Davis Seeks to Rally His Base

Gov. Gray Davis, a longtime political centrist, appealed aggressively Saturday to his Democratic base, hoping to cast the upcoming campaign in sharply partisan terms to survive California’s first statewide recall election.

Davis made his second trip in three days to San Francisco, the state’s most enduring Democratic stronghold, this time for his first rally of the recall campaign. Joining him on stage was a cast of well-known Democrats: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Mayor Willie Brown and Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the party’s national committee.

With a banner proclaiming “Democrats United” as his backdrop, Davis told 250 cheering supporters that the recall would threaten legal abortion, gun control, labor protections, gay rights, public schools and preservation of the California coastline.

“This is not simply about me,” he said. “This is about all Californians who believe in a progressive agenda.”

Davis’ appearance came as Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, responding to an appeals court ruling last week, ordered county registrars to verify all voter signatures on recall petitions submitted to them by July 16 and forward their findings to Shelley next week.

Since proponents turned in about 1.6 million signatures, and fewer than 900,000 are needed for the recall to reach the ballot, Shelley’s directive makes it likely that he would certify next week that the recall has qualified for an election. If so, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante must schedule the election to take place within 60 to 80 days. The election could occur as early as Sept. 30.

In San Francisco, Davis already was speaking as if the election were on, staging a campaign kickoff that was an overt display of his widening effort to mobilize Democrats. Their support is crucial to his campaign, but by no means assured; the most recent Times Poll found that one in three Democrats would vote to toss Davis out of office.

An immediate goal for him as the campaign starts is to win back those wayward Democrats. Over the last 10 days, Davis has appealed for support among Latinos, African Americans and Asians -- all core Democratic constituencies. He also has sharpened his rhetoric against Republican lawmakers who have proposed billions of dollars in cuts to public schools and health care, among other things, rather than raising taxes, as Davis has suggested.

“The Republicans’ intransigence has taken us to the brink of disaster,” he charged on one Los Angeles radio show.

In a state where voters are solidly aligned with the Democratic Party and just last year denied Republican candidates every statewide office, Davis’ approach has obvious political advantages. It is not without risks, however, particularly for a candidate who has clung to the political center, cultivating bipartisan support at the expense of delivering for traditional Democratic constituencies.

For Davis, who enjoys little personal popularity among voters or party leaders, the principal advantage of the partisan strategy is that it could convert a campaign about him into a broader defense of the Democratic Party against Republican attack. For other Democrats, meanwhile, the press to rally around Davis is less about protecting him than it is about preserving the party’s dominance in state politics.

Privately, Davis has led efforts to reassure Democratic leaders that his campaign crew is ready with a solid plan to beat back the recall. In Washington, his campaign advisors laid out that plan last week for Sen. Dianne Feinstein and other California Democrats in Congress. A key part of the plan is for Democrats in public office to stick with Davis. So far, they have toed that line. No Democrat has made any public moves toward running to replace him. At the rally, Pelosi and McAuliffe cast the recall as part of a national GOP agenda to thwart Democratic gains.

“Once again, the Republicans are trying to steal an election from the Democrats,” McAuliffe said. “Al Gore won the state of Florida, and Gray Davis won as governor in the state of California.”

To finance his campaign, Davis is preparing to collect millions of dollars from labor unions and other allies. Strategists say that if he raises much money before the stalled state budget passes, however, Davis would risk reviving accusations that he trades government favors for campaign money. Davis, who has long denied the allegations, sharply scaled back his fund-raising after he won reelection in November.

“I’d rather not do it,” Davis said in an interview last week at his state Capitol office. “I thought most of it was behind me, but obviously we’ll have to gear up.”

Polls show that Republicans overwhelmingly support the recall, and they also suggest that Davis faces a challenge in keeping fellow Democrats from supporting his ouster. The Times Poll found that more than half of Democrats gave Davis negative job ratings, but the governor’s advisors say they expect to persuade most of them to oppose the recall anyway, especially if the alternatives stay limited to Republicans and minor-party candidates.

“We found in our research that the Democrats come home pretty quick,” said David Doak, the Davis campaign’s chief media advisor.

But the governor’s strained ties with labor, minority groups and other core factions of the party have complicated his quest for Democratic loyalty. When he took office in 1999, some of those groups expected Davis to adopt their agenda wholesale after 16 years in the political wilderness under Republican governors. Instead, Davis dashed their hopes by sticking largely to the centrist course that has defined his career.

