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Democrats Criticize Governor, Join Race August 08, 2003 Support for California Gov. Gray Davis (D), who faces a recall election on Oct. 7, eroded dramatically yesterday as the wall of Democratic Party solidarity he had hoped would protect him collapsed in the wake of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision to enter the recall fray as a Republican. A trio of powerful San Francisco Democrats -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Mayor Willie Brown -- all either criticized Davis or went frosty in their support. California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante (D) and Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi (D), both proven statewide vote-getters, put their names on the ballot to replace Davis should he lose the recall, foiling Davis's plan to survive by giving Democratic voters no alternative to keeping him in office. Another of Davis's survival strategies -- to demonize Rep. Darrell Issa (R) for bankrolling the recall effort -- went flat when Issa took himself out of the race. And Davis's lawsuits asking the California Supreme Court to allow his name to appear among those of the replacement candidates, and to delay the election until next spring, were both rejected by a unanimous court yesterday evening. In short, on the carnival ride of California politics, Davis was white-knuckled in a free-falling car. Schwarzenegger's entry into the race, announced Wednesday night in a nationwide television appearance, shook up an already chaotic situation and left even some of Davis's leading allies doubting his chances. "Democrats will have a very difficult time defeating Arnold Schwarzenegger," Brown said in an interview with CNN. Brown, who fought for weeks to build a "firewall" of Democratic solidarity around Davis, added, "We are in trouble on the Democratic side with Gray Davis." But leading Democrats expressed doubts that the party can unify around an alternative to Davis. The strongest shot as a white knight, in the view of party strategists, was Feinstein, who decided Wednesday to stay out of the fray and fight the recall. Another widely mentioned rescuer, former California congressman Leon E. Panetta, said yesterday evening that he will not run and that he does not expect any other senior Democrats to enter the race. "I think the best strategy for confronting the recall was to be unified in opposition to it," Panetta said. "And if there was to be a candidate [other than Davis] to have that candidate emerge as a consensus of the party. Both of those strategies have kind of collapsed. Democrats are not unified in fighting this and that complicates the chances of winning. "So it comes down to whether Gray Davis can defeat this on his own," Panetta said. Feinstein agreed. "This is about him," she said of Davis, during a CNN interview. The senator stood by her decision not to run, while noting that Democrats from across the state had begged her to get in the race. Pelosi, in a statement, said resignedly that California's Democratic congressional delegation "will continue our discussions about the best way to defeat the recall." Davis advisers said they remain hopeful in spite of it all. "If you go back two weeks and look where we were and compare it to where we are now, we're not in bad shape," said David Doak, the governor's media strategist. "We were worried, number one, about Dianne Feinstein. She was the only Democrat well-known enough and popular enough that she could've caused people to vote no on Davis just to get her in. Now she's out.
"Our second-biggest worry was [former Los Angeles mayor Richard] Riordan, a moderate Republican with a record of management," Doak continued. Although Schwarzenegger said in an appearance yesterday that he has Riordan's backing, Riordan remained silent on his plans, while unnamed
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