Rocky Recall Road Ending in Smooth Shift

When Gov. Gray Davis returns to his private office in the Capitol’s east wing Thursday, he will be confronted immediately by the reality of his imminent departure.

The photograph of his wife, Sharon Davis, has been cleared from its prominent place on the credenza behind his desk and packed into a moving box along with other personal possessions. The governor’s bookcases are nearly bare and artwork has been stripped from the walls and taken to a state storage facility to allow Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger to determine the decor of what soon will be his Capitol digs.

Before the election, Davis and the Republican gubernatorial candidate were exchanging indignant broadsides, questioning each other’s integrity, competence and fitness for office.

Now, two weeks after Californians voted to remove the Democratic governor, officials from the incoming and outgoing administrations are describing the transfer of power as smooth, professional and even cordial.

Davis and his advisors won’t vacate their coveted offices in the Capitol’s “Horseshoe” until mid-November. But in daily meetings there and in nearby coffee shops and restaurants, senior and mid-level representatives of the rival political camps are hashing out the mechanics of the complicated handover.

A Schwarzenegger shadow government is rapidly taking shape and is being brought up to speed on pressing issues by Davis administration counterparts soon to be replaced.

“In all honesty, they have been classy from Day One,” said Bob White, who was chief of staff to Gov. Pete Wilson and now is a Schwarzenegger confidant helping to ease the transfer of power. “We all care about the state. They’re going out with a lot of class.”

Davis has returned to the Capitol only once since his Oct. 7 ouster, for a teary farewell with senior aides and Cabinet members, and to pose for photos on the east steps of the Capitol with high officials and support staff.

In the Horseshoe’s “War Room,” where boxes of bills are collated and prepared for the governor’s perusal every September, another set of boxes now fills space around the walls: file boxes of Davis administration documents on the electricity crisis, judicial appointments and five years of other subjects, packed and waiting to be carted away to the state archives.

Despite the historic nature of the recall and the resulting mid-term transition, there’s more than a century of precedent for the transfer of power that’s taking place in Sacramento. Experienced hands in both camps have been involved in previous gubernatorial transitions. Still, there is much to be done, especially because the power shift is coming three years earlier than Davis and his aides expected.

“I underestimated the work-load of a transition,” said Daniel Zingale, Davis’ Cabinet secretary. “There’s a lot to be done in a very crunched period of time. My impression is it’s as collegial as any transition I’ve known of, but that’s the rule rather than the exception. There’s a strong belief that this is an important part of democracy, a fulfillment of the people’s will.”

Schwarzenegger’s transition team is ensconced in recently vacated offices of the political law firm Nielsen, Merksamer, which moved to newer quarters. The team’s 12,000 square feet of space houses as many as 75 people working on appointments, policy issues and communications, as well as the swearing-in, which will take place in mid-November.

The office houses Patricia T. Clarey, a prime candidate to become Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff. It also includes policy teams headed by Paul Miner and Joe Rodota. All three are former aides to Wilson. They are focusing on such issues as taxes, shaping the budget and an overhaul of the workers’ compensation system.

The most pressing task remains the need to establish an administration. Schwarzenegger has received close to 4,000 resumes from people seeking paid and unpaid posts in the new administration.

But unlike career politicians who bring with them longtime aides, Schwarzenegger does not come to the corner office with a cadre willing to join state government. In some instances, people with government experience in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., who might have been tapped to enter the administration have declined, preferring to remain in private enterprise.

Davis advisors and Cabinet members have assembled a thick ring-binder notebook on current and upcoming issues for use by Schwarzenegger and his transition team. They are preparing an executive summary that will outline the most urgent issues the next administration will face.

Among the looming issues flagged in the executive summary are soaring health-care spending by the Department of Corrections and relevant details in the ongoing conversion to managed care begun by the Davis administration and efforts to contain state spending on prescription drugs for prisons, mental health, youth and other programs.

Another issue raised in the briefing papers is the need for Schwarzenegger’s team to create a group to oversee the elimination of the state Technology, Trade and Commerce Agency, which is supposed to be shut down by December under the budget Davis signed in August. Schwarzenegger’s team must carry out the agency’s closure and the dispersal of its duties to other state agencies and offices.

Already, Schwarzenegger’s team has been meeting with counterparts throughout the administration. On Monday, for example, Davis foreign affairs Secretary Michael Flores briefed Joe Rodota of the Schwarzenegger team on Mexico policy issues that the new governor must manage.

Nancy McFadden, Davis’ deputy Cabinet secretary, is teaming with Finance Secretary Steve Peace to oversee the transition at the Finance Department.

Even such mundane subjects as the processing of letters that the governor’s office receives by the thousands have been the focus of transition briefings; tips have been imparted on such matters as how to separate and respond to form letters that are part of broader lobbying campaigns as opposed to individual expressions of outrage.

“A lot of people on Gov.-elect Schwarzenegger’s team have had experience in state government, and so they know what we’re talking about,” Zingale said.

Indeed, many members of the Schwarzenegger team served in the Republican administrations of George Deukmejian and Wilson and participated in transitions between those governors or the handover from Wilson to Davis.

One subject familiar to those veterans is the prickly topic of “midnight appointments.” Davis administration officials have briefed Schwarzenegger’s team on what vacancies currently exist in the labyrinth of boards, commissions and other bodies that carry out the governor’s policies, what vacancies Davis expects to fill between now and the time he leaves office, and what vacancies will arise in the first weeks and months of the Schwarzenegger administration, Zingale said.

“We’d prefer that he stop making appointments,” said Rob Stutzman, spokesman for Schwarzenegger’s transition team. “We’d prefer he stop negotiating compacts [regulating gambling casinos operated by Indian tribes]. But we have not chosen to let these issues get in the way of a smooth transition at this point.”

Stutzman and Davis Press Secretary Steven Maviglio sat down Friday afternoon for a transition chat over coffee at the Jump Start Cafe across from the Capitol.

They discussed “nuts and bolts” trade talk, said Maviglio: how the governor’s Web page is run; how many cameras fit in the governor’s council room; the logistics of news conferences in the Capitol’s most popular public relations venue, Room 1190.

“It is still a small town. People know one another,” Stutzman said. “I’m sure I’ve bought him a beer somewhere along the way.”

Some of the interaction between the outgoing administration and the incoming one is playing out in more personal ways. Zingale, for example, is scheduled to have an informal private dinner next Monday with Clarey, the vice president for governmental affairs for Health Net Inc. of Woodland Hills, a health maintenance organization, and a Zingale acquaintance from his previous job as the director of the Department of Managed Health Care.

“They’ve been gracious and respectful,” Zingale said of the Schwarzenegger team. “I haven’t seen a trace of gloating. It’s been beyond professional. It’s been very respectful.”

For members of the outgoing administration, the transition means the end of the road in their current professional pursuits and looming unemployment. Senior advisors and junior staff members alike are wrapping up work, sorting through office files and packing belongings into Bekins moving boxes.

Former governor and current Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown spent more than three hours Thursday talking about the transition and consoling Davis’ staff at the Capitol. Brown ruminated from personal experience -- he handed power to Deukmejian in 1982 -- as he laid out what to expect over these final weeks of the Davis administration.

Likening the melancholy mood to that he witnessed when his father, former Gov. Edmund Brown, lost to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1966, Brown took time to bolster the spirits of young speechwriters, executive assistants and other mid- and junior-level staff members, and talked up possible employment opportunities with the city of Oakland, people who were there said.

“It was a turning point,” Zingale said, for dispirited Davis advisors and staff as they began to come to terms with the abrupt end of their time in power.