Democrats Attack Davis Over Campaign

Gov. Gray Davis suffered new setbacks Friday in his effort to keep the Democratic Party united behind his fight to survive the Oct. 7 recall election, as U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer openly questioned his campaign strategy.

With Davis struggling to recover from rock-bottom poll ratings in barely two months, Lockyer stunned fellow Democrats by accusing the governor of running an unnecessarily negative reelection effort last year.

He warned Davis not to take a similar approach in the recall race.

“It was a puke campaign, and I didn’t like it,” Lockyer told the Sacramento Bee, according to an article published Friday. “I think it’s a disservice to voters and the profession. I’m just tired of that stuff.”

If Davis runs a “trashy campaign” against potential Republican gubernatorial hopeful Richard Riordan, Lockyer said, prominent Democrats will jump ship and say: “We’re tired of that puke politics. Don’t you dare do it again, or we’re just going to help pull the plug.”

At an appearance Friday in Culver City, where he celebrated the first anniversary of the Amber abduction alert system, the governor refused to answer questions, breezing past reporters with a smile.

Davis media strategist David Doak said personal attacks should be off-limits in a campaign, but he defended “drawing distinctions on issues or pointing out inconsistencies on issues.”

He also recalled that when Riordan ran for governor last year, the former Los Angeles mayor accused Davis of gross mismanagement before Davis started running television ads against him.

“People need to understand that Dick Riordan ran a negative campaign against Gray Davis long before Gray Davis ever made a negative ad against him,” Doak said.

Lockyer’s comments were a stark reflection of Davis’ isolation within his own party. The immediate threat to Davis is that a prominent Democrat might run on the recall ballot as a candidate to replace him. Davis strategists believe the presence of a viable Democratic alternative on the ballot would all but ensure that voters toss the governor out of office.

Davis has a week left to convince fellow Democrats to stay out of the race. The deadline for candidates to put their names on the ballot is Aug. 9. The ballot will feature a yes-or-no question on whether to dump Davis, followed by a list of potential successors in case voters oust him.

By and large, Democratic officeholders have backed the Davis strategy of keeping well-known party members off the ballot.

But Boxer indicated that she could break ranks. A San Jose Mercury News story Friday quoted her as raising questions about whether it makes sense for Democrats to stay off the ballot.

“If that strategy doesn’t work, I’m mature enough -- and have been in this business long enough -- to say you don’t close off other options,” she said. “We’ll know in the next five, six, seven days.”

Boxer spokesman David Sandretti said the senator “feels strongly that the recall should be defeated because it sets a terrible precedent for our state. It’s costly and disruptive at a time when we should be united. It is her deepest hope that these arguments resonate with the voters and that they will turn against this ill-advised idea.”

On the question of fielding a Democratic candidate, he said: “We need to keep our eye on the voters’ views, and that is what she intends to do.”

Boxer was unavailable for comment, aides said.

In making their pitch for unity, Doak and other Davis strategists say that any top-tier Democrat who runs on the recall ballot would be unlikely to win. Voting patterns from legislative recalls suggest that many voters whose support is critical to a Democratic candidate would vote no on the recall, and then pick no one at all to replace Davis, Doak said.

Also, he said, a Democrat would have a tough time raising money with new donation caps in place and would be savaged by wealthy GOP rivals -- and multiple Democrats would probably split the vote and lose. Davis, as the subject of the recall, is not subject to donation caps.

“If somebody’s ambitious, and they want to run, then they’re going to run, and we can’t stop them,” he said. But, he added, “ultimately, everyone will figure out it’s not in their self-interest.”

Davis’ difficulty in keeping Democrats behind him reflects a long-standing chill between him and other members of his party. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, for one, has campaigned aggressively against the recall, yet he offered a biting critique of Davis this week in an interview with KTVU-TV Channel 2 in San Francisco. The mayor said Davis “offends lots of people,” “has zero personal relationships” and is “not hands-on when it comes to substantive involvement.”

Davis is “not as decisive as he needs to be, and he certainly doesn’t have any rhythm in his system that allows him to be comfortable at dinner with you or me,” Brown added.

The state’s most popular Democrat, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has also vowed to campaign against the recall, but has been all but silent about it in public since it qualified for the ballot last week. For weeks, Feinstein has declined requests for an interview on the recall, although she has said that she does not intend to put her name on the ballot. This week, three Democratic members of Congress urged her to run.

Lockyer, who is preparing to seek the Democratic nomination for governor in 2006, has said that he too does not intend to run.

His political advisor, Bill Carrick, said the warning to Davis against waging a harsh recall campaign reflected a widespread sentiment among Democratic strategists that Davis’ nasty reelection effort had been the catalyst for the recall.

Lockyer was “just saying out loud what a lot of other Democrats think,” Carrick said. “They want some assurance that there’s going to be a different kind of campaign. The trash talking of Dick Riordan that’s going on is not very reassuring in that regard.”

Riordan, 73, was the target of scathing Davis ads that helped destroy his gubernatorial campaign. After signs emerged this week that he might run again on the recall ballot, state Democratic Chairman Art Torres said Riordan’s semiretirement since he left City Hall in 2001 suggested he lacked the attention span that a governor needs.

Riordan has not formally announced his plans. But Republican actor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to pave the way for Riordan’s entrance by taking himself out of the race next week. Riordan has said he is likely to run if Schwarzenegger does not.

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Time staff writers Matea Gold and Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this report.