Court Allows Recall to Proceed; Schwarzenegger Gains Support

The California Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for the Oct. 7 recall election as a flurry of candidates entering and leaving the race brought the campaign to succeed Gov. Gray Davis into sharper focus.

On the Republican side, leading officeholders urged the party to unify around Arnold Schwarzenegger. As they did so, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) -- who spent $2.96 million to get the recall on the ballot and to promote his own candidacy -- announced in a tearful news conference that he would not run.

By contrast, Democratic officials expressed growing doubts about whether the governor could hold onto his job and split over how to respond to the recall effort.

“I think Davis faces a very big challenge,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the House minority leader.

“Our first choice is for the recall to be defeated,” she said in an interview. But Democrats need to unite around a backup candidate in case Davis loses, she said, because “we have to prepare ourselves to have a Democratic governor at the end of the day.”

Two Democratic elected officials, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, entered the race saying they should be that alternative candidate.

And U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who pulled her name out of consideration Wednesday despite leading in many polls, seemed to leave the door open, slightly, to changing her mind.

Feinstein said in a CNN interview that she would not reconsider “at this time.” But asked if anything would change her mind, she smiled and said: “It’s kind of interesting that people won’t accept ‘no’ for an answer.

“As you know, the time ends on Saturday, with the exception of a write-in down the pike,” she said.

Late Thursday afternoon, about 20 of California’s 33 Democrats in the House of Representatives held another in a series of urgent conference calls to discuss the party’s strategy.

The delegation will wait until after the filing deadline Saturday before deciding whom to support, Pelosi said afterward.

Others familiar with the call said members of the delegation, who had discussed former White House Chief of Staff Leon A. Panetta and Rep. George Miller (D-Concord) as candidates, were now edging toward Bustamante. There was no support voiced for a Garamendi candidacy, sources close to the delegation said. In an interview, Garamendi disparaged the idea of members of Congress “attempting to play kingmaker.”

Former major league baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth also announced that he was taking out candidacy papers. Ueberroth, a Republican and master organizer of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, said he would position himself as an independent if he ran.

Several prominent California Democrats said they thought that Schwarzenegger, along with the other new entrants in the race, would make it hard for Davis to survive. But others cautioned that the unprecedented nature of a statewide recall made all predictions uncertain.

“We may all be blowing smoke, because this hasn’t happened before,” said Steven Erie, professor of political science at UC San Diego. “But Davis is in more trouble today. You have much more serious contenders in.”

Davis, in Anaheim to speak to the California School Employees Assn. annual convention, expressed “wonderment” over the frenzied activity of the last few days.

“People are parachuting in, people are parachuting out. People are changing their mind almost hourly,” he said.

The governor refrained from talking about his opponents, saying he wouldn’t engage in any “back and forth” until the field was set Saturday.

Even when the candidates are known, he said, he’ll focus on urging voters to defeat the recall instead of attacking candidates. “I’m not a slasher and burner,” he said. “Everyone thinks my team is, but I’m a nice guy.”

Having other Democrats on the ballot might bring more voters to the polls who would oppose the recall, he added in a reversal of his past position that other Democrats should not run.

The ballot will have two parts. In the first, voters will be asked a yes or no question on whether Davis should remain in office. Then, regardless of whether they voted for the recall, they will be able to pick among potential successors to the governor. If Davis falls below 50% on the first question, the candidate receiving the most votes on the second half of the ballot will become governor.

The two Democratic officeholders to get in the race Thursday offered different approaches to that two-part ballot.

Bustamante asked voters to support him but only as a backup. Californians should first vote against removing Davis from office, he said. Vote “no on the recall and yes on Bustamante,” the lieutenant governor declared.

People should select him, he said, “if you care about fair admissions to college education, if you care about protecting the coast, if you care about living wages, if you care about protecting privacy from those who would sell it for profit, if you think it ought to be a woman’s right to chose.”

Garamendi, by contrast, did not come out clearly for keeping Davis in office. “I think any time there’s a vigorous debate in any political party, the citizens are helped,” he said.

The commissioner said he entered the race as a native son, saddened because “people all around this world, they look at California today, they don’t see a golden state, they see a state that’s a basket case.”

One group apparently holding steady for Davis was organized labor.

Miguel Contreras, secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said he was “extremely disappointed” with Bustamante, whom he has known since they were both children in the Central Valley town of Dinuba.

Contreras said he definitely would not back Bustamante or any other candidate to replace Davis. The labor federation is continuing to put all its energy into defeating the recall, he and other labor leaders said.

By day’s end, 37 candidates had filed the required 65 signatures and $3,500 fee with county registrars around the state -- including 12 Democrats, 11 Republicans, 11 independents and one would-be governor each from the Green, Libertarian and American Independent parties.

