It Looked Brilliant -- and Was Davis’ Great Blunder

Sacramento

If this were baseball, Gov. Gray Davis would be leading the league in errors. And he committed one boo-boo that has been especially costly.

The governor’s most glaring goof? The big blunder that, more than any other miscue, legitimizes the recall for many disgruntled voters?

Not his slow start confronting the energy crisis. That did generate a chorus of boos and begin his down slide. But once Davis got into the game, he played aggressively and effectively. There hasn’t been a major blackout since.

This was a deregulation scheme hatched by Republicans, after all, and gamed by power profiteers cheered on by the Bush administration.

Not the budget deficit, his “mismanaging” the state from a $12-billion surplus to a $38-billion shortfall. States across America have been running deficits. President Bush turned a record federal surplus into a deficit of at least $480 billion.

Davis’ budget mistake was not leading -- not lobbying hard for both painful tax hikes and spending cuts. But how many voters would that have pleased?

His biggest blooper certainly was not “lying” about the deficit size while running for reelection last fall. This charge was bogus, invented by recall promoters. Good talk-radio time filler.

It wasn’t even his obsessive fund-raising, although that’s getting close. Hitting up special interests at a $1.5-million-per-month pace caked the governor with sleaze. The whole system’s corrupt in Sacramento, but Davis played too fast and close to the line.

Moreover, fund-raising ate up time the governor could have used to schmooze legislators and mingle with voters, promoting himself and hearing their gripes.

Spending most of his record $78-million stash on negative TV ads was a major mistake. Even when attack ads destroy an opponent, they usually also tarnish the attacker. As his approval ratings sank, Davis should have pumped money into a rehabilitation effort, running positive spots to promote his record on education, gun control, the environment, labor -- giving people something to vote for.

But Davis was so insecure -- based on his own focus groups and polling -- that he figured voters would never believe him about his record. When a politician is that unpopular, however, this is when he particularly needs to recondition himself. Especially when he’s rolling in campaign money.

Davis’ single biggest blooper, the one that later sustained a recall rally for Republicans? It was his spending $9 million on attack ads in last year’s GOP gubernatorial primary to flatten the Republican candidate he feared most, former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan.

Meddling in the other party’s primary so overtly and heavy-handedly was unprecedented in California. But what made this so egregious was not that it was dastardly. It was just dumb.

In effect, Davis chose his own opponent for November -- political novice Bill Simon Jr. This grated on Republicans. But worse, voters abhorred their choices.

The voter turnout was a record low, only half those registered. When people who did show up were asked in a Times exit poll why they voted for their candidate, the most frequent response -- by 34% of those surveyed -- was, “He’s the best of a bad lot.”

So these days when Davis argues that he won reelection “fair and square” only 10 months ago and therefore it’s “unfair” to boot him, many reply: That was not a fair election. Davis rigged it. Our choices were lousy. We demand another election.

“Voters want a second bite at the apple,” notes political analyst Tony Quinn.

Says GOP political consultant David Gilliard, who managed the main signature-gathering drive for the recall: “People feel Davis pulled something in the election that deprived them of the best candidate. I’m very surprised at the awareness

people have of him doing that. They bring it up in focus groups and mention Riordan by name....

“If Davis were a different politician, there’d be a lot of sympathy for him now. But people don’t feel sorry for him. They figure he made his bed. Played the game and it’s coming back at him.”

Barbara O’Connor, Cal State Sacramento political science and communications professor, says the anti-Riordan ads “created a reservoir of bad will for Davis.... People already think all politicians are scum. This tapped into that.”

Asserts veteran Democratic consultant Bill Carrick: “If Gray had run against and beaten Riordan, there wouldn’t be a recall. People would say, ‘We had

a choice. We made the choice. It’s Gray Davis for better or worse.’

“This created a permission structure, allowed people to rationalize something so draconian.... But it gets back to the same thing: They don’t like his personality.”

All this is in hindsight, of course. At the time, pols and pundits thought Davis’ toss-out of Riordan was a brilliant play.

Turns out it was a bad boo-boo. As a result, the California electorate might bench its governor.