Davis Plays Up Devotion to Job in Bid to Save It

In his five successful campaigns for statewide office, Gov. Gray Davis relied on a simple strategy: He battered his opponents with a barrage of negative ads.

Now, with Davis facing an unprecedented Oct. 7 special election to recall him, prominent Democrats have persuaded him to try a less confrontational tack: Forgo the negativity and remind Californians as frequently as possible who is still governor.

On Saturday in Santa Monica, Davis signed legislation to ban toxic flame retardants. On Monday, he endorsed an antidiscrimination measure with rabbis in West Los Angeles. Today, he will support abortion-related legislation with women’s rights activists in San Francisco. Also today, the administration is scheduled to announce the state’s first new gambling agreement with an Indian tribe.

In a daily stream of public appearances -- usually in urban centers such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, on topics such as the environment that Davis considers crucial to loyal Democratic voters -- the governor has sought to project the image of a man consumed with the work of running the nation’s biggest state.

“My focus is to do my job,” Davis said this week in an appearance at the Museum of Tolerance in West Los Angeles, using a line that has become a mantra. “A lot of people want to be governor. I am privileged to be governor.”

By repeatedly portraying himself in the role of diligent chief executive, methodically attending to the problems of California as the unruly recall campaign swirls around him, Davis is taking a page from the playbook of former President Bill Clinton. In fact, Davis aides said, it was Clinton who advised Davis to embrace the strategy, which Clinton used in his own time of crisis when he faced impeachment during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Clinton and Davis speak by telephone three or four times a week, with the former president freely offering advice and encouragement, and the two men met for about 40 minutes last week in Chicago. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) offered Davis similar counsel, the aides said.

For Davis, however, the Clinton comparisons may end there. Unlike Clinton, who was popular with voters and, according to polls at the time, had the support of most Americans as he fought his impeachment, Davis has approval ratings at slightly above 20%.

Nonetheless, Davis advisors are strongly pursuing the “business as usual” strategy. They argue that the governor can turn his poll numbers around if he shows he is working on the problems voters have blamed him for, while emphasizing the popular causes and programs he championed during better financial times.

They are banking on the public growing tired of the recall fray, and ultimately looking to a Davis seemingly hard at work as the responsible choice, even if they continue to dislike him. Davis aides also hope that images of a hard-working governor could help counteract another negative perception -- that he pays more attention to raising money than running California.

“People are upset in this state, and the governor understands that,” said Peter Ragone, communications director of the Davis campaign. “While other people are aggressively playing politics, the governor is aggressively governing.”

Aides say the opportunity to get out and talk about his policy record has energized Davis, a development also noted by more impartial analysts.

At the Santa Monica ceremony Saturday on toxic flame retardants, the notoriously stiff Davis seemed unusually relaxed. When a crying child interrupted his prepared remarks, he improvised smoothly.

Well aware that the recall was the pressing news of the day -- and the paramount interest of the throng of reporters and television cameras -- Davis won laughs when he began a news conference by saying with a wry grin, “Let’s first deal with this subject and then we’ll deal with any other subjects you might have on your mind.” Later, asked about being blamed for the state’s financial difficulties and resulting budget cuts, he quipped: “My critics blame me for a rainy day.”

“I would characterize what the governor is doing as being the governor aggressively,” said Davis campaign director Steve Smith, “meaning that he’s not going to be sitting back in sort of a ‘rose garden’ strategy but in fact being the governor and getting out there, signing bills in a very public fashion and drawing attention to issues that are important to him.”

Yet even Davis soberly acknowledges that he faces an uphill fight to save his job. And his strategy raises the question: Can a governor blamed by many Californians for all that has gone wrong in the state defeat the recall by simply doing his job over the next two months?

“What got Davis in this hole was the perception that for the last several years he had priorities other than governing,” said Republican consultant Dan Schnur, alluding to Davis’ prodigious fund-raising. Schnur is advising businessman Peter Ueberroth in his campaign to replace Davis.

“This is exactly the right strategy,” Schnur said, “but it may not be enough to overcome the perception that built up over the course of the budget crisis and the energy crisis.”

Although the plan is for Davis to emphasize his role in shaping public policy, he isn’t ignoring the attempt to unseat him. In media interviews and public appearances, he has depicted the recall as an attempt by right-wing extremists to overturn last November’s election. Davis continues to make that case, though in less strident terms since some Democrats urged him to tone it down; it echoed Clinton’s description of the investigations that culminated in his impeachment.

Sensitive to criticism of his slashing campaign style, Davis will attempt to allow surrogates in labor and his campaign to throw many of the punches in this race.

“He’s certainly not going to shy away from questions on the recall, but he is first and foremost going to govern,” Smith said. “He expects the campaign at the same time to conduct a very strong campaign, seeking ‘no’ votes on the recall.”

The strategy isn’t without risk. Some analysts say Davis could be overshadowed by the more conventional campaigns of candidates such as actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and could become a has-been in the minds of donors.

“There is a danger with this strategy he is pursuing -- that people will assume he is gone and all the attention will go to the second part of the ballot,” in which voters can choose among well over 100 candidates to replace Davis if he is recalled, said Bruce Cain, a UC Berkeley political scientist and a former Democratic campaign advisor.

And “if he begins to lose support of donors, he will be in a position he has never been in before,” Cain said, “because he has never been short of money to wage a strong campaign.”

At times in recent days, Davis has attempted to carefully emphasize his experience and qualifications while pointing to the inexperience of Schwarzenegger, the front-runner. But his counterthrusts have been carefully worded, in an attempt to avoid charges of negative attacks and risk further offending voters who already find much to dislike with Davis, analysts said.

“That’s the dilemma,” Cain said. “The strategy he has now is hoping for people to get dissatisfied with Arnold and disillusioned with the process. That may happen, and it may not. It’s also letting your fate be decided by others, which is completely unusual for Gray Davis. He has always been quite proactive.”

Davis’ spate of public appearances have all followed a similar pattern: the governor discusses in detail an issue he has championed -- typically something considered important to women, Latinos or environmentally conscious voters -- and then proceeds to take questions from the assembled media. The questions are almost always about the recall.

Tuesday, the governor’s only public appearance was an event at a gas station in Brentwood, where he asked the Bush administration for a waiver for California so that it would not have to add ethanol to its gasoline. Davis and some environmentalists have said that adding ethanol to the state’s gas would needlessly drive up prices.

During normal times, the event would have been one in a string of routine Davis appearances around the state, attended by only a smattering or reporters. But all appearances by the governor these days are media spectacles. The press conference clearly had the aura of a campaign event.

“This is a great way for the governor to get free television time,” said UC Irvine political science professor Mark Petracca

Davis was joined Tuesday by California Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Winston Hickox, who opened by calling Davis “the governor in history that will be remembered for accomplishing more for the environment than any governor.” Afterward, a representative of the environmental group Coalition for Clean Air, Todd Campbell, also praised the governor’s environmental record.

“He has time and time again stepped up for California communities,” Campbell said.

“I know these are dark times. I hope you stand tough and persevere through this recall,” Campbell said.

Davis answered the recall questions, and presented himself as fully immersed in the work he was elected to do.

“I have an obligation to the 8 million people who went to the polls last November,” Davis said, referring to the overall number of ballots cast.

He said he has no intention of resigning: “They asked me to do a job in California. I’m going to do it every day they allow me to do it.”