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Defying Davis, Two Democrats Say They'll Run in Recall Vote Later in the day, another prominent Republican was said to be weighing the prospect of joining the race. The Republican, Peter V. Ueberroth, the former baseball commissioner who oversaw the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, began filling out papers for a possible candidacy, according to Dan Schnur, a consultant. Mr. Schnur said Mr. Ueberroth was contemplating a "bipartisan campaign and administration," a unity government of sorts that would bring Democrats and Republicans together in an effort to end the state's economic and political crises. "He is getting a very positive response," Mr. Schnur said. "He will have a decision by tomorrow morning." On the Democratic side, Mr. Davis's supporters played down the significance of Mr. Bustamante and Mr. Garamendi's defections. Those actions followed a decision on Wednesday by Senator Dianne Feinstein to stay out of the race. "I believe Democrats are united on one crucial point, we are against the recall," Mr. Davis said at an education conference in Anaheim. "This process is a wonderment to me. People are parachuting in. People are parachuting out. I'm just going to wait till everyone has decided on Saturday night before I start commenting and getting into the back and forth." But many Democrats said the candidacies of the two major state officials were the worst possible outcome of more than two weeks of jousting between Mr. Davis and his critics. The fallout was twofold, the Democratic officials said. The candidacies ended the party's common approach to keeping Democratic attention focused on the recall vote itself, while also creating a situation where top Democrats will campaign against one another on who would succeed Mr. Davis if he is ousted. Though the defections by no means ensure his defeat, they highlight the monumental task that he faces in not only turning off Mr. Schwarzenegger's celebrity glare, but also quelling an open rebellion in his own party. "The dam has broken," said Leon E. Panetta, the former California congressman who was chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. "It looks like we have the worst of all worlds." The recall mechanics mean that Mr. Davis could be ousted by a simple majority and that a decision on a successor would be in a separate part of the ballot, where the person receiving the most votes wins. A voter could vote to retain Mr. Davis and then vote for another person on the second part. The developments led to the second effort in two days by Democratic members of the state's Congressional delegation to come up with a consensus candidate for the replacement ballot. While there was considerable support for Mr. Bustamante, there was also widespread recognition that Mr. Garamendi, a Clinton administration official who has run for governor twice, was highly unlikely to back out. "Zero is gone," said Representative Brad Sherman, Democrat of the San Fernando Valley, referring to the number of Democratic candidates. "It is either going to be one or several. It is not like we have a playbook on this one. We are running this as we are going." Some Democratic officials said they were still holding out hope that Mr. Panetta might emerge as a consensus candidate, but he said he saw that as unlikely. "Once the barn door is open," Mr. Panetta said, "it is tough to put candidates back inside. You have too many egos involved here to be able to make that happen. That is the nature of politics."
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