Davis Recall Drive Still Lacking Cash, Credibility

With a burst of publicity and the promise of badly needed funding, the movement to recall Gov. Gray Davis gained strength this week. But the effort is still hampered by a struggle for cash and credibility that bolsters Davis’ chance of survival despite his widespread unpopularity, political analysts say.

Even as proponents said they planned to launch a stepped-up petition drive as soon as this weekend, Rep. Darrell Issa on Wednesday offered the latest in a series of conflicting statements about his financial commitment and willingness to run as Davis’ replacement. The Vista Republican had emerged earlier this week as the potential savior of the recall drive, which has lagged in its efforts to collect the roughly 900,000 signatures needed to force a vote.

Aides then said that Issa would commit a six-figure sum to the recall campaign. But Issa refused to be pinned down on how much he would contribute or precisely how much in other donations he has solicited.

“This isn’t about how much I contribute, other than my time,” Issa said in an interview on Capitol Hill. “It’s not about one donor. It has to be many donors.”

Toward that end, Issa said he and others would soon come up with “in the neighborhood of a half-million dollars” as he seeks to raise $1.2 million to pay for a professional signature-gathering drive. He declined to confirm what he has privately told Republicans throughout the state: that he is, in effect, running for governor in the event the issue goes to voters.

With Issa’s involvement, three separate groups are now taking part in the effort to oust the incumbent Democrat, who won a closer-than-expected election last November and has grown even less popular as he wrestles with the state’s mammoth budget shortfall. Though still in its infancy, the recall holds out the possibility of complicated strategy assessments for the state’s political class, with Republicans forced to decide whether to try to take over the state’s fiscal mess and Democrats pressed to side with or against their party’s governor.

Although Davis has largely ignored the recall effort in public, he held a lengthy private session with political advisors who continue to discuss among themselves the outlines of a prospective campaign. If it comes to that, the governor may have to do without the services of his longtime strategist, Garry South, who is expected to sign on shortly with one of the Democratic presidential candidates.

The recall attempt is being led by a handful of conservative activists, including anti-tax crusader Ted Costa and Sal Russo, the manager of Republican Bill Simon’s unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign against Davis. Despite their common goal and an agreement to use the same recall petitions, members of the different organizations have viewed one another with suspicion, thwarting attempts to cooperate and undermining their collective goal. With one quarter of their collection time gone, recall proponents say they have gathered about 100,000 signatures toward the 897,158 valid signatures needed by Sept. 2.

Typically, a campaign would need to collect 1.2 million signatures by then to ensure it hits the required tally, strategists said.

“Clearly, the groundswell they were hoping for hasn’t emerged,” said Tony Quinn, a nonpartisan campaign analyst in Sacramento. “If they’re going to get the signatures they need, they’re going to have to buy them.”

But complicating efforts to hire signature collectors is the absence of any tangible support from the GOP establishment, party leaders in Sacramento or the California Republican donor community. The White House, which has taken a strong hand in state party affairs, has also kept a notable distance.

“I can understand why people would be unhappy with the fiscal state of California,” said Gerald Parsky, a Westside businessman and President Bush’s chief political emissary in the state. But even after Issa’s attempt earlier this week to jump-start the recall, Parsky said, “Our priorities are having enough financial resources to win California for the president and to strengthen the California Republican Party.”

Privately, many GOP leaders are contemptuous of Davis, but voice little confidence in their own field of potential candidates, including Simon and Issa.

“Recalling Gray Davis is easy,” one Republican official in Sacramento said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The hard part is making sure a Republican is elected to replace him. No one has yet shown me a convincing plan to do that.”

Given the tepid response and the desperate need for dollars, the involvement of Issa has been enthusiastically embraced by recall proponents, who are counting on the wealthy lawmaker to spur others to follow.

“From the beginning we’ve had tremendous interest from people who haven’t signed on because they’re laggards, not leaders,” Russo said. “They wanted the thing to get going before they signed. But we knew that if we built it, much like the movie, they would come. And that’s exactly what’s happening.”

Other Republicans, however, questioned Issa’s commitment. Just two weeks ago, the congressman told reporters that he would be a candidate for governor and would assist the recall effort; a day later, he said he would not write a check and was only considering a candidacy.

Davis aides professed to being nearly as delighted as Republicans in seeing Issa come on board, in whatever role he ultimately takes. “He provides a little money and a great target,” said one strategist, who declined to be identified, in keeping with Davis’ effort to keep a low political profile.

Tim Hodson, a political analyst at Cal State Sacramento, agreed. “Now it’s not longer just about getting rid of Gray Davis,” Hodson said. “Now there’s a rival candidate, whether Issa wants to admit it or not, and the dynamic becomes a choice between Davis and replacing him with Darrell Issa.”

But Issa insisted his involvement is “not about guaranteeing a Republican replacement” for Davis, or advancing his own desire to be governor. “I’m a congressman who simply said, ‘I care about my state too much to let it go down the tubes over the next three years,’ ” Issa said during an interview outside the House chamber.

In Sacramento, a strategist for Issa, Dave Gilliard, said he hopes to field as many as 200 professionals across the state this weekend to energize the signature-gathering drive. Though recall proponents have until September to complete their work, Gilliard said they hope to finish by mid-July, in order to force a recall vote as soon as possible. “October sounds like a good time to me,” Gilliard said.

An election that early would keep the recall question off the same ballots as the San Francisco mayor’s race in November and the presidential primary next March, both of which are likely to draw disproportionate numbers of Democrat voters.

If the recall measure were to qualify for the ballot, voters would have two decisions to make: whether Davis should be removed from office and who should replace him if he is.

If enough valid signatures were gathered, a complete slate of candidates might not be known until after recall petitions were certified 60 days after filing and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante set a date for the election. After that, anyone wishing to run for governor could get on the ballot by paying a filing fee of $3,500, 2% of the governor’s $175,000 salary.

The ballot could include multiple Democrats and Republicans as well as candidates from smaller parties.