GOP Challengers Spar as Davis Campaigns to Remain in Office

Rifts among three of the leading Republican contenders for governor emerged Saturday as they began competing for support from party loyalists with a united assault on Democratic incumbent Gov. Gray Davis.

In Los Angeles, Davis campaigned against the recall at a labor union barbecue in Echo Park.

“They don’t want to recall me,” he told several hundred supporters, mostly Latinos. “They want to recall the progress we’ve made over the last four years.”

He also voiced support for a bill that would provide driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, a subject of intense lobbying by Latino leaders who had been angered by his resistance to a version of the bill earlier in his tenure.

While Davis hammered GOP lawmakers for proposing budget cuts to health and education programs, his own fiscal record was the target of scathing attacks by Republicans Tom McClintock, Bill Simon Jr. and San Diego area Rep. Darrell Issa.

The three appealed to conservatives at a rally outside the state Capitol by blaming Davis for the state’s fiscal crisis and by calling for the governor’s removal in the Oct. 7 recall election. The rally drew 1,000 supporters of the recall to the Capitol steps, where they carried “Dump Davis” signs and shouted “No more Gray!”

Simon, who lost to Davis in the race for governor last November, said his Democratic rival had “lied about the budget” during the 2002 campaign. He cited the way Davis’ projections of the size of the budget shortfall jumped dramatically after the election.

“I don’t think there are many Californians who believe that Davis honestly thought in early November that the budget deficit would be that low -- only to find out 11 days later that the scales dropped from his eyes like Paul on the road to Damascus, and he had some type of an epiphany,” said Simon, invoking Paul’s conversion to Christianity in the Bible. “I don’t find that credible.”

Simon, a businessman who lives in Pacific Palisades, did not formally declare his candidacy but left little doubt about his intentions. In an aggressive speech that recapped his campaign themes from last year, he outlined budget plans for “when I am governor in 2006 -- or maybe in 2003.”

While Issa, Simon and McClintock were united in their criticism of Davis, they began to diverge in trying to establish which of them would be his strongest rival. If all three put their names on the ballot, they will inevitably compete for the same slice of the electorate: the Republican Party’s conservative base.

All three are fiscal conservatives who oppose legal abortion and gun control.

For now, it remains uncertain whether a less conservative Republican -- such as former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan or actor Arnold Schwarzenegger -- will enter the recall race and lay claim to a broader swath of the California electorate.

Many strategists in both parties believe that the recall ballot would threaten Davis more if it included a Republican moderate with the means to run a serious campaign than it would if all the candidates were conservatives.

Davis, who supports legal abortion and gun control, has used the positions of the Republican hopefuls on those issues -- Issa’s stands in particular -- to bolster his case that the recall is a right-wing plot to seize control of the nation’s most populous state.

As Issa made the rounds of conservative radio broadcast booths at the rally, the San Diego congressman criticized Davis for “still running on social issues at a time in which the state is in terrible financial shape.”

“I think that is very much like Nero fiddling as Rome burned,” he said.

Issa, who is the only one of the three conservatives to have formally declared his candidacy, was the boldest Saturday in drawing contrasts with GOP rivals. A one-time Army officer who made more than $100 million in a rags-to-riches ascent in the car-alarm business, Issa spent $1.7 million to bankroll the recall. Compared with Simon and McClintock, he said, he offers “the best balance” of military, private-sector and legislative experience.

While the candidate stopped short of attacking his GOP rivals, his campaign did not.

In a telephone interview, Issa campaign manager Scott Taylor said the congressman had “led the recall from the front while Bill Simon did absolutely nothing.” And, unlike Issa, Simon, heir to a multimillion-dollar family fortune, “has no up-from-the-bootstraps background,” Taylor said. He also recalled Simon’s repeated bungles last year in the governor’s race, his first bid for public office.

“He ran one of the least memorable campaigns in our history, certainly from a competency point of view,” Taylor said.

Simon responded: “I spent two years trying to recall Gray Davis, so I’ve done plenty to support the recall.”

Taylor also took a shot at Michael Huffington, the 1994 Republican nominee for U.S. Senate. Huffington, a wealthy former congressman who lives in Brentwood, released a statement Friday that he might run for governor as a moderate. Taylor said Huffington, who is openly gay, was not a serious candidate.

“I just have the feeling voters aren’t going to embrace the first bisexual gubernatorial candidate,” Taylor said. Minutes later, Issa’s communications director, Jonathan Wilcox, said Taylor’s remark about Huffington had been “reckless.”

“Might I ask you not to print that?” he asked.

Huffington’s spokesman, Bruce Nestande, declined to comment.

McClintock and Simon were more subtle in trying to separate themselves from their rivals.

McClintock, who lost the state controller’s race in November by a margin of less than 1%, reminded the crowd that he had won 103,000 votes more than Simon did in the governor’s race.

Simon, pointing to his 2002 campaign platform, said simply: “Every candidate’s got to set forth a plan. I’m not sure that we’ve heard a full plan from either Tom McClintock or Darrell Issa. You’ve certainly heard mine.”

All three gubernatorial hopefuls steered clear of guns, abortion and other social issues, despite the presence of activists distributing anti-abortion and pro-gun literature at booths on the Capitol lawns. Instead, they focused almost exclusively on the fiscal crisis, a problem for which voters largely blame Davis, according to polls.

Each of the three vowed to roll back the tripling of the state’s vehicle license fee, but none detailed programs he would cut to compensate for the billions of dollars in state revenue that would be lost.

“If this governor can claim to have the authority to raise the car tax by fiat, then by God, I’ll claim the same authority to lower it right back down by fiat,” McClintock shouted to the crowd, amid chants of “Run, Tom, Run!”

George Gorton, Schwarzenegger’s political strategist, questioned whether Issa, McClintock or Simon could assemble a coalition that encompasses enough people beyond their conservative base to win -- even in a crowded recall race with no runoff. Former Gov. Pete Wilson and other Republicans who have won statewide office in recent elections were moderates, and “that’s the kind of candidate we do best with,” Gorton said.

Issa, Simon and McClintock, he said, would “divide up the far-right vote.”

Democratic strategist Bill Carrick also raised doubts about the prospects of any of the conservative candidates. For them to win, he said, voter turnout must be low. But with the intense national media spotlight on the recall campaign, voter turnout is likely to be relatively high, he said.

“The decibel level of the media coverage is unbelievably loud,” Carrick said. “This has got more attention in the last four days than the entire governor’s race got last year.”

In Los Angeles, Davis called the recall an “ill considered” effort motivated by partisan politics. Davis assailed education and health-care cuts proposed by Republican state lawmakers.

“They say it’s to save money, but they’re more than delighted to spend $60 million trying to overturn an election we had less than a year ago,” he said. “I will not sacrifice the education or health insurance of one child on the altar of Republican partisanship.”

Alongside Davis was a line of Democratic supporters, including state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar), Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), state Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), Los Angeles City Council President Alex Padilla and Los Angeles City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa.

The largely Latino crowd cheered when Davis vowed to sign the driver’s license bill.

“You put that bill on my desk, and I will sign it in a heartbeat,” he said.

Times staff writer Daren Briscoe contributed to this report.