So, if I can do my absentee ballot thing (I haven't changed my permanent address and don't want to until my name change goes through), then I get to vote on a governor.

My choices are down to three in the initial summary:
Arnold Schwarzenegger - my liberal friends probably don't like that one.
Phil Angelides
Peter Camejo

I have not been too excited with our current governor. I do like his lack of religious rhetoric in his policies and I am excited to see him take an initiative with the environment. That is something many of my fiscal conservative friends still appreciate. I do not like his criminal reform (or lack there of) policies. I do see how he re-managed the budget after Davis' problems. My initial response is probably not my vote.

Angelides on the other hand sounds pretty good. Except one major thing. His goal is to strengthen the middle-class. I fall under this bracket, so I should be excited. I don't believe though that this will trickle down to the poor. The middle-class strives to be the rich, and are typically the most apathetic to the cause of the poor. They often barely have time to pay their morgages, let alone throw some philanthropic donations to the poor. So while they receive their tax cuts (all 4,000,000 families) The remaining 10-15 million poor families are stuck choosing to pay taxes or buy bread. Unfortunately for them, they make just enough to have to pay taxes, but not enough to do that and eat.

Then there is Camejo. Ideally, this guy looks good, but frankly I'm too much of a moderate to vote for an idealist. I have no statement to make to bring my ideals to light. I really do want the pragmatic person. To vote for Camejo is not a waste of a vote, even though he won't win, but to vote for Camejo seems to me like issues that are imperative really will not get addressed with any support - either from the public or the state legislation.

So who should I vote for?

PS Look for other choices off of my ballot.

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