Representing the flip side

Sacramento

Midway through her debut year as California’s first lady, Sharon Davis received an unexpected invitation: Please, asked officials at Cal State Chico, deliver our commencement address.

She quickly agreed. But as luck would have it, graduation day was a 109-degree sizzler. So Davis, gazing out at the crowd of wilting seniors, cut short her speech and struggled to come up with a memorable send-off.

Her final message to the Chico State class of 2000? “Party on!”

The graduates roared their approval, and Davis figured she had scored big. Then came the next day’s headline: Governor’s Wife Tells Grads to Party On.

Sharon Davis likes to tell this story, which says a lot about her. Unlike her ever-cautious husband, she is voluble, self-deprecating and not afraid to share a laugh at her own expense. She’s also a deft speaker who can read an audience and will risk an embarrassing moment if it feels right.

While polls show that most California voters view Democratic Gov. Gray Davis with something well short of affection, his petite, red-haired wife seems to delight and comfort his constituents wherever she goes.

That ability has made her the not-so-secret weapon in the Davis reelection effort, a surrogate who, some advisors say, tops the candidate himself in her ability to work a room, disarm skeptics and distill the governor’s accomplishments into a real-world message.

“Gray Davis isn’t a political natural,” says Garry South, the governor’s chief campaign strategist. “Sharon Davis is.”

Adds Barbara O’Connor, director of the Institute for Politics and Media at Cal State Sacramento: “Four years of exposure to Gray Davis has not made us like him. Ten minutes of exposure to Sharon Davis makes you genuinely like her.”

While many political spouses campaign grudgingly or want no role at all, Davis, 48, relishes the job. Her years as a flight attendant, she says, were perfect preparation: “I learned to smile even when my feet hurt.”

The governor may be raising millions in his campaign for a second term, but it is his wife who is doing the ground-level work. Traveling five days a week, she rallies volunteers, mingles with labor leaders and preaches the Gray Davis gospel -- moderate policies, incremental change -- to all willing listeners. By late October, that pace will have accelerated to seven days a week.

Consultants say a likable spouse can boost a candidate’s image immeasurably, projecting his human side and, in the case of an unpopular politician, providing living proof that he may not be so bad after all.

“An articulate, energetic wife can stand up and say, ‘You know, I live with this man 24 hours a day, I see how hard he works, what his commitment is,’ ” says Larry Thomas, an advisor to former GOP Govs. Pete Wilson and George Deukmejian. “That presents a tremendous little window for a curious person to look into.”

A sense of awe

Sharon Davis never expected to lead a life even remotely resembling the one she has now. At her 30-year high school reunion in August, she told friends she still pinches herself to make sure it’s all real. At other events, she says the smartest thing she ever did was marry well.

Even after nearly four years as first lady, Davis projects a sense of awe about her station in life. And she still speaks with a candor unsettling for the guarded political set.

Born Sharon Lee Ryer, the daughter of a Navy petty officer and a housewife, she was one of seven children raised in the small town of Santee near San Diego. The boisterous, church-going household was a happy place, she says, though her father was stingy with affection and ordered everyone around. Sharon, a middle child, was plump, wore glasses, got Cs and, she recalls, “had no real direction in life.”

In high school, however, she became what friend Dora Winn calls “the swan” -- slimming down, dying her hair blond and “turning into the quintessential California girl.” At 15, her parents urged her to enter the Miss Santee beauty pageant, and she won. The victory, Davis says, gave her a surge of confidence about what the future might hold.

Her ticket out of Santee was as a flight attendant for now-defunct Pacific Southwest Airlines. Competition for jobs with the carrier was stiff, and Davis recalls being very proud of her achievement until a kid on the street pointed to her uniform -- miniskirt, red high heels -- and observed that she must work for Burger King. After that, she changed clothes at the airport.

It was on a PSA flight that she met her future husband, in a 1979 episode both love to recount. Gray Davis, then chief of staff for Gov. Jerry Brown, was running late, causing the pilot to hold the jet on the runway. When he boarded without an apology, flight attendant Ryer was waiting: “Who do you think you are? You just made 120 people late.”

Not exactly love at first sight.

