Recall sponsor confident about election -- and future
By Daniel Weintraub -- Bee Columnist - (Published October 2, 2003)
A week before California's historic recall election, with candidates criss-crossing the state trailed by the national media, with opponents and social commentators warning that the recall will be the ruin of civic life as we know it, the man who helped start it all was alone and at peace, passing the time in his suburban Sacramento office in the corner of a former roller skating rink.
"The recall process has worked exactly the way it was supposed to," Ted Costa said between peeks at polling data that have left him supremely confident that the recall will succeed Tuesday. "It's worked because it had broad-based support."
Costa, 62, drafted the recall petition that targeted Davis, and he gathered the first 100 signatures on the document presented to the governor for his response. While others helped spread the word and paid for the workers to circulate the petitions, Costa was the recall's early public face, an apt symbol of an angry and frustrated electorate.
Now, at least for the moment, the telephones have stopped ringing, the television crews have moved to the campaign trail, and Costa, the chief executive officer of People's Advocate, an anti-tax group, has been left to himself to plan an election night party and ponder the state's past and future.
He seems almost puzzled by how California got itself into this fix in the first place. Gray Davis, he says, was on paper "the ideal governor." With his credentials and the landslide that put him in office in 1998, he should have been a smashing success.
"He was the chief executive to a governor, he served as controller, he knows the legislative process," Costa said, ticking through the now-famous Davis résumé. "But he became governor and he was afraid to make a decision until the last possible moment."
Costa rejects critics who say the recall will simply make future governors even more timid, unwilling to offend the voters for fear of finding themselves on the wrong end of a petition.
"By January, the new governor is going to make a dozen tough decisions," Costa predicts, not allowing himself to believe that the governor might be Davis. "If they don't, the problem is going to get even worse."
Costa believes that a successful recall will further embolden California's direct democracy movement, a prospect that might make some cringe. He thinks the next governor will have to go "to the people" to win changes that the Legislature will try to block. The repeal of the car tax, and possibly a recent bill giving illegal immigrants the right to get a driver's license, will end up on the ballot, he says.
But Costa suggests it's foolish to believe this recall will breed a string of them, even as he concedes that someone is surely going to try to remove the next governor.
"Without a doubt," he says, noting that every recent governor has been the target of a recall petition. "It doesn't cost them anything to do it. If 500 people registered for governor and 135 paid the fees to do it, someone is going to try to recall the governor." But, he adds, "It will be a failure. It won't have broad-based support. It won't have the backing of the people."
What if the pubic employees unions launch it, with their millions of dollars in dues set aside for political purposes?
"It would be a big gamble for them," he said. "If they lose they are going to lose a whole bunch. So I don't think they will do it."
The recall provision, Costa says, is like a fire extinguisher.
"No one loves a fire," he says. "But when you get a fire, you put it out. And when someone blatantly abuses their office, they deserve to be recalled." Now it's time to put the tool back "on the shelf," he says. "It will be there when we need it. That's enough."
Costa says he won't automatically oppose proposals to change the way the recall works. A runoff election might be OK, he says, to winnow the candidates in the replacement election. But he smiles at the suggestion made by some that the signature threshold be raised from 12 percent of those who voted in the last election to something much higher, perhaps 25 percent. Costa notes that the Davis recall campaign eventually collected 2.1 million signatures (1.3 million were verified by the counties), more than twice what they needed to qualify the measure for the ballot. And he says his troops would have gathered more if they were needed.
"We could have got 3 million," he says.
This election, Costa believes, is the first time in at least a generation that California voters have felt that their vote matters. The idea of removing Davis, something about the finality of the act, even without being sure of his replacement, has given voters a sense that they are back in control of the state's affairs.
"People feel powerless," he says.
Not anymore. Not if Tuesday's election goes the way Costa thinks it will.
sacbee.com |
