Tom McClintock, California State Senator

Tom McClintock is a California State Senator. He finished third in the re-call election in 2003 that elected Arnold Schwarzenegger Governor of California. He appeared previously on California Politics Today, on September 16, 2004, when he attacked the then-pending Proposition 71 as a "'self-serving sham' that will spend money California doesn’t have."

Now that Proposition 71 has passed and has been added to the California Constitution, Senator McClintock has returned to California Politics Today to comment on a proposal to reform Proposition 71 embodied in SB 18, introduced on December 6, 2004, by his California Senate colleague Deborah Ortiz.

You can hear Senator McClintock's remarks about this in their entirety by clicking here.

Comparing Senator Ortiz to the Claude Rains character in the Warner Bros. classic film Casablanca who is "shocked, shocked" to learn that gambling is going on at Monsieur Rick's Café Americain (right before he collects his gambling winnings), Senator McClintock bluntly characterizes as "monumental hypocrisy" the effort by Senator Ortiz to make changes in Proposition 71 in those aspects of the legislation for which he says he criticized it in a debate with her where, he claims, she assured him and everyone else that his objections were without merit.

Senator McClintock described Senator Ortiz' legislative action in pursuing those changes now with what he called "an old bureaucratic term, 'CYA'."

Senator McClintock further said that he expected SB 18 to pass and to have no legal impact once it had. He said he'd be voting for it along with the rest of the Legislature.

He said that if Senator Ortiz were sincere about achieving the reforms included in SB 18, she would start organizing a petition drive to put them on the ballot as an initiative with the authority to override the offending provisions of law as implemented through Proposition 71.

As can be heard in the next installment of California Politics Today, Senator Ortiz, when confronted with this challenge from Senator McClintock, counter-suggests that he and his Republican colleagues join with her to put such an initiative on the ballot without going through the signature gathering process, but rather by passing it on to the voters with a 70% vote by both houses of the California Legislature.

She also challenged Senator McClintock to join with her in raising the money necessary to qualify and pass that "supplemental" legislation. You can hear Senator Ortiz' comments about Senator McClintock's criticisms and the rest of her interview in its entirety by clicking here.

For another point of view on SB 18 and the structure and operations of the "Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee" ("ICOC") that will be in charge of dispersing the $3 billion in funds for embryonic stem cell research in California under the provisions of Proposition 71, click on the title of the article, "Jesse Reynolds, Program Director at Center for Genetics and Society, calls on ICOC to 'act responsibly and reject the nomination of Robert Klein' as its head at Friday's organizational meeting".