On subsequent flights, however, the two got to talking. And eventually, as improbable as it seemed to friends, they began dating. She was 25, he was 36.

On their first date, he asked her opinion of the Equal Rights Amendment. “I had no idea what he was talking about,” Davis admits. “I went to work in a miniskirt. Feminism wasn’t part of my life.”

Despite the gulf between them, it was an exciting romance, highlighted by dinners with Brown and his flame of that time, singer Linda Ronstadt. The awkward part was telling her parents -- staunch Republicans -- that she was seeing the top aide to “Governor Moonbeam,” as the iconoclastic Brown was known. The Ryers were appalled, but eventually accepted their daughter’s beau and even voted for him -- at first by absentee ballot to avoid being seen in a Democratic booth.

After five years of dating, she grew tired of being what she calls “the girlfriend of,” a position she says “has no credibility in politics.” “Gray was taking a trip to Israel. I told him that when he got back, we were either engaged or he didn’t need to show up at my place,” she recalls.

The ultimatum worked. In February, the couple will celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary.

Beloved by her staff

The cliche about opposites attracting sums up the first couple quite well. She is light, outgoing, beloved by her staff. He is mercurial, inward, famously difficult to work for.

Although both are health nuts, climbing the Stairmaster with religious dedication, she deviates from their preferred daily diet of chicken and steamed broccoli to indulge in an occasional dessert. He rarely does.

While he’s a workaholic, she has a well-developed playful side. Shortly after the 1998 election that ushered him into office, a Los Angeles radio station invited listeners to call in and vote on whether the new governor was a “babe.” His wife called in.

“He was a babe when I married him,” she declared, “and he’s still a babe today.” In an interview, she elaborates: “I think he is attractive, not in a Ben Affleck kind of way, but he has striking features.”

Asked to analyze her husband, Davis says he is a man of utter discipline and restraint, a reaction, she says, to an alcoholic father who ran out on the family with another woman. She recalls a photo from his years at Stanford University, a group shot of him and his fraternity brothers. All the other Greeks wore togas; Gray Davis wore a buttoned-down shirt.

“It’s as if he knew he was going to be governor someday,” she marvels. “He doesn’t try to be dull, but he accepts who he is and hasn’t tried to remake himself like some politicians.”

Aides to the governor give thanks daily for the first lady. One reason for their affection is her effect on him. A volcanic man, the governor is visibly soothed by her presence.

“She has an alchemy-like effect on him,” South says. “He has a temper,” another official says, “and she can put out the fire. He doesn’t want to behave badly in front of her.”

To maximize her influence, the governor’s advisors like to seal the two alone in a room before a major speech, such as his inaugural address and appearance at the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. During those moments, the governor says, the two often pray, “and she keeps me grounded.”

In the 25 years he’s known his wife, Gray Davis remembers only two days when she got up in a bad mood. But that sunny disposition, nurtured by her nightly reading of the Bible, masks some personal pain.

In 1998, she lost her mother after a long bout with Alzheimer’s disease. Soon after, she found herself caring for her father, stricken with inoperable cancer. He died in 2000.

With her parents gone, Davis became unofficial guardian for a younger brother beset by psychological problems. In between her duties as first lady, she takes his often frantic phone calls or makes emergency runs to San Diego, stocking his refrigerator with food, resolving disagreements, or just providing reassurance.

Talking about him, Davis’ striking blue eyes fill with tears: “You can do the tough love thing, but the other side of me says I’m not comfortable with that. I can’t come home, live this nice life and just turn away from it, so I help him.”

Another brother battles substance abuse, and occasionally becomes homeless and loses touch with his siblings. “Every family has struggles,” she says. “We’re no different.”

Tears also surface as Davis talks of the couple’s inability to have children. “I think because of my faith,” she says, “I could accept that if I was meant to have a child, I’d have a child.

“I love kids,” she adds, “and Gray would have been a wonderful parent. It’s sad when you think about it....” Her voice trails off for a moment. Then the wistful look is gone.

“But I look at our life, at how Gray is in a job that is all-consuming. And I think, can I picture him sitting on the sideline at soccer practice, signing bills?”

