As Bustamante Gains, Davis Inches Toward Backing Him

Gov. Gray Davis edged closer to abandoning his me-or-nothing strategy against the recall, as key Democrats rallied behind the backup candidacy of Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante to hedge against losing power in Sacramento.

Bustamante picked up several major endorsements, including the backing of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation and a vote of support from the powerful California Teachers Assn. Both groups also urged a “no” vote on efforts to oust Davis. A similar move by state Democratic legislators is expected next week.

In brief comments to The Times after a fund-raising event in San Francisco, Davis said: “Cruz Bustamante is a good and decent person, and I believe his involvement in the race will bring out more voters who will vote against the recall.”

“I know some of my aides were of a different view initially,” Davis added. “But I believe the excitement of his candidacy will actually attract more people to polls who will vote ‘no.’ ”

Those words stopped short of endorsing Bustamante, but moved Davis closer to aligning himself with the emerging position of the state Democratic Party establishment.

“We strongly oppose the recall,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), head of the Democratic congressional delegation. “But if California voters make a different choice, then Lt. Gov. Bustamante is the appropriate person to assume the office.”

The shift in position reflected growing Democratic nervousness over the party’s risk of losing the governor’s office in the Oct. 7 election, given its unusual permutations. The first part of the recall ballot will ask voters whether Davis should be recalled; the second will ask who should replace the governor if voters turn him out. Until recently, Davis had argued strenuously that his best hope for beating the recall lay in presenting voters a clear yes-or-no choice on question one, with no Democratic fallback.

Yet as support for his strategy has crumbled, even some of the governor’s own political advisors have been counseling him to embrace his potential Democratic replacement, for the sake of party unity and to better his chances of keeping his job.

“It’s in nobody’s interest right now to be fighting over this,” said one Davis aide, describing advice the governor has received. “I think we should go in the flow, because right now it’s in everyone’s interest to see it happen.”

But other aides were offering different counsel, and not all party leaders are ready to rally behind the “No on the Recall, Yes on Bustamante” banner. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, one of the state’s most popular elected Democrats, said during a campaign appearance in L.A. with Davis that “I am not going to vote on the second part of the ballot.”

Feinstein, who has scolded Bustamante for running after originally saying he wouldn’t, added that “I’m going to vote on the first part of the ballot, and my vote is going to be to vote no on the recall.”

San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, speaking with a Times reporter after the Davis fund-raiser, said, “I’ll probably vote for Cruz, but I’m not interested in anyone knowing that.”

“It’s ‘no on the recall,’ period. That’s what I want everyone focusing on,” he added.

For his part, Bustamante welcomed the endorsements. Campaigning in Coronado, he insisted that he was not stumping to undermine Davis.

He called the recall an abuse of the political process and told reporters, “I’m in competition with Arnold and Tom and Simon and Peter” -- a reference to the major GOP hopefuls. “I’m not in competition with Gray.”

Faced with unique political circumstances and an unprecedented election, Democratic and Republican strategists alike were scrambling to figure out the best way to approach the next six weeks of campaigning.

On the GOP side, there was continued talk of trying to clear the field for Arnold Schwarzenegger, but none of his rivals seemed ready to step aside.

“It’s up to the voters to make a selection based upon the candidates that have presented themselves,” said state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), who is running for governor. The sentiment was echoed by GOP candidate Bill Simon Jr.

But the calculations on the Democratic side are more complex, given both the dual nature of the question -- keep the governor or try replacing him with a different Democrat -- and the history of personal animus between Davis and Bustamante and their campaign teams.

Even as those tensions continued to boil, party leaders sought to play down any rift.

“We believe that unity within the party around opposing the recall very strenuously but supporting Cruz is a winning strategy that will draw more people to the polls,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco said in an interview.

“The danger is missing an opportunity to increase turnout,” she added. “Many people don’t know that if they don’t vote on the second [part of the] ballot, a Republican can sail right in there.... If we don’t vote on the second part, we give it away. We cannot give it away.”

California Teachers Assn.’s President Barbara E. Kerr made a similar argument after the union voted in Sacramento to oppose the recall but back Bustamante. “We really believe the recall is a bad idea,” she said. “But it’s important the successor -- if there is a successor -- know about public education. And we can’t leave that to chance.”

The union, which had a public falling out with Davis during his first term, endorsed him in the 2002 gubernatorial campaign but contributed only $62,000 to his reelection effort -- all but $10,000 of it early in his term. In 1998, the CTA spent $1.2 million to help elect Davis.

For the recall, Kerr said the group’s board has approved several hundred thousand dollars for outreach to union members, which will include a registration drive, vote-by-mail campaign and get-out-the-vote effort.

There were other signs Thursday of momentum shifting toward Bustamante. Democrats in the Legislature are preparing to endorse the “No on the Recall, Yes on Bustamante” campaign next week, a legislator said. “People, though still opposed to the recall, are more convinced we need a backup plan, a just-in-case plan,” the legislator said.

And Bustamante picked up the endorsement of Los Angeles City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, his former Sacramento roommate and successor as Assembly speaker.

“The risk is clearly that the state could end up with a candidate with absolutely no experience in governance,” said Villaraigosa, who has also been a close political ally of Davis. “There’s too much at stake to allow that to happen.”

The councilman stopped short of urging the governor to back Bustamante -- for the time being. “I think right now and for the foreseeable future, the governor’s energies will be focused on opposition to the recall,” Villaraigosa said. “But if the polling continues to move in a negative direction, that could change.”

Yet publicly, there was no indication from Davis if -- or when -- he might urge a vote for Bustamante. The conflicting advice the governor was receiving from his closest aides was notable, given the years of harmony within his inner circle.

One advisor said Davis “in one fell swoop can end all the stories about Democrats divided” by embracing Bustamante even as he fights the recall. But another senior aide said that approach was “like the tobacco companies saying to teenage kids: You shouldn’t smoke, but if you do, please smoke our brand.”

As that dispute roiled Davis’ camp, the actual campaigning for governor continued at a breakneck pace.

Davis was joined by Feinstein at Los Angeles police headquarters, where they called for reauthorization of the federal ban on assault-type weapons.

But the subject quickly turned to the recall when a reporter asked Feinstein whether Schwarzenegger had glorified assault weapons by featuring them in his action movies.

“Absolutely,” she replied.

“I’m one who believes that there is too much violence in movies, and that violence begets violence,” Feinstein said. “You become a role model for someone of lesser maturity out on the street to try to imitate what you do in a movie. So I don’t consider those kinds of things terribly healthy for a society.”

Davis, for his part, said he hadn’t seen “those movies.” But he was clearly versed in the budget plan presented by another GOP opponent, businessman Peter V. Ueberroth.

Davis expressed skepticism about Ueberroth’s proposal for a 5% across-the-board spending cut and a sell-off of state properties, as well as a tax amnesty proposal that Ueberroth said could bring in $6 billion -- a figure disputed by analysts. “The devil is always in the details,” Davis said.

Meantime, Simon campaigned in Fresno, appearing before a scant audience as he signed a pledge that as governor he would never raise taxes or fees. He denied that he would drop out of the race in favor of Schwarzenegger or any other Republican.

McClintock also reiterated his intention to keep running and took a jab at Schwarzenegger’s economic plan.

Schwarzenegger press aide Sean Walsh said about film violence: “We need parental supervision on our children, but adults are mature enough to make up their own minds about movie content.” As for the economic proposal he said, “Arnold is very clear on his tax position. He has a vision for the state.”

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Times staff writers Ronald Brownstein, Anna Gorman, Daryl Kelley, Patrick McGreevy and David Rosenzweig contributed to this report.