 |
 -0 |
 |
|
||||||||
 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
|
Governor's backers chip in to fight recall After donating $5 million to Democrats and Republicans during the last election year, the president of the Spanish-language Univision network now has given $50,000 to a committee supporting Gov. Gray Davis in his fight against a proposed recall. A handful of other wealthy Californians have joined him as well, raising $344,000 for the Davis anti-recall committee. This is an odd-numbered year, which usually means a relatively quiet political season. But the potential recall of Davis has oiled the state's fund- raising machine once again and forced special interests to start taking sides. One prominent group, the California Business Roundtable, announced Wednesday it was opposing the recall, arguing it will have "no productive results" as the state faces a fiscal crisis and a $38.2 billion budget deficit. The group never endorses candidates, but felt the recall could be chaotic. "This is not politically motivated," said Bill Hauck, president of the group, who surmised that his members donate more to Republicans than Democrats. "It is motivated by the fact that we need our public officials to be focused on the issues that are most important to our citizens." At the same time, millionaire Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), has provided nearly $450,000 for the recall and paid for a full-page newspaper ad Wednesday in the Sacramento Bee calling for Davis' ouster because of how he handled the state budget. Issa quoted Davis from his 1999 state of the state address, where the governor said, "Accountability should not become another buzzword. It must have real meaning in the real world." At the end of the ad are the words: "Darrell Issa. Governor." To Davis' camp, the recall can't be ignored. "Darrell Issa's money has made this a real campaign," said Steve Smith, a longtime Davis political adviser who is helping with the anti-recall effort. "Will he get the signatures? I'm not so sure of that. This will be a fully engaged, on both sides, grassroots campaign. I think people are well past the stage of, 'Gee, will people notice they are there?' He's spending hundreds of thousands of dollars buying signatures. We're engaged." Until recently, a Davis recall was dismissed in Sacramento as a long shot. But the central group organizing the recall said it is collecting about 17,000 signatures a day toward the nearly 900,000 needed by Sept. 2. If that momentum is sustained, the recall movement could have enough signatures by mid-July to qualify the recall for a special election in the fall. If the recall measure qualifies, voters will be asked whether Davis should be removed from office and who should replace him. That scenario has sent other California politicians scrambling to decide whether they should join Issa on the recall ballot. And the unexpected quickness of the signature-gathering effort is forcing Davis' longtime donors to decide whether they want to write one more check. So far, only familiar names -- a smattering of unions and the ultrawealthy -- have showed up. The newly formed Taxpayers Against the Governor's Recall has hired two of Davis' veteran fund-raisers and started collecting signatures opposing the recall, as a way to tie up paid signature-gathering workers and engage voters one-on-one. Davis, less than a year after being re-elected, also has begun collecting campaign money through his gubernatorial committee. He has raised $88,667 since May 8 from various unions, nursing home conglomerate Beverly Enterprises,
Blue Cross health care and South San Francisco biotech firm Genentech, according to campaign filing reports.
|
|
|
