Ten years ago, California erupted in an anti-government, anti-establishment convulsion unlike any ever
seen.
Disgruntled voters seized the chance for a rare do-over, recalling their staid and serious governor, Gray
Davis, and replacing him less than a year after his reelection with one of the most famous and exuberant
personalities on the planet. It was only the second time in U.S. history a sitting governor was booted from
office.
The spectacle — a snap election featuring a color wheel of 135 candidates, including a former child actor, a
porn star and a handful of professional politicians — shook California from its usual political slumber and
captivated an audience that watched from around the world.
A decade on, the effects are still being felt, albeit subtly, and not the way proponents imagined, or the way
actor-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the chief beneficiary, so grandly promised.
Fundamental changes in the way California elects its leaders — a top-two primary system aimed at pushing
candidates to the ideological center and an impartial redrawing of the state's political boundaries — will almost
certainly change how Sacramento operates for years to come. Neither would likely have passed without
Schwarzenegger sitting in the governor's office.
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