Constitutional Convention Has Momentum

I visited yesterday afternoon with Jim Wunderman and othe rstaff and consultants of the Bay Area Council, the San Francisco-based organization that is pushing a state constitutional convention. I'll write at more length later, but the two main things I learned is 1. The process is still early, and even Wunderman, the strongest advocate for this idea, doesn't have a clear idea of how such a convention would be called and how it might work. 2. The convention idea has real momentum. Wunderman has been deluged with expressions of interest from across the political spectrum. And if he and his lawyers (Hanson Bridgett is providing legal advice) can figur eout the mechanics of this quickly and file a measure, he wantsan initiative to call a constitutional convention to appear on next year's special election ballot.

As evidence of that interest, Schwarzenegger gave a shout-out to the convention idea, without specifically endorsing it, in his budget press conference yesterday. Here's the paragraph in question, from the official transcript released by the governor's office:

"Each time we go through something like this that we have just gone through, it's important that we reevaluate everything. And so I think some people say we should have a constitutional convention and all kinds of different ideas are being thrown around. We know that the system itself is not working, that it's flawed and therefore we should revisit it and come up with ways so that we can speed up this process and that when we say that there should be a budget, a balanced budget by June 15th, that there is one, because I think that that says a lot for our state and for the financial community and Wall Street and all, when we are fiscally responsible."