Scapegoating Davis in Recall

Please, oh please, Californians, prove to the rest of the nation that you are not the naive and foolish voters the right-wingers think you are. I realize you have a terrible budget crisis in your state. We do here in Washington, as well. Oregon has the worst unemployment and budget crisis it has had in two decades. Many states currently have budget crises because of a national administration that is totally out of control.

I realize Gov. Gray Davis is not the most charismatic politician on the block -- we have one of those here in Washington too. But surely you can see what is going on. The right-wingers have created this amazing tar baby nationally, and now they think they can convince us that our Democratic governors are to blame. Just three years ago our nation was at peace, we were prosperous and had a surplus of jobs as well as treasury dollars. There were no energy crises to be found. We not only were the envy of the world community but were seriously addressing the world’s ills. Look at us now. Davis is not the source of your problems. The source of our states’ problems is in Washington, D.C. Please don’t let them force a political coup in California as they did in the nation in 2000. Where will it end?

Larry Dennison

Port Townsend, Wash.

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The Republican U.S. Senate impeaches the elected president. The Republican Supreme Court hands the presidency to an unelected candidate. Now a Republican congressman pays to unseat California’s elected governor. If you’ve got Republicans, who needs elections?

Martin Lipton

Los Angeles

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Whether or not one agrees with the efforts of Ted Costa et al to recall Davis (“Little-Known Activist Is Recall Powerhouse,” July 14), it seems to me that there ought to be a law that stipulates that only the people who actually voted in the general election in which a said officeholder was elected be allowed to sign a petition to recall his or her services. Why should tens of thousands of people who didn’t bother to vote in the general election be allowed to, in effect, recast a vote?

Kevin M. Doyle

Los Angeles

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Double feature, coming soon: Gray Davis in “Total Recall.” Arnold Schwarzenegger in “The Candidate.”

Saul Kahan

Los Angeles

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If the recall ballot gives us little choice other than Davis, Bill Simon, Schwarzenegger or Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), then I’m writing in NOTA -- none of the above. If NOTA wins, then a new election must be held with different candidates.

Bruce Joffe

Piedmont, Calif.

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The problem with the recall of Davis is that it offers no solution to California’s ills. Whoever is governor will have to face the choice of cutting services or raising taxes -- with the approval of two-thirds of the Legislature. Passing a budget that is held hostage by an extremist GOP leadership is the real challenge.

The recall election is not really about Davis, it’s about whether Californians want to cut services in education, health care and law enforcement or raise taxes. It’s about whether we choose a future based on ensuring quality of life or a future that looks much like the landscape that only a Terminator would appreciate.

Michael Matsuda

Yorba Linda

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“Recall Idea Got Its Start in L.A. in 1898” (July 13) credits L.A. physician John Randolph Haynes with proposing the state’s recall law to fight corruption and restore power to the public. While focusing on the recall effort against Davis, the article ironically fails to mention a historic local political earthquake 40 years after Haynes: the successful 1938 recall of Los Angeles Mayor Frank Shaw.

Until then, Shaw, his City Hall fixer-brother, Joe, and others, including then-LAPD chief James E. Davis and Dist. Atty Buron Fitts, winked and nodded. Vice flourished and Mafia figures Bugsy Siegel and Johnny Rosselli, protected by the establishment and movie mogul elites, operated with impunity years after the recall. FDR’s U.S. Atty. Gen. Frank Murphy called the City of the Angels “the most corrupt, graft-ridden city in the U.S.”

Joseph Scott

Los Angeles