Untility bills and the Car Tax spells the end for Davis. I am still on the mortgage on a house in Orange County. Every Morning, Waikiki looks better and better to me.
In Southern Calif., Dream Gone Sour Fuels Recall Rage
San Diego, Orange Counties May Be Epicenter of Davis's Undoing
By Rene Sanchez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 8, 2003; Page A03
ESCONDIDO, Calif. -- Before the lights went out in California two years ago, Michael Butler usually paid about $150 a month for electricity. Now, his bill tops $250.
"This state is a total mess," said Butler, a marketing executive. "It's just one problem after another."
Before California's budget went bust this year, Demetrios Kritikos paid about $200 annually in car taxes. His new fee just arrived in the mail. Now, he owes $600.
"That's ridiculous," said Kritikos, who owns a local dry cleaning store. "Things are not good at all."
This growing middle-class suburb of San Diego where the sun almost always shines is usually, like so much of Southern California, an easygoing, optimistic place. But that mood has changed.
These days, it is the epicenter of a furious political revolt.
Voters here say they are counting the days to California's gubernatorial recall election next month. They sound exasperated with the state's political culture and desperate to restore the California of their memory or imagination -- a golden land of opportunity.
"The whole wonderful lifestyle that people have had here for so long feels at risk," said Katherine Rankle, who stopped with her adolescent son at a shopping mall a few days ago. "People are fearful for their jobs, of taxes getting raised, of having to move somewhere else because everything is getting so crowded and expensive. You hear it everywhere. It's scary."
Same day, same mall: Two middle-aged men were in a coffee shop, discussing the recall. They said they have had all they can take of Gov. Gray Davis (D). Another man who had been eavesdropping walked over and interrupted them.
"Two words," he said, "massive mismanagement."
Then he raised his iced latte in a kind of toast to the extraordinary political drama unfolding in the state. They all exchanged resolute glances. It was as if a posse in jean shorts and flip-flops had just been formed to get the governor.
"It's time to make a change," one of them said.
The rage has been growing for months. Here in San Diego County, which along with neighboring Orange County has long been home to many conservative voters, the recall has caught fire like nowhere else in California.
Nearly 400,000 residents in those two places signed petitions this summer in support of throwing Davis out of office, three times the number who did in the six counties of the heavily Democratic San Francisco Bay Area.
Even some voters here who didn't join the movement then now say they are intrigued with the historic Oct. 7 election, and are tempted to dump Davis.
That many of them tend to vote Republican only partially explains the fervor for the recall. Some say they are willing to go to the extreme of ousting Davis less than a year after his reelection mostly because they want to send a message to both parties that they are fed up with inattention to California's serious problems, and weary of partisan gridlock and gamesmanship.
The region has become a caldron of political discontent, and its enthusiasm for the recall is a microcosm of the anxiety and anger rippling across a state that only five years ago was basking in the nation's biggest economic boom.
A survey last month by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that now nearly 75 percent of voters believe that the state is headed in the wrong direction. The survey also showed that support for the recall is not limited to Republican voters. Sixty percent of independent voters and 44 percent of Democratic voters in the state also said that they favor it.
Overall, 58 percent of voters said they are ready to recall Davis. A Los Angeles Times poll later in the month found that the electorate supports the recall by a margin of 50 to 45 percent.
"I've never seen anything like this," said George Plescia, a Republican who was elected last year to represent Escondido in the state assembly. "People here tend to have a relaxed attitude, to be more patient with things. But I think their frustration has grown tremendously even since last year."
That dismay is being stoked for hours every day on political talk-radio programs broadcast across Southern California -- and now it is being organized for the recall vote.
Republican leaders in San Diego County have begun assembling and training more than 1,500 volunteers to swarm every precinct here before the election and inspire voters to go to the polls. The grass-roots campaign is the largest the county GOP has ever staged.
Marie Waldron has no doubt that turnout for the recall will be strong. She serves on Escondido's city council and owns a small printing shop. Voter fury has been rising here, she said, since California's failed experiment with electricity deregulation created energy shortages two years ago that led to blackouts and steep increases in utility rates. That problem hit San Diego County first, and hardest.
Waldron said that she has lost one-third of her business since then because clients fleeing high costs have relocated either to Arizona or Nevada. California's record $38 billion budget shortfall this year, which has forced the state to triple taxes on vehicles and slash many programs, and which has ruined its credit rating, is creating another exodus of businesses and residents, she said.
"This has been a long time coming," Waldron said. "It's electricity costs, housing costs, insurance costs, the deficit, higher taxes -- the list just goes on and on. People are saying, 'Gee, the sunshine is great, but I keep paying and paying and not seeing much benefit anymore.' This election is about Davis, but for many people it's also about making a statement: Enough is enough."
Many California residents came here, or have always stayed, for the endless summer, or the promise of good jobs, or for a way of life that looks to the future and rarely feels burdened by the past.
Now, amid hard times, many complain of paradise lost: They're constantly stuck in traffic, or engulfed by suburban sprawl, or can no longer afford to buy a home.
Candidates hoping to replace Davis are playing to the prevalent nostalgia here for the have-it-all California dream, even though many voters have only known it as fantasy.
California historian Kevin Starr said that such longing has ignited many other political uprisings in the state. "People have always felt a utopian dimension to life in California," he said. "That creates high expectations and a psychological volatility when things don't go well."
Michael Capaldi, chairman of the Lincoln Club of Orange County, Southern California's most prominent Republican group, characterized support for the recall another way: "We're a state that's always out of control, and that's good," he said. "Californians don't have roots. There's no political caste system. The parties are weak. The independent mind is welcome. Voters see the recall as another chance to exert their power, and they're never going to turn that down. They know that whoever is governor after this is going to be a humble man, because now there's always going to be this threat in the background."
Here in Escondido, such sentiment dominates conversation about the recall.
Many voters may have signed petitions calling for the special election largely because they believe that Davis has been a bad governor, or to help return Republicans to political power in California. But many of them also sound like they have far more than partisan motives on their minds.
Ask Michael Simon, a sales manager, about the recall and before long he starts talking about how the San Diego area is becoming "just like Los Angeles."
"It's definitely changing," he said. "It can take forever to get home now after work, and no one even seems to have a plan to deal with it."
Ask Demetrios Kritikos, the dry cleaner, about the recall and before long he starts talking about the burdens that new immigrants are putting on the state's budget. "Too many are coming in," he said.
Katherine Rankle, a Republican who said she backed Davis last year, did not sign the recall petition this summer. But now, she is wondering whether replacing the governor with a political outsider might be just the jolt California needs.
"Maybe there's no other way to solve our problems," she said.
Wayne Dauber, a corporate pilot, didn't sign the recall petition when it was circulated here, either.
But he said he believes that Davis and other political leaders in California deserve whatever upheaval the election may bring.
"The people we've had in office have been making decisions just so we can keep them in power," he said. "There's a real breakdown in the system. It's definitely not functioning anymore."
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