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In Southern Calif., Dream Gone Sour Fuels Recall Rage "This state is a total mess," said Butler, a marketing executive. "It's just one problem after another." Before California's budget went bust this year, Demetrios Kritikos paid about $200 annually in car taxes. His new fee just arrived in the mail. Now, he owes $600. "That's ridiculous," said Kritikos, who owns a local dry cleaning store. "Things are not good at all." This growing middle-class suburb of San Diego where the sun almost always shines is usually, like so much of Southern California, an easygoing, optimistic place. But that mood has changed. These days, it is the epicenter of a furious political revolt. Voters here say they are counting the days to California's gubernatorial recall election next month. They sound exasperated with the state's political culture and desperate to restore the California of their memory or imagination -- a golden land of opportunity. "The whole wonderful lifestyle that people have had here for so long feels at risk," said Katherine Rankle, who stopped with her adolescent son at a shopping mall a few days ago. "People are fearful for their jobs, of taxes getting raised, of having to move somewhere else because everything is getting so crowded and expensive. You hear it everywhere. It's scary." Same day, same mall: Two middle-aged men were in a coffee shop, discussing the recall. They said they have had all they can take of Gov. Gray Davis (D). Another man who had been eavesdropping walked over and interrupted them. "Two words," he said, "massive mismanagement." Then he raised his iced latte in a kind of toast to the extraordinary political drama unfolding in the state. They all exchanged resolute glances. It was as if a posse in jean shorts and flip-flops had just been formed to get the governor. "It's time to make a change," one of them said. The rage has been growing for months. Here in San Diego County, which along with neighboring Orange County has long been home to many conservative voters, the recall has caught fire like nowhere else in California. Nearly 400,000 residents in those two places signed petitions this summer in support of throwing Davis out of office, three times the number who did in the six counties of the heavily Democratic San Francisco Bay Area. Even some voters here who didn't join the movement then now say they are intrigued with the historic Oct. 7 election, and are tempted to dump Davis. That many of them tend to vote Republican only partially explains the fervor for the recall. Some say they are willing to go to the extreme of ousting Davis less than a year after his reelection mostly because they want to send a message to both parties that they are fed up with inattention to California's serious problems, and weary of partisan gridlock and gamesmanship. The region has become a caldron of political discontent, and its enthusiasm for the recall is a microcosm of the anxiety and anger rippling across a state that only five years ago was basking in the nation's biggest economic boom. A survey last month by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that now nearly 75 percent of voters believe that the state is headed in the wrong direction. The survey also showed that support for the recall is not limited to Republican voters. Sixty percent of independent voters and 44 percent of Democratic voters in the state also said that they favor it.
Overall, 58 percent of voters said they are ready to recall Davis. A Los Angeles
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