Majority Would Vote To Oust Davis, Poll Shows
SACRAMENTO - With the campaign to recall Gov. Gray Davis gathering surprising steam and the Democrat's popularity in free fall, California's chief executive is ratcheting up his last-ditch crusade to derail the potentially career-ending initiative.
As money and support flow into recall offices around the state, a poll released today shows for the first time that, if given the chance, a majority of likely California voters would cast their ballots to toss Davis from office.
The startling increase in momentum has prompted Davis and his loyalists to launch a fierce counter-attack on the man responsible for breathing financial life into the recall campaign: Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista.
On Wednesday, the governor denounced Issa as a ``right-winger'' who was trying to finagle his way into the governor's office, and Davis loyalists increased their attacks on the Southern California congressman. One launched a bare-bones Web site, www.stopissa.org, that features a menacing man wearing leather gloves pointing a revolver at the screen. A red-lettered caption warns, ``Don't let Darrell Issa hijack California's election process!''
All of it may be too little, too late for Davis. Some of his allies privately conceded that it's no longer a matter of if the recall gets on the ballot, but when.
``The momentum seems to be clearly on the side of the recall proponents,'' said one prominent Davis supporter.
Armed with $645,000 from Issa, the recall campaign is steaming along, and organizers confidently predict they will be able to gather enough signatures in the next few weeks to put the issue before voters this fall. Today, Issa's team will start sending out another 1 million recall petitions to Republicans and Libertarians across California.
The first 1 million -- sent to homes with at least two Republican voters -- has generated a huge surge of support with signatures and $5 checks pouring into a stuffy Sacramento office.
So far, the recall team says it has turned in about 250,000 signatures to elections officials. But the campaign says it has nearly 700,000 of the 1.2 million signatures it wants to gather and expects to wrap up the process by mid-July. The recall measure needs 900,000 valid signatures to get on the ballot.
If that happens, state elections officials could be forced to call a special election this fall to decide the governor's fate. Voters would be asked if they would support the governor's recall, and who they would choose to replace him.
Even if the recall campaign fails to meet that ambitious deadline, it has until Sept. 2 to gather enough signatures to put the issue on the March, 2004 primary ballot.
The recall campaign got a shot in the arm from the latest poll from the Public Policy Institute of California. The poll showed that a narrow majority of likely voters would toss Davis from office.
In its survey of 961 likely voters, the non-partisan San Francisco think tank found that 51 percent would back the recall, while 43 percent would oppose the campaign. Support for the governor's ouster came from not only Republicans but also half the independent voters and a third of the Democrats.
The poll also showed the governor's approval ratings hitting a historic low of 21 percent among likely voters. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
``This certainly speaks a lot to the depth and breadth of discontent,'' said survey director Mark Baldassare. ``It's not just a partisan issue, and it certainly suggests that this is a serious matter for the governor.''
Davis and his allies are doing everything they can to throw a wrench in the works. The campaign fighting the recall has quickly scooped up more than $750,000 in donations and is trying to cast Issa as an anti-abortionist, anti-environmentalist upset over Davis' re-election last fall.
``The only thing that has changed since last November's election is Darrell Issa's ambition,'' said Steve Smith, campaign director for Taxpayers Against the Governor's Recall.
Issa, a wealthy entrepreneur, ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1998.
In an attempt to corner the market on professional signature gatherers, Davis allies are collecting their own signatures for an anti-recall petition. The petition wouldn't be placed on the ballot, but is meant to demonstrate support for Davis. The dual campaigns have created a ground war on the streets.
Dorothy Parris, a retired wedding-dress maker who is coordinating the recall campaign in San Jose, said she and her team have been intimidated and threatened by Californians so outraged by the prospect that they have torn up petitions and scribbled on them in rage -- tactics that have prompted calls to police. Other signature-gatherers have been lured away by the promise of more money working for the anti-recall campaign.
Smith, the recall opponent, said none of his people is threatening recall signature gatherers. Issa spokesman Scott Taylor dismissed the strategy as the work of ``thugs.''
``We always expect the worst from Gray Davis,'' he said.
On Wednesday, Davis sought to discredit the recall campaign as little more than a rich man's attempt to meddle in big league politics.
``The person financing it is a right-winger, Congressman Darrell Issa,'' Davis said on KGO radio. ``He just wants to run for governor on the cheap.''
In an appearance on CNN's ``Inside Politics,'' Issa fired back in what is quickly becoming California's second campaign for governor in a year.
``It is very clear that every governor of California has been better than this one,'' Issa said. ``And any governor that would be elected post this governor in a recall effort would be better than this governor.''
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