takes over the front pages.

Only if the business community is willing to pay advertising rates for the front pages!

If this scenario takes traction, as it appears it will, the issue will be the only one that drives the next statewide election.

Maybe, but unlikely. Remember, if Latinos get as worked up again as they did over Proposition 187, the boomerang impact on the business community might be considerable. But I must defer to those who have the privilege of better information about the coming campaign. Tell us, Mr. Johnson, about the upcoming campaign you surely know more about! Speak so we all can hear, oh, monied Voice of the People!