So Many to Run Against, So Little Time

It is the political version of three-dimensional chess played at a blistering pace: The major candidates in the brief recall campaign must outflank each other based on strategic considerations far more complicated than those of a normal election.

A typical election for governor is straightforward. The primary thins the field, leaving two candidates to go head-to-head.

In this first-ever statewide recall campaign, by contrast, several candidates appear to have the money and public recognition to influence the outcome, including Gov. Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Simon Jr., state Sen. Tom McClintock, Peter V. Ueberroth, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, Arianna Huffington and Peter Camejo.

Each must identify where the votes lie in a field of roughly 150 candidates, target the opponent who poses the biggest threat and also stake out a position on the recall itself.

“It’s multidimensional,” said Bruce Cain, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.

“Schwarzenegger has to worry about Ueberroth. Simon has to worry about McClintock. Bustamante has to worry about Peter Camejo and possibly Arianna Huffington.”

” ... You have to decide: Are you going after your opponent? Are you going after Gray Davis? And to what degree are you just promoting yourself?”

A great unknown remains turnout. Among political experts there is no consensus on whether all the attention devoted to the recall -- and all the candidates -- will bring more people to the polls.

For now, the contest is likely to split into a set of races within races.

Schwarzenegger, for example, portrays his main opponent in the race as Davis. He appears to want to hover above the rest of the field on the strength of his celebrity, and make the election a referendum on the governor. In his early campaign statements, Schwarzenegger has skewered Davis while remaining largely silent on the rest of the field.

“We all know that Gray Davis can run a dirty campaign better than anyone, but he doesn’t know how to run a state,” Schwarzenegger said on “The Tonight Show” in announcing his candidacy Wednesday.

But while Davis is the target of the recall, his name is not on the ballot for potential successors-- the law does not allow that. The candidates Schwarzenegger will be competing with include Simon, Ueberroth and Bustamante, and his attempt to appeal to voters across party lines could alienate Republicans in a multi-candidate field.

“Schwarzenegger’s going to do a real dance,” said Kenneth Khachigian, a longtime Republican strategist who advised Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) on getting the recall on the ballot.

“On the one hand, he wants Republicans to vote for him because he’s a Republican. And he’ll pitch himself as the last, best hope for the party to win the governorship,” Khachigian said.

“At the same time, he’s out there talking to moderates and the more independent Democrats,” he added. More ideologically motivated Republican candidates “will beat up on Schwarzenegger,” he said.

Schwarzenegger may hope to pick up votes from Democrats, but Bustamante’s entry in the race will reduce the number of Democratic votes available, said K.B. Forbes, Simon’s communications director.

Bustamante “gives the Democratic voter peace of mind. They have someone who is left of center, who is a recognized Democrat, who is prominent. And it makes them more comfortable than voting for someone with an ‘R’ in their name,” Forbes said.

But Bustamante faces his own set of complicated choices. As a Democrat, he is hewing to the party’s insistence that he call on voters to oppose the recall. So he must avoid demonizing Davis.

As a candidate in his own right, Bustamante needs to convince voters to see him as a potential governor and as the one safe alternative for Democrats. That part of his effort got an important boost with Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi’s departure from the race Saturday.

He also needs to decide how much to challenge the two candidates who appeal to voters on his left -- Camejo and Huffington.

If Bustamante wants to be the true Democrat in the race, Simon wants to be the real Republican. His strategists hope to exploit concerns by conservative activists that Schwarzenegger is an ersatz Republican who is not sufficiently opposed to taxes, abortion and gun control.

Already, no less prominent a conservative than Rush Limbaugh has questioned Schwarzenegger’s conservative credentials.

The actor’s campaign “may not be what it appears,” as far as him being a “great heavyweight conservative,” Limbaugh said recently on his radio show. “Don’t go getting all highfalutin-excited about this yet.”

Then there is Peter Ueberroth, a Republican trying to run as an independent. As a former major league baseball commissioner who organized the successful 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Ueberroth wants to be seen as a kind of senior statesman, a sober alternative in a field that includes comics, TV has-beens and various publicity seekers.

“He benefits from the portrait [of the campaign] as a circus,” said Dan Schnur, a Republican political consultant working for the Ueberroth campaign. Ueberroth looks more attractive to the extent the recall is perceived as “less than serious,” Schnur said.

But Ueberroth has been out of the public eye for many years. “He has to reintroduce himself” to the public, Khachigian said. “He is 15 years past his heyday.”

Navigating the race poses a different set of challenges for Davis than for any other candidate. In last year’s reelection campaign, he had just one main opponent to worry about: Simon. Now, Davis is trying to run less against any individual opponent than against the recall process itself.

The dynamics of the race will force Davis, known as a tough campaigner, to shape a more nuanced message, to refine the classic campaign formula of battering the opponent, experts say.

Polls show Davis is so unpopular that he lacks credibility in touting himself or his record and is in peril if he attacks his opponents.

“He doesn’t have the warmth or interpersonal skills that make people feel they know or like him,” said Barbara O’Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at Cal State Sacramento.

If he is to beat the recall and save his job, his strategists believe, the governor must persuade voters the recall is a sideshow run amok. Davis and his loyalists portray the process as anti-democratic and subject to abuse.

Republicans have “found the recall as a ridiculously easy technique to throw a monkey wrench into the election process,” said Garry South, a longtime Davis advisor. “If this succeeds, I guarantee you we will not have heard the last of the recall. They will launch a recall against someone else shortly later.”