‘Snap out of it!’

Gray Davis says his wife has made him a better person. “Some people say I have a long ways to go,” he adds in an interview, “but you should have seen me before I met her.”

Six weeks into his governorship, he says he was “thunderstruck” by all the demands from Democrats wanting action on this or that issue. He complained to his wife.

“She listened for about 10 seconds,” he recalls, “and said, ‘Snap out of it! You’ve worked all your life to become governor, so enjoy every moment, even the bad ones.’ ”

That sort of spousal scolding, however good-natured, would never happen in public. If Davis is anything, she is unswervingly loyal.

Asked to name an issue on which she has disagreed with her husband, she could not come up with a single one. Her Republican predecessor, Gayle Wilson, was not so reticent. She vocally split with her husband over publicly funded abortions, which he opposed as a U.S. senator.

And although Davis cites Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Rodham Clinton as the first ladies she most admires, she lacks their independent, activist streak. Though well-briefed on the issues, she will not lobby her husband or work behind the scenes, advancing an agenda. That low-key style has insulated her from the type of criticism that dogged her heroines.

“Some people seem to want me to whisper in his ear about something,” she says. “But that’s not my job. I’m not going to do that.”

She does, however, share in the frustrations that go along with running the nation’s most populous state. She frets when the governor gets blamed for things that go wrong, but she’s more troubled when he fails to get credit when things go right.

Mostly, however, Davis is too busy and too contented to complain. Aside from her advocacy of schools, reading and the Healthy Families insurance program for the poor, she serves as a mentor to a Sacramento seventh-grader, spending time each week helping the child with her math and other struggles.

In between her official duties, Davis tries to fit in yoga, a round of golf, a hunt for antiques or an hour rereading works by her favorite author, Mark Twain. And recently, she wrote a children’s book, “Capitol Kitty,” based on a feline that lives outside her office window. Proceeds from the book, due out this month, will go toward improving school libraries.

At the moment, the first lady’s life is a blur of campaign stops as she tries to persuade voters her husband deserves four more years. On a recent swing through far Northern California, she faced thin crowds, a grueling schedule and steamy temperatures.

But her smile never dimmed and she showed a nimble mastery of the issues, from the energy crisis to school test scores, water allocations for farmers and expansion of the state’s health insurance program for poor families.

After hearing her stump speech in Del Norte County, the chairman of the county’s Board of Supervisors, Chuck Blackburn, is sold: “She’s a high-energy person, and she knows her stuff.”

Near the end of this journey, Davis is the headliner at a luncheon in the heavily Republican farm-belt town of Colusa. The event is supposed to raise money for two Democrats running for legislative seats, but the turnout is bleak -- 14 people, to be exact. The first lady’s campaign aide looks mortified, and works her cell phone to find out what’s gone wrong. But if Davis cares, she hides it well. Small crowd? Great! That way she can meet everybody! “Whether it’s 12 people or 200, they are there for you and deserve your best,” she says.

Marching into the cavernous room in low-heeled Ferragamos, Davis shares an embrace here, a sympathetic ear there. Then she gives her 10-minute pitch.

“Democrats are moving this state forward!” she concludes, thrusting a fist skyward as a cardboard campaign sign falls off the wall.

The crowd applauds warmly, seemingly shocked that the first lady has bothered to show up in their tiny town, at their tiny event. As Davis leaves, a bodyguard spots the hem of her St. John’s knit skirt unraveling. Unperturbed, she ducks into the ladies’ room for repairs.

Then she’s off again, driving 40 miles across the California rice fields to her next stop.

Despite the heavy campaign schedule, Davis still finds time for what she calls the best part of being first lady, visiting schools. At one elementary campus recently, she patiently took questions from dozens of eager students gathered on the grass. Her final query came from a boy waving a hand way in the back.

“Do you have a limo?” he wanted to know.

“No, but I do have some really cool bodyguards,” the first lady replied, pointing to two dark-suited men in sunglasses.

A loud murmur rippled through the kids. Once again, Sharon Davis had left a crowd impressed.

Wednesday: a profile of Cindy Simon, wife of GOP gubernatorial candidate William Simon.