The Keys to Recall Vote? No One Can Say for Sure

With last week’s certification of a gubernatorial recall election, California embarked on a crash campaign with few precedents.

But while the novelty of the election has left political experts unsure of what to expect, many predict that three aspects of the race will set its parameters: the rapid-fire nature of the 10-week race; the possible entrance of movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger; and the presence on the same ballot of the Racial Privacy Initiative, a measure to prevent the government from collecting racial data.

A gubernatorial recall has so many unknowns that political consultants of both parties -- who usually cleave close to conventional wisdom -- can’t agree on even the very basics of proper strategy for a contest.

Some say money and fame are sure to determine the contest; others say the limited time frame and extensive news coverage will dilute the power of the pocketbooks. Some see the recall as a contest for independent voters; others say it will be a contest between whether Davis and Republicans over who can turn out their most liberal and conservative bases.

What political observers do agree on is that the recall election is a strange hybrid: an initiative campaign (shall the governor be recalled?) attached to a Republican primary with a twist -- the candidates may be moderates or conservatives, but many of the voters will be liberals.

“This is a very complex, very sophisticated campaign with a huge number of variables,” said Clint Reilly, who has been a strategist both for the Republican former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat. “It’s hard to know what to think.”

Provisions for recall elections are set out in the state Constitution. Once the secretary of state certified Wednesday that enough voters had signed petitions demanding a recall, an election was ordained to occur 60 to 80 days hence.

The job of picking the precise date fell to Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who on Thursday chose Oct. 7, a date 77 days from the certification. The usual time to prepare for a state election is 131 days, though most candidates plan their campaigns for much longer than that.

Two months is an uncomfortable length of time, consultants say -- too short to build a statewide political organization to turn out voters but too long for most candidates to run a sustained television campaign in such a large state.

Some consultants say the calendar will put a premium on having plenty of money early, a boon for wealthy potential candidates like Schwarzenegger and the 2002 Republican gubernatorial nominee, Bill Simon Jr. Television buys could run as much as $2 million a week for these candidates.

The contribution limits that apply to the recall also affect the money stakes. As the object of the recall, Davis faces no limits on the amounts of money he can accept from donors. His challengers, by contrast, are covered by California’s contribution limits, which cap the amounts that contributors can donate to candidates.

Politically, however, raising huge sums quickly could be difficult for the governor, whose aggressive fund-raising during his tenure has been attacked by proponents of the recall.

But the novelty of the recall itself may make money less important than it usually is, other consultants say. For one thing, the first 39 days of the campaign will take place during late July and August, when many voters are on vacation and don’t pay as much attention to politics. For those who are interested, an expected cascade of news media coverage may mean that TV ads aren’t as necessary for attracting attention and building name recognition.

“Plus, when people have a short period of time, everyone pretty much starts in the same place,” said Richard Close, chairman of Valley VOTE, which led the unsuccessful 2002 campaign to secede from Los Angeles and set up a separate city in the San Fernando Valley. “It doesn’t give the people with money as much time to spend their money and exploit their advantage. It evens the playing field.”

Many political observers argue that the speed of the recall works against Davis, who is unpopular and needs as much time as he can get to change the minds of Californians. But consultants disagree on what his most effective tactic might be.

Democrats argue that Davis can succeed by running against the recall, and raising doubts about the fairness of unseating a governor less than a year after he was reelected.

Democratic political consultant Kam Kuwata said Davis needs to go on the attack, blaming President Bush and the federal budget deficit for California’s fiscal problems.

“Davis should think of this as more of an initiative campaign than an election,” said Reilly, the San Francisco-based strategist, who helped Feinstein defeat a recall attempt when she was San Francisco’s mayor 20 years ago. “If you’re Davis, you need to make it a referendum on the recall.”

Some Republican consultants differ. A negative campaign, they say, guarantees Davis’ defeat. Instead, he would be best served by more of the mea culpas he has offered in the last few days.