The powerful California Teachers Assn., a staunch ally in his 1998 campaign, withheld donations and criticized his school policies when he sought reelection. His refusal to sign a bill granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants -- a topic intensely covered by the Spanish-language media -- led Latino Democrats in the Legislature last year to yank their endorsements.

Now, Democratic groups are savoring their new leverage over Davis. His vulnerability was palpable at a Latino civil rights group’s recent dinner in a Los Angeles hotel ballroom. The banquet host, Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, was blunt.

“The governor is in a bit of a pickle, and he needs the Latino vote,” Gonzalez told the crowd of several hundred Latinos. “So I thought I’d take the opportunity to tell the governor to help us help him.”

As Davis chatted with Mayor James K. Hahn at a front-row table, Gonzalez whipped up cheers by cranking up pressure on the governor. Shouting with a preacher’s cadence, he called on Davis to sign the driver’s license bill.

“You all know the ‘Jerry Maguire’ movie? ‘Help me help you,’ ” Gonzalez said. “Well, governor, we want you to help us help you.”

Moments later, Davis won a standing ovation for speaking in favor of the bill.

“I believe that hard-working people who contribute to our economy, subsidize our food, make it easier for us to stay in a hotel, and have spent a good deal of time in this state ought to have the right to drive a car,” he said.

On Tuesday, Davis sought to mend fences with another ally, the Greenlining Institute, a group that promotes economic growth in urban minority areas. The group’s leaders said Davis refused to meet with them during his reelection campaign and paid scant attention to their concerns.

Bob Gnaizda, general counsel to the group, said “dissatisfaction remains high” with Davis, but leaders of the institute were thrilled that he met with them Tuesday and made a statement -- at their request -- denouncing a ballot measure that would ban state collection of statistics on race.

That measure already has qualified for the next statewide ballot, so it would go before voters at the same time as the recall.

“The recall has shocked him into being a more engaged governor who seeks out the opinions of his natural allies,” Gnaizda said. “The governor had ignored his base for a long time.”

Democratic strategist Bill Carrick said that if Davis keeps Democrats out of the race to replace him, support for the recall is apt to decline among Democratic voters, but “that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have to go out there and really hustle to get them jazzed up.”

“This is going to be an election that’s going to be decided by who gets their vote out,” he said.

In the extraordinary circumstances of the Davis recall, turnout patterns are impossible to predict.

Special statewide elections typically draw a disproportionately Republican electorate. Given the attention focused on this campaign -- and its sheer novelty -- it is hard to know whether that pattern will hold this time.

The committee set up by the Davis campaign team to fight the recall has filed a lawsuit that could delay the election until the March presidential primary, when a strong Democratic turnout is likely.

But the judge handling the suit has declined to slow the count of signatures.

Regardless of the election date, some strategists question Davis’ prospects for keeping his job when polls show nearly seven in 10 voters are dissatisfied with his performance.

“He’s going right back to his base supporters, but that’s not enough to win -- and he can’t put together enough of those people to overcome the recall,” said Republican analyst Tony Quinn. “The recall is much more a revolt against the political class, of which Davis is the personification.”

In shaping his campaign strategy, Davis has turned for advice to Feinstein, who overwhelmingly beat back a recall in 1983 while mayor of San Francisco.

He also has sought guidance from former President Clinton, another Democrat who was confronted by rivals determined to kick him out of office, in his case, through impeachment.

“I have frequently sought his advice and counsel and am grateful for the suggestions he’s made to me over the course of the past two weeks,” Davis said in the interview.

Looming over the Davis campaign is the state’s $38-billion shortfall and the legislative stalemate on passing a budget. Polls show that voters -- like his Republican foes in the Legislature -- blame Davis for the fiscal crisis. Davis, however, is trying to turn it to his advantage in the campaign.

In San Francisco on Thursday, he paid a campaign-style visit to a Chinatown medical clinic, where he cast himself as a savior of health insurance for children who might lose their coverage under Republican budget proposals. In a scene reminiscent of the television ads he used in his reelection campaign, Davis warned that more than 100,000 children would be denied immunizations under the “hardhearted Republican plan.”

“When Republicans say they’re against any taxes at any time, I want the public to know the flip side of that,” he told a bank of seven TV news cameras as patients and clinic employees in white lab coats looked on. “The flip side of that is kicking 400,000 kids off their health insurance program.”