Davis Admits Mistakes but Says He Remains Confident

Faced now with 74 days to convince voters that he should be allowed to stay in his job, Gov. Gray Davis admitted Thursday that he had made mistakes in his administration but said he remained confident that Californians would vote to keep him in office.

“While they have problems with me, while I’ve made mistakes, while we have a tough economy all across the country, at the end of the day, I believe they will acknowledge we have been making progress in a tough economy,” Davis said during a noontime appearance at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department headquarters in Monterey Park. “I don’t think they’re going to replace my progressive agenda with a conservative agenda.”

The governor would not specify what mistakes he believed he had made, but he sounded humbled by the political developments that have culminated in the announcement of the state’s first gubernatorial recall election.

“Not everything that I’ve done has worked out as well as I thought it could,” Davis said. “I’m human, like everyone else.”

A few hours after Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante declared that the recall election would be held on Oct. 7, Davis made his only public appearance of the day at the sheriff’s headquarters in the hills east of Los Angeles, where he tried to remain focused on state business.

With an unwavering smile, the governor swept into a meeting room accompanied by Sheriff Lee Baca, Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton and other public safety officials to address several dozen police officers and sheriff’s deputies and an equal number of reporters.

Davis pressed the Legislature to pass a long-overdue budget and warned that further delays would threaten public safety.

“I call upon every legislator in Sacramento to put aside any partisan politics, whether you’re on the right or left,” Davis said as he sat flanked by an American flag and a California flag. “Get this budget passed. Then we can talk about the recall, we can talk about politics, we can talk about everything else.”

But even as he attempted to stay out of the swirl of political speculation, Davis was peppered with questions from reporters about the coming election and how he felt about the campaign to unseat his administration.

“It’s not my favorite subject,” the governor said dryly.

His staff’s efforts to deflect questions about Davis’ standing seemed only to underscore the uncertainty of the moment.

“The governor continues to do the business of the state,” Davis spokesman Byron Tucker told reporters, noting that Davis had signed 22 bills into law on Wednesday and had made several judicial appointments. “The governor continues to be governor.”

Davis spent Thursday afternoon conferring with his budget team and meeting with the California Coalition of Law Enforcement Associations in Anaheim, according to his office.

However, the governor said his political advisors were quickly gearing up for his anti-recall campaign, which filed paperwork Thursday as “Californians Against the Costly Recall of the Governor.” He offered some hints about his strategy, noting that while some blame him for California’s $38-billion budget shortfall, 46 other states are also struggling with their finances.

“The election will be about whether or not we’ve done the best we can in trying times,” Davis said.

And he signaled his intent to run a campaign in which he will not directly spar with his challengers.

“I’m going to just focus on the arguments for retaining me and the arguments against change,” he said. “It’s a very risky business to change governors in one day.”

Some political experts concurred that Davis’ best bet is to let others critique his opponents, an approach that would allow him to address the concerns that motivated more than a million voters to sign recall petitions.

“He’s got to stay above the fray,” said Democratic strategist Darry Sragow. “The fundamental issue here is that a lot of Californians want to be reassured that he’s actually paying attention to them and taking care of their needs.”

That strategy would be a sharp departure from the approach Davis took in last year’s gubernatorial election, in which his campaign first attacked former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan during the Republican primary and then GOP nominee Bill Simon Jr. during the general election. Davis said little during the race about what he would do in a second term.

“Gray Davis is the master of the lesser-of-two-evils school of politics,” said a Republican political consultant, Dan Schnur. “Davis’ problem is that there’s only one name on the first question on the recall ballot, and it’s his.”

With his approval rating hovering around 20%, the governor must give Californians a reason to vote for him and not just against the recall, experts said. Showing contrition and conceding mistakes, as he did Thursday, may be part of that process. But some doubted that it would be seen as authentic.

Schnur said: “He’s much better at splitting someone else’s lip than biting his own.”