The People's Governor?

Steven Greenhut: The Sacramento Bee reported today that the Orange County Employees Association, the union representing OC’s miscellaneous county workers, and Sen. Lou Correa, the “moderate” Democrat from Anaheim who authored 1999 legislation that started the “3 percent at 50” mess that has destroyed budgets statewide, are hosting a down-to-Earth “inauguration party celebrating the election of the People’s Governor, Jerry Brown.”

It’s no surprise that a liberal public employees’ union is celebrating the election of a union-friendly Democratic governor, but I wonder about the “People’s Governor” language. We know about People’s Republics and the People’s leaders. These are not freedom-loving Democratic societies, but are, well, communist and socialist societies. When people refer to the People’s Republic of Portland or the People’s Republic of Santa Monica, they jokingly are referring to the hard-left politics of those cities.

I’m not suggesting these folks are commies. In fact, I know OCEA’s president, Nick Berardino, and he’s a patriotic Vietnam veteran and fairly moderate as union officials go. Correa is, as I mentioned above, considered a moderate by modern California Democratic standards. So why would they use this language? Does this mean the ushering in of old lefty terminology or recognition of a new, hard-left era for the state of California?

My guess is they are so immersed in their Progressive ideology that they don’t even see how their terminology echoes that used by other people’s republics.