California labor unions have dominated the state's politics in recent years, with unionized nurses, teachers, firefighters and police officers serving as the face of the campaign to defeat Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ballot initiatives in the 2005 special election. However, union leaders said they were taking a bit of a breather to recover from the special election and were hoarding most of their resources for an effort to remove Schwarzenegger from office in the fall.
See "Labor Takes Breather Before Challenging Governor", Joe Matthews, Los Angeles Times, June 5, 2006