Among them were three who share names of political figures -- an Edward Kennedy, a John Burton and an S. Issa -- as well as a Michael Jackson from Long Beach and one-time child acting star Gary Coleman.

Also signing on, in Alameda County, was Green Party candidate Peter Camejo, 63, who earned 5.3% of the vote and a third-place finish in last fall’s governor’s race. Camejo said he would be running on a platform favoring legal marijuana, universal health care and increased taxes on businesses and those with high incomes.

Of all the candidates, the one attracting the most attention Thursday remained Schwarzenegger. He received a movie star’s welcome when he arrived to get his candidacy papers at the usually sleepy offices of the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder in Norwalk.

The 56-year-old, clad in a blue sport jacket and tie, negotiated a rope line of about 100 fans in three minutes, signing a dozen or so autographs. He signed one man’s T-shirt that read, “Schwarzenegger for Governor.”

The clerk who greeted him giggled when the actor with the distinctive accent asked if she knew who he was.

Less than 10 minutes later, he was back out the front door, where he spoke briefly and answered four questions in front of about 20 TV cameras and 50 members of the media.

He was only slightly more specific about his agenda than he was a day earlier, when he entered the campaign, promising to have a “detailed” budget plan soon and insisting that there were choices other than program cuts or tax increases to balance the state’s budget.

“We have to talk about a third” option, Schwarzenegger said, “bringing more business back” to increase state income.

“We have to overhaul our economic agenda,” he said. “We have to make sure everyone in California has a fantastic job.” He added that “it is very important that our children have first access to our state treasury.”

Questioned about his qualifications to run an enormous government, Schwarzenegger said that leadership was more important and that he had proved doubters wrong before, rising from life as an Austrian farm boy and immigrant to become “the highest-paid entertainer in the world.”

As he made his first moves as a declared candidate, Schwarzenegger began to win endorsements from fellow Republicans, including former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who said he was surprised Wednesday when Schwarzenegger told a national television audience he would run.

Many Riordan supporters remained bitter, because they said he deserved at least a courtesy notice that his friend would be on the ballot.

In a phone interview from his wife’s Malibu beach house, Riordan said Thursday morning that Schwarzenegger’s announcement had caught him by surprise “because he held back until the last minute.” But he said he had no resentment about being kept out of the loop.

“What I am is relieved that we have someone like Arnold running,” Riordan said, “someone who is going to fight hard for this state.”

Other Republicans closing ranks behind the former Mr. Universe included Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas), who heads the 20-member California Republican delegation, and Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), Doug Ose (R-Sacramento) and Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs).

“Arnold’s going to be taking some new approaches, and he’s not bogged down in the infighting that has developed over the years” within the GOP, Rohrabacher said. “He can come in with a clean slate to the party, and all of its factions are going to be able to work with him.”

In San Diego, Issa said he withdrew from the race after becoming persuaded that other strong candidates would ensure that Davis stood no chance of surviving the election.

“In 61 days, he’ll be gone,” the congressman predicted.

His bowing out had “nothing to do with Schwarzenegger’s decision, other than I needed to know that there were several strong candidates that were going to file,” he said at the county registrar’s office with his wife, Kathy, at his side.

Just moments earlier, a young volunteer had handed out press packets with an Issa statement declaring: “Today, with high hopes and great expectations, I am officially a candidate for governor of this great state.”

Some Democrats, including Sen. Barbara Boxer, had hoped that the state Supreme Court would postpone the election or change the rules, giving the Democrats a way out of the dilemma of whether to stick with Davis.

But the court dashed those hopes with an afternoon announcement that the justices had rejected a series of challenges to the election, including one filed by Davis.

The court unanimously rejected four challenges, including the one from the governor, and turned aside the fifth by a 5-2 vote.

The latter challenge said the requirements for getting on the ballot -- 65 signatures and a $3,500 fee -- were too loose and violated state law.

The majority said that, with no state law specifying the number of signatures required to nominate a candidate for a recall replacement ballot, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley was within his rights to set the standards the way he did.

The two dissenters, Chief Justice Ronald M. George and Justice Carlos Moreno, the only Democrat on the court, insisted that the “extremely low threshold” for making the ballot had triggered “the chaos, confusion and circus-like atmosphere that have characterized the current recall process.”

Legal experts said further litigation was likely, and already several cases are pending in federal court, including one by the American Civil Liberties Union and several civil rights groups challenging the use of punch-card voting machines in several urban counties, including Los Angeles.

“We are not out of the woods yet,” said professor Richard L. Hasen of Loyola Law School.