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Issa's bid to recall Davis simmered, then boiled In mid-April, after the U.S. attack on Iraq, Issa, a junior Republican congressman from the San Diego area, was still a presumed candidate for a 2004 Senate race against Democrat Barbara Boxer. Drawing on his Lebanese roots, he was traveling the Middle East as a post-war diplomat for the Bush administration. By April 22, even before the jet lag wore off, the 49-year-old conservative had embarked on a different mission, urging Republican state lawmakers and business leaders to back a lagging attempt to recall the state's second-term Democratic governor. Davis' supporters saw Issa's plunge into a yet-to-exist governor's race as a reckless move. They called him volatile and waved chapters from his past to bolster their case, from a car-theft arrest three decades ago to a complaint last year that Issa had tried to bully a Border Patrol agent who pulled him over for speeding in a construction zone. What the governor and his friends didn't know was that Issa had been quietly plotting his moves since the California Republican Party convention in February. "What's happened has been almost exactly what he outlined that day in the hotel room, what he walked me through in February," said state Assemblyman Ray Haynes, R-Murrieta. Issa had taken Haynes into his confidence during the convention, calling him to a private meeting at the Hyatt Regency Sacramento. "He said ... it's not smart to do anything before the war," Haynes recalled. "He just walked through how it needed to go. The only thing that delayed it was the war started two weeks later than he thought it would." Talk of a recall was started in early February by some anti-tax and conservative Republican activists but lacked momentum until Issa's public involvement. Recall backers, who face the daunting task of collecting nearly 900,000 voter signatures supporting their effort, blame Davis for the worst budget crisis in state history, an estimated shortfall of $38.2 billion. The California secretary of state's office is expected to report the first official tally of signatures received to date on Tuesday. Issa, a multimillionaire who made his fortune selling car alarms, first donated $100,000 to launch a recall fund-raising committee, an amount that had grown to $445,000 by Friday. Then he announced he was setting up an exploratory committee for his own gubernatorial campaign should voters reject Davis. Issa envisions himself as a force who would resist tax increases and bring spending back in line while improving California's business climate. "The governor has broken the trust," Issa said in a telephone interview between meetings with potential supporters. "And when problems get worse, he always finds someone to blame instead of solving them." Garry South, a Democratic strategist and longtime Davis adviser, said Issa is foolish to campaign before the recall has qualified for an election. "This is about the crassest display of political hubris I've ever seen," he said, noting that in California's history, each of 31 attempts to recall a governor failed. Issa's rise to wealth, then politics, is marked by long odds, blemishes, second chances and perseverance. The Christian grandson of a Lebanese immigrant, Issa -- whose last name is Arabic for Jesus -- grew up in a big family in a blue-collar Cleveland neighborhood. He dropped out of high school and joined the Army but came home when his father fell ill.
Hanging out with his older brother, who had already been arrested several times, Issa was picked up on suspicion of car theft and indicted in 1972. Charges were later dropped; Issa says police jumped to
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