As the recall election approaches, local politicians are turning an eye toward UCSB.

Third District Supervisor Gail Marshall and 35th District Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson attended UCSB’s Campus Democrats meeting Tuesday night at 8 in the Graduate Student Association Lounge. About 25 students, mostly freshmen and first-time voters, attended the meeting. Attendees talked about the upcoming recall election, opposition to the war in Iraq and gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Jackson said the recall election has made California the laughingstock of the nation.

“That [Schwarzenegger], who can read lines in movies where he goes around shooting up people and winning by violence could suddenly, without any credentials, become the governor of the largest state in the country and the fifth-largest economy in the world,” she said.

California is the third-largest state in the Union after Alaska and Texas, but is the most populous state.

Marshall agreed with Jackson and said the people of California did not want a government in which elected officials could be recalled simply because small groups of people with large amounts of money were unhappy with the election results.

“We don’t want to have a government by referendum. We don’t want the bad guys to go away from an election that we win, and because they have more money they can come back in and recall the candidates that were elected by the majority,” Marshall said.

Jackson said Republican policies are responsible for California’s “deregulated” energy system, a $40 billion drain on the California economy and a failing worker’s compensation program.

Jackson’s recent projects include the writing of Assembly Bill 1290, prohibiting people who have had a stalking restraining order or an elderly abuse restraining order filed against them from owning, purchasing, possessing or receiving a firearm while that order is in effect. The bill was signed into law by Gov. Gray Davis. Pre-existing laws stated that only domestic violence offenders with a restraining order be restricted from possessing firearms. According to Jackson’s spokeswoman Janice Rocco, support for the bill came from California Attorney General Bill Lockyear, District Attorney Gregory Totten, the California District Attorney’s office and the Peace Officers Research Association of California.

“There were no opposing interest groups to this bill, but I do know that one of the votes we didn’t get came from Senator Tom McClintock,” Rocco said.