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State Democrats recall lessons of Florida The new rhetoric from the anti-recall forces is intended to focus the public's attention on a single message -- that conservative Republicans like Rep. Darrell Issa of San Diego County are attempting to overturn a fair election. EFFORTS TO SHAPE PERCEPTION This image, again, is a reverse of the situation in Florida. In part because a few TV networks predicted Bush the winner early, Gore was viewed as the challenger during the 2000 recount. That put Bush at a strategic advantage, Lehane said. Davis is attempting to capitalize on the same type of image by reminding voters he was legitimately elected eight months ago. Lehane said the California recall is similar to Florida in that "both represent an effort to circumvent the democratic process. What you have in California is the very same types of conservative operative forces essentially trying to overturn what was the expressed will of the people." Lehane called the recall forces "disgruntled right-wing losers," an echo of the "Sore-Loserman" campaign that emerged from Republicans against Gore and his running mate, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, in the Florida recount. Perhaps inevitably, the focus in the recall also has shifted to California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, just as Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris came under fire during the 2000 recount. Sacramento Bee columnist Daniel Weintraub questioned last week whether Shelley "is the new Katherine Harris" for attempting to delay the petition counting, and conservative radio host Eric Hogue said he would "keep the heat" on Shelley if he "decides to play with the process." In an interview, Shelley said he understood the newfound focus on his office but would do nothing to delay the counting of ballots. Shelley said he had a team of lawyers looking at laws governing recalls and was "going to do this absolutely by the book." OUTREACH TO BUSINESS GROUPS A large part of the anti-recall strategy, pushed by labor leader Art Pulaski and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has been to show a united face for Democrats and their traditional constituents. They also want to paint recall forces into an ideological corner by enlisting support from business groups, including the California Business Roundtable, and other special interests not normally aligned with Democrats. "When I talk to business leaders, to financiers, they say this is not about supporting the governor," said Pulaski, president of the California Federation of Labor. "This is about the damage the recall does to the state's effort to improve the economy and balance the budget. I view this as much broader than party politics and much deeper than that." On Sunday, Pulaski joined several Democratic and Republican business leaders in signing an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times asking Bush to call for an end to the recall campaign. The signatories included Democrat Eli Broad, chairman of AIG SunAmerica Inc., a financial services company; Republican Arthur Rock, a founder of Intel; Republican John Doerr, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist; and Republican F. Warren Hellman, chairman of investment firm Hellman & Friedman. Democrats believe they have no choice but to form a united front. The alternative is too politically dangerous, because it would give Democratic voters a palatable alternative to Davis and essentially encourage them to vote against him on the recall and then pick a Democrat as the replacement governor.
But political consultants said the new Davis strategy also risked alienating Democrats from the recall altogether, which could shift the advantage
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