California Governor Gray
Davis may soon join an elite club. Only one other
Governor in history has ever been successfully recalled
and that was North Dakota Governor Lynn Joseph Frazier
in the early 1920’s.
A group called Rescue
California hopes to repeat history and have turned in
1.6 million signatures to County officials across the
state of California in order to recall troubled Governor
Gray Davis. Legally they need 897,158 valid signatures
so the group will turn in almost twice as many
signatures than they actually need.
Supporters of the Governor
filed a lawsuit against the signatures in hopes of
preventing the recall citing illegalities in the
Republican-led petition drive, including the use of
signature gatherers who were not registered to vote in
California. However, even Davis supporters admit that a
recall election is inevitable. The question is, when
and who?
WHEN? Supporters of the
recall are pushing for November in hopes of capitalizing
on an off-year Republican-heavy turnout. Legal battles
could delay the election from November to March of 2004
when it will benefit Davis because of heavy Demo turnout
for the presidential primary. We will find that out
towards the end of August when the signatures validation
process is complete.
WHO? This is the much
bigger question. Rep. Darrell Issa has funded much of
the recall effort in hopes of running for Governor.
Republican insiders have problems with Issa because of
his conservative ideology as well as his past arrest
record for car theft and other violations. Much has
been made of popular actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his
possible run. The Terminator 3 star has stated he would
like to run for Governor but won’t make an announcement
until after his is done promoting his new movie
Terminator 3. Schwarzenegger has made noise about
running before and is extremely popular in the state
that loves loves loves its movie stars. Former Governor
and Former President Ronald Regan as well as current
state Senate Powerhouse Sheila Kuehl are among some of
more popular officials who have also had previous
careers in acting.
On the other side of the
isle, Major Democrats have denounced the recall effort
and say they don’t support it, however if the recall
happens they will have to put up a candidate whether
they want to or not. There has been much talk about Lt.
Governor Cruz Bustamante, Attorney General Bill Lockyer
and actor/activist Rob Reiner. Some were even looking
forward to a Reiner/Schwarzenegger (or Meat
Head/Terminator as they like calling it here) match-up.
However, leading the pack for the Dems as well as in the
polls is popular moderate Senator Dianne Feinstein. She
is the most popular elected official in the state and
has attempted to run for the seat before (she lost to
Davis in the Dem primary). Should Feinstein run, she
would be able to appoint her successor and lock the seat
for Dems for the rest of her term. Should that happen,
essentially the Republicans would have set up a scenario
where they replaced the weakest and least popular
Democrat with the strongest and most popular Democrat
and essentially, spent a lot of money to help the
Democratic Party keep its lock on the statewide
offices. But of course as we have all learned, anything
can happen in California politics.
San
Francisco Politics 
Governor
Davis Recall?