 |
 -0 |
 |
|
||||||||
 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
|
Recall Vote Set for Oct. 7 The tight timetable touched off an immediate scramble for voter loyalty by the Democratic governor and his potential opponents. Davis formed a new campaign committee to fight the recall; Republicans vowed to use the historic election as a vehicle to end years of mounting losses at California's polls. "We're not going to blow it," said GOP strategist Dave Gilliard, director of the Rescue California committee that plans to spend $15 million urging voters to dump Davis. "I've seen our party outsmarted before." The governor hopes to define his campaign as a drive to stop Republicans from forcing an unpopular conservative agenda on the state. But his immediate challenge is to keep fellow Democrats from putting their names on the ballot. So far, the state's top Democrats in elected office have pledged to stay out of the race in a display of party unity that Davis sees as crucial to his political survival. But under the schedule set Thursday, candidates have 16 days to decide whether to run. So until that deadline, the unpopular governor could face a struggle in keeping fellow party members behind him. A top Democratic strategist called the dynamic "a total game of chicken," saying the sentiment among labor leaders and other key Democratic players was "well beyond nervousness." "There's no question that there's real fear of us losing the governor's office," the strategist said. The subtle positioning by potential Democratic candidates — closing the door, but not all the way — could be seen in a statement Thursday by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Recent polls have shown her as the most popular California Democrat. "Nothing that I know right now interests me in running," she said in Washington. "I think the recall is a terrible mistake for California." Bustamante, the Democrat who runs just behind Feinstein in recall polls, was more definitive. After announcing the election date, he said there was no chance he would be a candidate on the recall ballot. The scope of the election had been in doubt since Tuesday, when Bustamante suggested that he might not include the election of a Davis successor on the ballot. That approach would have at least delayed, and perhaps denied, candidates' opportunity to run to replace Davis. But in his proclamation calling the special Oct. 7 election, Bustamante said the ballot would indeed have two parts: the recall proposal, followed by a list of candidates to succeed Davis in case a majority votes to bounce him from office. Also up for a vote will be an initiative that would stop the state from collecting and using most kinds of racial and ethnic data. The initiative, backed by University of California Regent Ward Connerly, qualified earlier this year to be on the next statewide ballot. As the potential candidates stepped up their campaign discussions, lawyers for the Davis organization pressed forward with their legal challenge to the recall. After failing to get the California Supreme Court and two lower courts to block Secretary of State Kevin Shelley from certifying the petition for an election, they urged the high court Thursday to stop preparations for the vote. There was no immediate response from the Supreme Court. Davis' lawyers say recall sponsors illegally employed out-of-state petition circulators to gather signatures. Those signatures, they say, should be deemed invalid.
Legal experts predicted that additional court challenges would be mounted as partisans on all sides examine recall laws that have never before been used in a statewide California
|
|
|