Dan Schnur, a Republican strategist, points out that attacks by Davis have hurt the poll numbers of the recall’s biggest financial backer, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), but failed to slow the momentum for the governor’s recall.

“Davis is the absolute master of the lesser-of-two-evils school of politics,” Schnur said, but that may not work here with a slate of several candidates running against him at the same time. “Going negative reinforces what Californians don’t like about him, and the recall passes in a breeze. If he is smart about it, he’ll defend himself and stay positive.”

Many political observers expect Davis to attack the recall indirectly. That’s where the Racial Privacy Initiative could play a role. The initiative was long ago certified for the next state ballot, which now will be the recall vote.

Davis opposes the Racial Privacy Initiative, and he may attempt to link backers of the recall to the initiative. (In fact, the recall’s original petitioner, Ted Costa, has been an active supporter of the racial initiative.) The idea would be to bring out liberals and minorities who tend to support affirmative action and who could be expected to vote against the initiative and the recall.

University of California Regent Ward Connerly, the initiative’s main backer (and leader of the 1996 campaign to ban racial preferences in public institutions), has not taken a position on the recall, a spokeswoman said.

Nevertheless, said Republican strategist Arnold Steinberg, “you can expect Democrats to use the Racial Privacy Initiative to energize their voters. The initiative also could be used to channel funds. If donors weren’t willing to give directly to Davis, they could give to the campaign against the Racial Privacy measure.”

Consultants are divided on how candidates for governor should respond to Davis. Steinberg said such candidates should closely identify themselves with the recall. But other consultants say that Republican candidates in particular should put distance between the recall and their campaigns -- even though the two questions are likely to appear together on the ballot.

Separating succession from the recall is essential to answering Davis’ charge that the recall is a fiercely partisan exercise, these consultants say. To achieve that separation, the candidates need to stick to discussions of their own plans for improving the state finances and avoid trading insults with Davis and each other.

Republicans, consultants say, should have an advantage if several candidates enter the race -- more options could encourage more people to come out and support the recall. But that benefit could be diluted if the Republicans attack each other and thus create a chaotic campaign; volatility among the alternatives might buttress Democratic arguments that a recall is risky.

Negative attacks are also like to backfire on the attacker in a multiple-candidate race, consultants say; while the attacker and his target will be hurt, candidates uninvolved in the back-and-forth could grow stronger.

In this context, if Schwarzenegger enters the race, his candidacy would pose both an opportunity and a dilemma for the recall.

Both Democratic and Republican consultants said that if Schwarzenegger proved to be a compelling and tough candidate, he could bring new voters to the polls -- turning the recall into a certain winner and perhaps even making the actor governor. But if Schwarzenegger proves less than sure-footed as a campaigner, he could prove to be a useful foil for Davis in the governor’s attempts to caricature the recall.

If Schwarzenegger gets in, he may well find that the fight is not on TV but on the less comfortable ground of “get out the vote” politics. Some consultants say that independent voters will be the bigger prize. But other consultants predict that the campaigns will pour much of their money into expensive mailings to their most loyal supporters.

“You’ll see an incredibly focused get-out-the-vote effort targeted at the hard-core liberals or conservatives,” Schnur said. “An election like this is too unpredictable to risk money on independents. You just don’t know what people are going to do.”

Indeed, Schnur argues that the recall is so unorthodox that it might even achieve that rarest of outcomes: an edifying campaign.

Imagine, he said, that the contest rolls into its final weeks, and Davis pushes to the finish while refraining from attacks on his rivals. A field of five opponents -- wary that negative attacks will boomerang and hurt their standing in a large field -- also stay on the high road.

California TV stations, which often prefer celebrity gossip to election news, cover the novel race with the intensity of a freeway chase. And the apathetic California voting public is closely engaged in a historic bit of direct democracy.

“People like to talk about how terrible a recall is,” Schnur said. “But because of the circumstances, it is possible we will see the kind of campaign that people say they want.”