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Davis-Bustamante Rift Shapes Race That was the case in April 1999. Latino leaders, including Bustamante, wanted Davis to drop the state's defense of Proposition 187, a ballot initiative aimed at denying health and education benefits to illegal immigrants. Davis decided instead to ask a federal appeals court to resolve the issues through mediation — a move Bustamante learned about in the newspaper. "That wasn't insulting," Ross said. "That was degrading." Some close to Davis said the governor had tried to brief Bustamante about his decision, but the lieutenant governor boycotted a meeting Davis held after his decision was leaked to the media. What happened next, said one former legislator, had much to do with a rivalry between two Sacramento powerhouses — Ross and Garry South, the governor's top strategist. Bustamante held a news conference on the Capitol steps attacking the governor's position, saying Davis was backtracking on his campaign promise to heal racial divides in the state. "Cruz stood up on the steps and slammed him," the former legislator said. "Gray felt, with some justification, that he got sucker-punched. He felt that Richie [Ross] was trying to get headlines off of Gray." The next week, Bustamante asked the federal appeals court to reject Davis' request for mediation. Soon afterward, nine Bustamante aides lost their parking spaces at the Capitol. The governor's office blamed construction that caused the closure of some parking lots. Bustamante's staff said it was payback. "That was some smarty-pants response to a policy disagreement," Ross said. Since then, the two have been courteous in public but essentially have not spoken in four years, said people who have worked closely with the officials. South said the governor's camp attempted a detente during last year's state election. Davis signed a letter soliciting donations for Bustamante, polled for him and ferried him to campaign stops aboard Davis' leased planes. South himself gave Bustamante a $1,000 campaign contribution, and Davis' campaign donated $24,381 to the lieutenant governor. "I reached out to him very early on and said, 'Let's put bad blood behind us,' " South said. In turn, Bustamante did Spanish-language television commercials urging Latino voters to support Davis. But the brief reconciliation soured when Bustamante aired a campaign ad late in the race focusing on the legislative investigation into one of the low points of the Davis administration — its decision to sign a $95-million computer software contract with Oracle Corp. that state departments said they did not need. Ross said Bustamante ran the commercial to establish the lieutenant governor's own identity. Earlier this month, when Bustamante decided to put his name on the recall ballot, he held a news conference and did a live interview on CNN before he told the governor. Ross insists that Bustamante is not running because of bad blood between him and Davis. "There is no personal animus on Cruz's part," Ross said. "He moved on." But Bustamante's public rebuke of the Davis campaign this week has led some political experts to wonder whether the lieutenant governor will drop the part of his campaign telling people to vote "no" on the recall and focus on his own candidacy. "It's difficult enough to maintain a message of 'no on recall, yes on me,' and at some point I suspected it might break down to simply a 'yes on me' campaign," Giarrizzo said. "One obvious question is: Is this the start of that?"
Ross declined to answer that question. "We're taking it day-by-day," he said.
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