Days after a Republican congressman asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to step down, Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines has a target on his back.
Shawn Steel, a former California Republican Party chairman and one of two representatives to the Republican National Committee, on Wednesday told Rob Johnson of Modesto's KMPH 840 that he and other Republicans plan to ask Villines to step down from his Capitol leadership post.
Steel said Republicans are angry that Villines helped approve billions in temporary taxes during the latest budget agreement and that he is now advocating passage of Proposition 1A, which contains a spending limit but also $16 billion in additional taxes.
"We are definitely going to be going straight forward and asking that he, after the election on May 19th, that he resigns, he steps down," Steel said. "It's embarrassing having a Republican supporting one of the biggest tax increases in American history on a state level. And he doesn't have good justification for it."
Steel didn't specify which "state party leaders," besides himself, would ask for the resignation. Steel was not immediately available for comment Wednesday.
Steel and Villines got into a back-and-forth argument Saturday during the California Republican Party's executive committee meeting in Sacramento, as Villines asked the party to endorse all six May ballot measures. (The party voted to oppose all of them.) Villines at that time suggested that the party was hurting itself by being obstructionist and blocking solutions to the state's budget crisis, while Steel said the party's woes were the fault of leaders who abandon positions on issues like taxes.
Villines dismissed Steel's comments during an unrelated Capitol press conference.
"I've known Shawn for a long time, and I consider Shawn to be a friend," Villines said. "You know, there's just a strong disagreement in our party, but we're a big tent, we're a big tent party. We're the party of Reagan, and everybody can have a position. We're going to have to go through a rough patch. I believe fundamentally that these reforms and these initiatives are very, very important for California ... and Shawn feels differently. So we just have a disagreement, and I guess we'll just have to leave it at that."
California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring issued the following statement late Wednesday: "We fully support the leaders elected by our legislative team, including Assembly Leader Villines. There is a diversity of opinion within any party at times, but there is no doubt that Mike has been a great, hardworking leader for our party and every Californian."
Jim Sanders of The Bee's Capitol Bureau contributed to this report.
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