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Davis' Reelection Team Regroups to Fight Recall Davis had hoped to use his second term to repair an image tainted by his response to the California energy crisis and his dogged pursuit of campaign money. But now, amid rising anxiety over the recall among Davis supporters, the Democratic governor once again is fighting for sheer political survival. To plot strategy against the recall, the tight-knit team that guided Davis to victory in the gubernatorial elections of 1998 and 2002 has reassembled informally over the last several weeks, mainly on conference calls. Among them are Garry South, the governor's former chief campaign strategist; pollster Paul Maslin; media consultants David Doak and Tom O'Donnell; former Davis cabinet secretary Susan Kennedy; the governor's chief of staff, Lynn Schenk; and his top fund-raiser, lobbyist Darius Anderson, according to people familiar with the matter. "All of us who used to be part of the old team are coming together, and we're going to do what we can to fight this thing," a Davis advisor said. The Davis brain trust, now enlarged to include former Al Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, has worked without pay to shape the campaign plan, the advisor said. In charge of executing it is Steve Smith, who took a leave of absence as state labor secretary last week to lead the new committee set up to save Davis: Taxpayers Against the Governor's Recall. The committee has hired two former Davis fund-raisers to collect as much as $4 million, organizers said. If the recall qualifies for the ballot, Davis is expected to raise millions more for a full-scale television ad campaign. People close to Davis say he was determined after his reelection to regain his public standing by minimizing his political fund-raising and showing the kind of leadership in the state fiscal crisis that many Californians thought he lacked during the electricity debacle of his first term. Even now, Davis, who was deeply engaged in oversight of previous campaigns, has made a point of staying relatively detached from the anti-recall effort, they say. In February, when the recall threat surfaced, Davis had his advisors quietly assess the legal and political ramifications. But it was only in April that they seriously mobilized behind the scenes, largely in response to the sudden emergence of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) as the key force behind the recall. And it was only last week that the extent of Davis' preparations became clear as the anti-recall committee moved on several fronts to blunt Issa's momentum. "I think they're very afraid of this being on the ballot," said Dave Gilliard, director of Issa's committee, Rescue California Recall Gray Davis. "They've finally pulled their head out of the sand." With tens of millions of dollars in personal assets at his disposal, Issa is dispatching paid crews around the state to circulate the petition for a recall election. It will cost more than $2 million to acquire the nearly 900,000 valid signatures required to get a recall proposal on the ballot, analysts say. Although the recall forces have turned in fewer than 19,000 signatures, they insist they have hundreds of thousands more being processed ahead of the Sept. 2 deadline.
So far, Issa has put up $445,000 of the $814,000 raised by pro-recall committees. He has a strong incentive to donate more: Issa plans to run for governor on the recall ballot as a candidate to replace Davis. In the end, analysts say, Issa's money could transform the recall from
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