Poll Shows 79% Support for AB 32, California's Global Warming Law, That Only 1 Republican in Legislature Voted For

In the California Senate, the vote was on a straight party line with 23 Democrats voting for it and 14 Republicans voting against it. One Republican Senator, Bill Morrow, did not cast a vote on the bill.

So 60 of 62 Republican state legislators voted against this measure that 68% of their party's registered voters favor according to this poll. And it isn't that they didn't know what they were voting on. The debate was very spirited and some intemperate remarks were made on the floor by the Republican opposition, many of them deriding the measure as a “job killer.”

Republican Assemblymember Paul Benoit, cited the figure of some 17,000 scientists who he said found there was no proof of global warming. Republican Assemblymember Ray Haynes described current increases in world temperature as a “natural occurrence."

Republican State Senator Tom McClintock, then a candidate for Lieutenant Governor, acknowledged that the climate was in fact warming, but ascribed that to the waxing and waning of the climate cycle and said that the next time we have an ice age, it will go down. He predicted financial ruin for the state and that it would increase the state deficit.

McClintock's statement became part of television and radio commercials in the waning days of the Lieutenant Governor's race and was one of the factors leading to his defeat.

Take a good long look at the numbers here and there is fodder for Democratic campaigns in the Fall of 2008. The strong responses from the non-partisan/other and "middle of the road" ideology subsets, the swing voters, show which way the door may swing and who's butt may get hit with it. And the floor debate and other public comments, for all to see via the California Channel and other recordings, will make great ads and youtube postings.

As we enter the phase where implementation of this measure will be debated this year, with a number of bills on the means and methods needed to actually get there, Republican members of the legislature need a convincing conversion before the election year is upon us, or they may go the way of the dodo bird. The 66% to 21% disapproval of the way the Federal government is handling global warming, found in this Field Poll, shows where they will stand with the voters if they continue with the Bush program.