 |
 -0 |
 |
|
||||||||
 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
|
Recall backers see fishhook win But Issa has since opened his own campaign organization, and Rescue California has shifted gears to a campaign whose singular purpose is ensuring Davis loses the recall question, which in essence is the third and most unpredictable leg of a race that also features the governor and his challengers. Though not advancing any candidate, Gilliard invited Davis' potential replacements to use his organization as a surrogate for going negative, a campaign strategy that works, yet is a double-edged sword that usually results in lower favorable ratings for the candidate who does so. Leaving that task to Rescue California could allow the governor's challengers to not only survive the political slings and arrows that are a Davis trademark, but to benefit from them. "The Republican candidates, if they're wise, will run positive campaigns about the future and allow us to engage Gray Davis," Gilliard said. "They've gone down that road before and he's still the heavyweight champion of the world when it comes to political slugfests." For help, Rescue California retained Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster based in Washington. Luntz polled 800 registered voters in California and determined that if the vote were held today, Davis would lose his job. Whether or not that holds true on election day remains a question mark, the pollster said Thursday while in Sacramento to unveil his analysis to reporters. "The outcome of this recall is absolutely, positively in doubt," Luntz said. The voter psychology of recall elections is sketchy, but Gilliard's study of two successful California legislative recalls found that about 12 percent to 15 percent more voters answered the recall question than picked a successor, which will be part two of October's ballot and whose victor need only earn a plurality of votes to win if Davis gets dumped. The 2002 California gubernatorial electoral map was similar to that of the 2000 presidential race, whereby President Bush won more overall states than Al Gore, but lost the popular vote because the former vice president won more votes in urban mega cities like Los Angeles and New York. Simon, in losing to Davis, won 40 out of 58 counties, but the governor beat him in Los Angeles and San Francisco counties, which account for about 10.6 million people -- or almost a third of California's population. But voter turnout in the upcoming special election is unlikely to mirror that of a general election, said Luntz and Chris Lehane, one of Davis' political advisers. Special elections tend to attract more Republicans than Democrats, and Luntz said the intensity of negative feelings toward Davis felt by likely recall voters is something he has never seen before. "They're spitting mad here in California," Luntz said. Lehane countered that once people learn of the recall's projected $35 million cost to the taxpayers and the GOP's plan to turn California into a bastion of right-wing Republicanism, they will oppose it. The challenge is to get that message out and mobilize rank-and-file Democrats, he said. The governor is likely to focus on a couple of key areas, including the San Francisco Bay area and others that are proportionately Democratic, Lehane said. Gilliard said it's precisely those areas that his campaign will tend to ignore, as for every recall supporter he gets to the polls there, he might simultaneously remind two opponents to vote as well.
However, said Gilliard, Rescue California will be on the air in Los Angeles County, a majority Democratic county of about 4 million registered voters that netted 275,548 valid pro-recall signatures. One of multiple planned TV
|
|
|
