Governor Seizes On Energy Issue at Convention

After months of keeping a personal distance from his reelection campaign, Gov. Gray Davis on Saturday stepped into the role of candidate, seizing the energy issue as a bludgeon to flog his Republican foes.

Joining a chorus of Enron-bashing at the state Democratic Party convention, Davis accused his GOP rivals of supporting the kind of free-market free-for-all he blamed for last year’s electricity crisis.

“Here’s a wake-up call: California will return to this disastrous deregulation scheme over this governor’s dead body,” Davis said--drawing a roar for stealing President Bush’s tough talk on preserving federal tax cuts.

Besides serving as the informal launching ground for Davis’ reelection campaign, the gathering of more than 2,500 party faithful in downtown Los Angeles provided a backdrop for early tryouts by prospective presidential hopefuls.

On hand were Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina and John F. Kerry of Massachusetts--none openly admitting any ambitions beyond the wish to see Davis reelected and Democrats prosper in general.

The governor, for his part, didn’t rule out his own run for president, or vice president, should he win a second term in November.

“All that I can tell you is that I have no plans but to work as hard as I can to be reelected and to spend the next four years being governor,” Davis told reporters, leaving the door distinctly open to a possible White House run.

The two-day gathering of the party’s most loyal followers comes at a difficult time for Democrats, as they probe for weakness in a president enjoying stratospheric support in opinion polls. That is true even in California, where Bush lost in a landslide in 2000.

The result was an odd kind of dissonance between partisan hearts and pragmatic heads, which was reflected in Kerry’s speech and the crowd’s response.

“There are no labels--no Democrats, no Republicans. We are united, one America, one president, one purpose, to make clear: No terrorist will steal our way of life in the United States of America,” he said, to polite applause.

But within moments, Kerry turned the events of Sept. 11 to partisan ends--and drew a far more rousing ovation.

“It is time,” he said, “to remind our Republican friends that the firefighters and the police officers they are so quick to make speeches about--the ones who climbed those stairs of the World Trade Center in order to give their lives so that others may live--were all members of a union, and they all believed in the right of workers to organize.”

Most of Saturday’s speakers treated the war on terrorism as a passing note. There were brief statements of bipartisanship, salutes to the nation’s fighting men and women, and commendations for Bush as commander-in-chief.

However, there was no hesitation about assailing him on the home front, with critics picking apart his record on abortion, education, civil rights and the economy. “Being a good American does not mean we have to suppress good debate,” Daschle said.

A particular focus was the administration’s ties to Enron, the collapsed energy giant.

Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, played off the president’s reference in his State of the Union speech to Iran, Iraq and North Korea as “an axis of evil.”

“What he didn’t talk about is the ‘access of evil,’” McAuliffe said. “The unprecedented access he’s given to corporate special interests.”

Others spoke of “Enronomics”--”helping those at the top and leaving everyone else behind,” as Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) put it--and “Enronizing Social Security,” in the words of Daschle, who promised to fight any effort to privatize the retirement system.

Kerry compared Enron to the fictional mafia clan the Corleones--with apologies, he said, to the Corleones--and Edwards said the Enron collapse has contributed to the economic anxiety of Americans who worry: “Is something like this going to happen to me?”

About the only speaker who failed to utter the word “Enron” from the podium was Davis, who has come under fire from his Republican opponents for accepting $119,500 in past campaign contributions from the firm.

“No one fought Enron harder and more successfully,” Davis said at a news conference, citing his efforts to win price caps and re-regulate the state’s energy market. “I see no reason to give back any resources. It would be one thing if I did their bidding, but I was hostile to everything they tried to persuade me to try to do.”

Davis’ appearance at the convention marked a sort of coming out as a candidate. Although he has been omnipresent in television advertising for the past several weeks--and has raised money for reelection since even before taking office--Davis has shunned most overt forms of campaigning.

His appearance Saturday began with a videotaped tribute to himself, featuring testimonials from schoolteachers, firefighters and the parents of a handicapped child who fought their HMO with the Davis administration’s help.

Afterward, the usually buttoned-down governor bounded through the convention ballroom, shaking hands, hugging and slapping backs as he worked his way to the stage amid blaring rock music.

“Four years ago, I promised you that California would be stronger, kinder and better now than it was then,” Davis said after the crowd settled down. “And I have delivered on that promise.”

He went on to extol his record on education, environmental protection, gay rights and health care, drawing repeated ovations.

The response turned to hoots and jeers as he scorned his GOP opponents, never mentioning them by name.

“You can’t govern the fifth-largest economy in the world with warmed-over platitudes,” he said. “You can’t lead this state of 34 million people with old ideas and vague generalities. Talk is cheap.”

Davis added, “Whichever one of you emerges from the Republican primary”--Secretary of State Bill Jones, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan or businessman Bill Simon Jr.--”you’re in for the fight of your life.”

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Times staff writer Dan Morain contributed to this report.