California Delay Deepens Already Bitter National Gulf

Take a disputed election and toss in a controversial court decision and suddenly California looks an awful lot like Florida.

The recall vote, with its eccentric cast of characters, has been a source of great mirth to many outsiders looking in. But with Monday’s move to delay the Oct. 7 election, the race has suddenly been converted from a curiosity into a national rallying cry for partisans on both sides.

To Republicans, the decision underscores the wanton will of the activist judges they rail against, suggesting judicial appointments could become a higher-profile issue in next year’s presidential campaign.

To Democrats, the mere thought of the Supreme Court stepping into yet another election fight is enough to incite outrage and, potentially, boost voter turnout next year.

The result is more partisan division, a bitterness that may spill over to the 2004 contest and open a gulf even deeper than the one that produced the last 50-50 presidential election.

“The truth is, we’re seeing the increased polarization of American politics manifest itself very dramatically in this recall,” said Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist who lives in Los Angeles and works for Democratic Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, a presidential hopeful from Missouri.

“There’s been a whole series of events that cause people to say, ‘I’m on this team. I’m not even going to look at the other team.’ ”

Unlike the aftermath in Florida, it is no longer just Democrats accusing their opponents of stop-at-nothing treachery.

After Monday’s decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Republicans across the country are seething as well, using some of the very same language heard from Democrats more than 2 1/2 years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to end the Florida vote count, putting George W. Bush in the White House.

“There’s a feeling that liberals will do anything to win,” said Stephen Moore, a conservative activist in Washington. “They’re relying on these three rogue judges to overturn and essentially take the ballot away from voters.”

As Republicans hastened to point out, the judges who ordered the postponement were all appointed by Democratic presidents.

“The action of the 9th Circuit is just another brick in the edifice of judicial overreaching that conservatives complain about,” said William Kristol, publisher of the Weekly Standard magazine and a prominent voice in conservative circles.

“The 9th Circuit is just another piece of evidence for why it matters who is president with the power to appoint federal judges.”

However, while many Republicans have been quick to voice outrage, the response from the White House has been notably muted.

President Bush and his political lieutenants have steered clear of the recall from the start -- at least publicly -- and lately have carefully avoided taking sides in the fight between actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and conservative state Sen. Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks, the main Republicans in the race to succeed Davis.

Asked for two days running about the 9th Circuit decision, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters: “You know our position on that. That’s a matter for the state of California.”

A GOP consultant with close ties to the White House said Bush strategists “have a tremendous amount of discomfort with the situation,” especially after their unsuccessful attempt last year to promote former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan over another conservative, Bill Simon Jr., in the Republican governor’s race.

“They can’t play favorites,” said the consultant, who requested anonymity to preserve his relations with the White House. “While on the one hand they might say the most electable candidate is Schwarzenegger, they are scared to death of doing anything that gets them crossways with the most conservative elements of the party.”

Indeed, many party activists are keeping a close watch on California.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a key Bush administration ally, has criticized Schwarzenegger for refusing to sign an explicit no-new-taxes pledge.

The actor’s refusal, Norquist wrote this week in the Washington Post, has fueled McClintock’s success and split the Republican vote, allowing Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante to sustain a lead in polls.

“A Republican cannot be elected and govern successfully,” Norquist said, “without staking out an unequivocal anti-tax-hike position.”

Other activists are carefully watching to see if Monday’s decision halting the Oct. 7 vote is overturned, either by the full 9th Circuit, which is considering whether to order a rehearing of the case, or the U.S. Supreme Court.

“If the courts delay this, or the recall never happens, you will have such an infuriated conservative voter base they will strike out at Democrats across the board,” said Moore, whose conservative Club for Growth has emerged as an important force in Republican politics.

“Conservatives across the country feel this is just an outrageous miscarriage of justice.”

For Democrats -- or at least those with an interest in winning the White House -- the court decision was both welcome and a source of some consternation.

The postponement of the recall vote may help Davis, according to most analysts, by kicking the election over to March, when California will hold its presidential primary. That would presumably mean more Democrats turning out to vote.

But, for the presidential candidates, it also means another six months of sharing the political spotlight with the likes of Schwarzenegger, Davis, Bustamante and others among the 135 candidates on the recall ballot.

“If this thing expands out to March, although the fever-pitch coverage subsides pretty quickly, it does to some degree affect the dynamic of the presidential campaign, because it’s the one big thing out there everyone wants to talk about,” said Garry South, a strategist for Davis as well as Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, another of the 10 Democrats seeking the White House.

That said, South and many other Democrats believe that a Supreme Court decision stepping into the matter and forcing a vote Oct. 7 would be a provocation not soon forgotten by partisans still infuriated by the court’s intervention in the case of Bush vs. Gore.

