in this issue

DAVID BINDER, the San Francisco pollster, doesn't mince his words:

"This whole special election was designed around the idea that young people, liberals, progressives won't vote," he told me this week. "The governor and his people are counting on you not voting."

That's the challenge right there. In a typical off-year election, with no top-ticket offices on the ballot, voter turnout, even in politically obsessed cities like San Francisco, is low. We might be pushing 30 percent here, and even less elsewhere in the state.

Which is exactly what Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his allies want. Because they've placed on the ballot one of the most audacious and sweeping power grabs of any state politician in memory. If the governor's initiatives all pass, Schwarzenegger will have almost unilateral authority to cut state spending, axing programs at his whim, even after a budget has been approved. Republican judges could wind up drawing new legislative and congressional lines in a state that has kept the GOP in the minority for years. And the one major well-funded interest group that has fought the governor – public employee unions – could be largely cut out of the political process.

It's hard to get excited about a special election that most of us think is silly and never wanted to see in the first place (the fact that it's costing the state $70 million is infuriating). But if that anger turns into apathy, and the left stays home Nov. 8, the state's political power will be shifted in a very dangerous direction.

Remember: Schwarzenegger is not the moderate he pretended to be when he first ran for office. "His agenda is the Bush agenda: tax cuts, break the backs of the unions, give more money and power to the wealthy," Binder notes.

So please: Go to the polls. Because the governor is counting on you to sit this one out.

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By the way: The Oct. 10 New York Times had a fascinating story about how Home Depot is fighting to keep day laborers from waiting for work outside its stores. Another reminder that this is a chain operation that doesn't belong in San Francisco. The Board of Supervisors hears the appeal of a really rotten Home Depot environmental impact report Oct. 25. Show up and tell them to vote to keep this monster out of town.

Tim Redmond tredmond@sfbg.com