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Recall drive has almost half on petition Recall organizers said that when the Davis administration ordered the state to triple the state's car tax last week, as part of a budget-balancing maneuver, it energized the petition-gathering crew. Organizers said they had as many as 1,000 people collecting signatures around the state last weekend. "Some of our circulators made homemade signs about the car tax to put up at their tables, and that brought people over," said David Gilliard, a political consultant in charge of the Rescue California recall committee. "That is such a huge issue. It was perfect timing for us." Gilliard said about 900,000 signatures have been collected, with about 300, 000 in the "pipeline" being processed either by his workers or Costa's. There was a significant amount of skepticism about the progress of the recall campaign after organizers announced May 5 that 100,000 signatures had been collected -- only to have Shelley's office later officially report less than 20,000. DISCREPANCY CITED Carroll Wills, a spokesman for Taxpayers Against the Governor's Recall, said petition gatherers have once again reported to the media a number higher than the official count from an independent source. He said that when the petitions are scrubbed of nonregistered voters, the recall campaign likely has only about one-third of the signatures needed with only about three weeks to get the rest to qualify for a special election. "At some point, the disconnect between their political spin and the reality at the ground level needs to be called into question," Wills said. "Every reality on the ground suggests they are nowhere near where they say they are, and certainly are not on pace to make a special election." E-mail Robert Salladay at rsalladay@sfchronicle.com. ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback
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