Already, Democrats have been telling voters that the recall is “part of an ongoing national effort to steal elections Republicans cannot win,” as Davis said in a speech kicking off his anti-recall effort.

The practice started in Florida with the 2000 presidential election, Democrats say, continued with unusual off-year redistricting efforts in Colorado and Texas, and now extends to California, with the recall attempt coming just months after Davis won reelection to a four-year term.

In recent days, a parade of national Democratic figures -- from former President Bill Clinton to the Rev. Jesse Jackson -- have trooped across California to second the governor’s assertions.

The latest was Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, another of the contenders for his party’s presidential nomination.

“Don’t let the Republicans monkey with the democracy of California,” Kerry said at a Wednesday stop alongside Davis at a Westwood veterans center. “This recall is an abuse of the democratic process, and I hope California will reject it.”

Said Paul Maslin, a Davis pollster who is doing the same work in the Democratic presidential campaign of Vermont’s Howard Dean, “The 2000 election has cast a shadow over this whole thing.”

“The original fuel for combustion was laid in December 2000,” Maslin said. “If the Supreme Court overturns this postponement ... there’s going to be a firestorm. It’s going to energize Democrats to vote in droves and numbers like you’ve never seen.”

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Contributions race

These contributions were reported by major candidates on the recall ballot who have received at least $100,000 for their gubernatorial campaigns. Totals are for all contributions through Aug. 23 and for contributions of $1,000 or more through Wednesday. Donations of $1,000 or more must be reported within 24 hours of receipt.

*--* Contributions Candidate or committee Total reported Reported in 24 hrs ending Wed Cruz Bustamante $2,455,992 $185,700 477 contributions 18 contributions

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* Five groups or individuals gave $21,200,* including the California Teachers Assn., a union that has supported Gov. Gray Davis’ anti-recall efforts; a union representing firefighters from the California Department of Forestry; Pacific Cement of San Francisco; and Vance Jay Owen, a bankruptcy lawyer from Corpus Christi, Texas.

Bustamante controls three other committees:

Californians for Stability is an anti-recall fund that has raised $412,500. The Cruz Bustamante Committee Against Prop. 54 has collected more than $4.3 million, most of which was transferred from the Lt. Gov. Bustamante 2002 Committee, an old reelection campaign fund. That committee reported raising more than $900,000, excluding the transfers.

*--* Contributions Candidate or committee Total reported Reported in 24 hrs ending Wed

Arianna Huffington $587,052 none 2,310 contributions Tom McClintock $918,912 $17,000 1,236 contributions 7 contributions

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* Corona del Mar developer William Dohr contributed $5,000. Conservative commentator Bruce Herschensohn, an unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate in 1992, gave $1,000.

*--* Contributions Candidate or committee Total reported Reported in 24 hrs ending Wed

Arnold $8,429,558 $371,684 Schwarzenegger 1,006 contributions 64 contributions

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* Arthur Rock, co-founder of software giant Intel and a member of Schwarzenegger’s economic advisory team, gave $21,200. Henry Samueli, co-founder of Broadcom, a broadband communications technology company, contributed the same amount. Dewayne Zinkin, a Fresno real estate developer, gave $21,200; his family’s trust, which controls an exercise equipment company, made an identical gift. Five car dealerships or dealership executives gave a total of $32,600.

Schwarzenegger also controls Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall, a pro-recall committee, which has raised more than $1 million.

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Davis Fights the Recall

*--* Californians Against $6,327,114 $262,128 the Costly Recall 383 contributions 18 contributions of the Governor

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Gov. Gray Davis controls this anti-recall committee.

* SeaSpine, Inc., a Riverside medical equipment maker, gave $50,000. Hollywood nightclub owner and longtime Davis supporter Eugene La Pietra contributed $25,000; he previously gave $50,000 to the anti-recall effort. Mercury General Corp., a Los Angeles insurance company, contributed $25,000, doubling its total to the committee. The group also has contributed $10,000 to McClintock. Fourteen plumbling unions or councils gave more than $950,000 in late August and early September.

Davis also continues to raise money through his former reelection committee, the Gov. Gray Davis Committee, which has transferred more than $1 million to Californians Against the Costly Recall. The committee has raised more than $350,000, excluding the transfers.

A third committee, Taxpayers Against the Governor’s Recall, has reported more than $2.7 million in contributions.

*Contributions to candidates from each outside source are limited to $21,200. There is no cap on the amount candidates can give their own campaigns, or on donations to noncandidacy committees.

Reported by Times staff writers Joel Rubin and Jeffrey L. Rabin and Times

researcher Maloy Moore.

Source: Campaign reports filed with the California secretary of state

Los Angeles Times