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Enviros: Issa a green nightmare He said Issa has voted in favor of offshore oil drilling and for relaxing regulations limiting water pollution from mining operations. Issa has also voted against sport utility vehicle fuel efficiency measures, and against strict standards for arsenic in drinking water, Mastrodonato said. "The recall threatens to roll back decades of environmental progress on cleaning up our drinking water, our air and the coast,'' said Michael Stanley-Jones of Clean Water Action. While the League of Conservation Voters rated Issa's environmental voting scorecard at less than 5 percent in 2001, CLCV Political Director Sarah Rose said Gov. Gray Davis had an average four-year environmental voting rating of 78 out of a possible 100. "It's a shame that voters don't realize what a good environmental governor he has been," Ann Notthoff, a CLCV board member, told The Examiner. A spokesman for the Issa campaign disputed the characterization. "Darrell Issa is pro-environment 100 percent," said Jonathan Wilcox, communication director for the Issa for Governor campaign. "Any character- ization of the opposite is an example of the bad politics that the recall campaign wants to counter." Wilcox added that Issa, who owns a hybrid car, has offered legislation to promote hybrid vehicle technology, and has voted to restrict oil drilling off the coast of California. Issa is a car alarm magnate who spent $1.7 million of his own money to gather signatures for the recall. Meanwhile, several lawsuits were filed Monday seeking to change or stop the recall fervor. James Frankel, a retired attorney, is asking the state supreme court to block potential names of successors from appearing on the ballot. He says the California Constitution makes it clear that Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante should assume the governorship for the remainder of Davis' four-year term if the recall is successful. San Francisco attorney Jerome Falk, who is representing Frankel, said article 2, section 15A of the state constitution makes it clear that the lieutenant governor take over should the governor step down. He said the constitution makes no distinction between "death, resignation, impeachment, or recall." "I started to read about this issue and decided only the Supreme Court could resolve this," Falk said. "If you wait until after the election for the court to grapple with the question, you would have a hell of a mess." Falk declined to state his party affiliation, but said the Democratic Party had nothing to do with the appeal. "I have had zero communication with any elected official or any political person from any party," said Falk, who is an attorney with Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin, a San Francisco law firm. Falk said the petition does not seek to interfere with the recall itself, but seeks a "writ of mandate" preventing Secretary of State Kevin Shelley from including the names of replacement candidates on the ballot.
In another federal court challenge to be heard today, University of San Diego School of Law professor Shaun Martin and other legal scholars say it's unconstitutional to require voters to give Davis a thumbs up or down before getting a chance to pick who may succeed him. That unconstitutionally compels voters to vote on one matter to gain eligibility to vote on another,
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