JOHN FUND'S POLITICAL DIARY
Gray to Fade
A recall election for California's governor now seems a sure thing.
Thursday, July 10, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
SACRAMENTO, Calif.--Both political parties dislike the recall of Gov. Gray Davis that is now heading for the California ballot; Democrats and Republicans alike prefer stability to uncertainty. The White House is cool to the idea because it would prefer a crippled Democrat in the governor's mansion as President Bush seeks to win the state in the 2004 election. The Business Roundtable and Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce favor the devil they know and oppose the recall. The only supporters appear to be the people: 51% of people surveyed in last week's Los Angeles Times poll backed a recall, including a majority of Hispanics and a third of Democrats.
It is hard to overstate Mr. Davis's unpopularity. His gross mismanagement of the state's 2001 energy crisis and this year's $38 billion state deficit has sent his approval rating crashing to 22% in the latest Times poll. Over two-thirds of union members disapprove of his performance. Pollsters note he is the first politician in anyone's memory to have less than 50% support in all demographic groups.
That is why the Davis forces are planning to fight the recall by first deploying what Democratic consultant Darry Sragow calls "endless legal challenges." They will likely claim that signature gatherers misrepresented their cause to gullible voters and may have failed to meet key technical requirements in filing petitions.
Recall organizers are also upset with Democratic secretary of state Kevin Shelley's directive to county voter registrars that they do not have to validate recall signatures until Aug. 23--an echo of Al Gore's 2000 Florida strategy, which relied on friendly county election officials. Should counties take that long, the recall would be pushed back from a likely November ballot to one next March--which could mean a slightly higher liberal turnout, since the election would be held at the same time as the Democratic presidential primary. As of yesterday, recall organizers were preparing lawsuits against Sacramento, Santa Barbara, Solano and Tehama counties for slowness in verifying the validity of recall signatures.
So far Democrats are publicly pledging loyalty to Gov. Davis. "This is a coup attempt by certain Republican extremists," claims Democratic Party political director Bob Mulholland. But behind the scenes, Sacramento is full of rumors that Democrats may put pressure on Davis to resign and allow Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, another Democrat, to become acting governor. National Democrats deny any such intent. "No Democrat is doing anything but fully supporting Gov. Davis in this," says Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe. "There are conspiracy theories galore, but I can tell you there are no secret meetings or anything."
The meeting may not have been secret, but last month labor union officials gathered for an unpublicized meeting at the Holiday Inn in Sacramento to assess the political situation. They were told the dynamics of a recall did not favor Gov. Davis's survival. A recall brings out the voters who are most passionate about the issue, and they tend to be recall supporters. A special election turnout in November would be skewed in favor of conservative voters.
What's more, the two-part design of the recall ballot--a yes-or-no referendum on the incumbent, followed by an open field of would-be replacements--creates problems in replacing Mr. Davis with a Democrat should the recall succeed. Usually about 10% of those who vote on a recall, mostly backers of the incumbent, tend not to vote for a replacement candidate. And voters who don't participate in the recall part of the ballot--also usually supporters of the incumbent, who think the recall is illegitimate--don't have their vote counted for a replacement. These factors tilt towards a Republican winning the replacement election if the GOP field isn't too divided.
The union officials at the meeting agreed that Mr. Davis was unlikely to survive a recall, according to a source familiar with the meeting. But they also agreed to give him about two months to "pull a Lazarus act" and revive his standing. The week after the union gathering, all potential Democratic statewide officeholders for a recall ballot announced they did not "intend" to allow their names to be put forward as candidates on a recall ballot. That would potentially force Democratic voters to vote either to retain Gov. Davis or to turn the governor's office over to a Republican. But few expect such solidarity to hold if the governor's poll numbers continue to languish and ambitious Democrats realize a recall election might be their best and last chance to grab the brass ring.
Among Republicans, the calculations are if anything even more complicated. Rep. Darrell Issa put up much of the money to get the recall on the ballot in hopes he would be the leading GOP candidate, but his candidacy seems to have imploded under the relentless attacks of the Davis opposition research machine. Bill Simon, the party's 2002 candidate for governor, is mending fences with party activists who were dissatisfied with his flawed campaign, but it's unclear if he can do that in the limited time before a recall election. Former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan has apparently taken himself out of consideration and is quietly backing actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The Austrian immigrant, known as "Ahnuld" to his fans, sponsored a successful initiative to fund after-school programs in California last year. He says he'll decide whether to run after he returns from an international publicity tour for his latest movie. The success of "Terminator 3" can only help him in any race for governor, says Dan Walters, a columnist for the Sacramento Bee. "The publicity helps him and some say the Terminator plot is tailor-made for his campaign pitch: it's about a good guy who saves the world from a robot."
East Coast conservative columnists, from George Will to William Safire and Jonah Goldberg, have panned the recall effort as an illegitimate effort to overturn the results of an election that gave Mr. Davis a second term only eight months ago. But recall organizers say their effort should be viewed as an act of political hygiene. And by 60% to 32%, Californians in the Los Angeles Times poll agreed that a recall effort to remove a bad governor was legitimate. They view a recall as akin to firing someone who's been hired for a job on a four-year contract but refuses to work.
A Democratic former legislator who opposes the recall says it's understandable how it came about. "Any normal political party would have sent its leaders in to Gray Davis after the energy fiasco and either told him to go or that he faced a serious primary opponent. Instead Davis intimidated everyone out of challenging him. Then the Republicans blew the general election by nominating a novice candidate. As much as I think the recall delays solutions to our budget mess it's in part fed by frustrated voters dealing with a governor who didn't really deserve a second term."
In the comedy classic "Young Frankenstein," a police inspector played by Kenneth Mars addresses an angry crowd in the town square below the Frankenstein family castle. "A riot is an ugly thing," he lectures the group. Then he suddenly switches his tone and points to the castle, yelling "And I think it's about time we had one!" He then leads the peasants with their pitchforks up the hill. A recall is similarly an ugly thing, but sometimes circumstances make it a necessity. Otherwise, organizers couldn't possibly have collected 1.6 million signatures in the space of four months or drawn support for such a radical move from Californians of all political stripes.
URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110003727 |
