On Jan. 9, Abel Maldonado sent out this message as part of his ongoing campaign for California governorship: “As Governor, I will work to reform and simplify California’s complex tax system. I’ll reduce the burden on the small businesses we need to grow in order to create jobs. I’ll cancel this high-speed rail boondoggle. And I will work every day to make it easier for jobs and opportunity to come back to California, for the benefit of all of our people.”
A week later, he announced an end to his candidacy.
Actually, if I’ve been reading the coverage right, he announced an end to his political career.
I have mixed feelings about this. Abel has been a fixture for so long, like a Republican hall table that’s been fully integrated into the design of our collective California home. With him gone, we’ll walk in the door, toss our keys and loose change toward the spot that’s always reliably been there, and everything will jingle and jangle to the floor.
In recent elections, he hasn’t fared so well. And though he stated family reasons as the impetus behind cutting his gubernatorial aspirations short, I have to think that the Jan. 16 announcement would have been different if he’d been kicking Jerry Brown’s incumbent butt come the start of 2014.
But I’m not going to taunt someone when he’s down—if he is indeed down.
“It’s time for me to stay home,” he told reporters who’d assembled to hear an announcement from him. “It’s time for me to be a full-time dad. It’s time for me to be a full-time husband.”
The more cynical among us—heck, me, if I’m honest—hears that as politi-speak code for, well, whatever it is that’s really knocking him out of the race, be it dwindling funds, lagging numbers, or something as yet unknown. But there’s something admirable, too, in someone choosing to care for the health of his family and, presumably, his own self. A political race is a stressful thing. My editor remembers seeing Abel after he was first elected to the senate, and the man looked like a walking Petri dish—even at his victory announcement at the Santa Maria Inn. Yet there he was, smiling and shaking enough hands to, I’m sure, make the Public Health Department wince if they’d seen it.
So here’s to good health in Abel’s future. May he avoid the Swine Flu as efficiently as he’s avoided elected office these last several years.
The Canary is washing her hands—er, wings—every chance she gets. Send comments to the canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 23-30, 2014.