Wait a minute. I thought that was Mark Williams...or was it Eric Hogue? And who was the "Father" of the recall, Ted Costa? Howard Kaloogian? Daryl Issa? Dave Gilliard? Steve Frank?
You guys have me so confused. If I had an ego I'd claim it too.
The only reason anyone's confused is because some people who weren't involved early on have tried to rewrite history. Here's how this one went:
* January, 2003 - Melanie Morgan and Shawn Steel are having a discussion about Gray Davis and his lies about the size of the state budget deficit. Melanie is asking what they can do about Davis and Steel suggests maybe we ought to recall him and Melanie gets excited and asks if they can really do that.
* Melanie and Steel then seriously look into this and the details and get the details wrong the first few times.
* Steel talks to a number of people about this including Ted Costa, Pat Cadell, Mark Abernathy, etc...
* Howard Kaloogian and Sal Russo have heard Melanie Morgan talking about this on the air. They realize that the GOP will never get behind this and it will only work if it's done from the outside. Russo and Kaloogian also have the whole Bill Simon network they can access and Russo talks to Democrat insiders who say "please, go for it, we'll help with it behind the scenes."
* We (Kaloogian-Russo-later Melanie Morgan) retain the website www.RecallGrayDavis.com in late January and build it in a few days. * Steel goes back to CPAC I believe to try to rally support for the fledging recall drive.
* Ted Costa has decided he will launch the recall himself. He's not very competent, his previous efforts came about because other people gave him money. But he thinks he can do this. Problem is, he doesn't have a plan that anyone thinks will work.
* The day that we launch RecallGrayDavis.com to sign up petition circulators, Costa produces Notice of Intent to Recall petition and goes on Eric Hogue show to get signatures for this initial recall document. This now officially starts the clock ticking. Costa then goes on Mark Williams Show which generates more people getting involved with Costa's recall group. And this is what generates the controversy between Hogue and Williams. Hogue was clearly ahead of Williams in jumping on board but Williams sees his station as relevant and Hogue's not relevant and so he believes his people jumping on board made the difference. I'll let everyone decide for themselves who to sympathize with on this as it's a nasty fight I don't want to be in the middle of.
* Costa goes to the media with Steel to boast about his recall drive. He has no website. No telephone number. He has his People's Advocate send out a questionnaire to his members asking "Should we launch a recall or do something else?"
* We step up our efforts and pretty soon the Recall Gray Davis Committee is seen by most people as the official recall committee. They don't realize Costa has a separate committee (it took him over a week to even reserve a recall website). People presume Kaloogian, Costa, Morgan, Hogue are all in the same group.
* Despite being called endless names by the Costa group we realize we have to bite our tongues and not have a public rift in the recall. We agree to use Costa's recall petition even though it is rejected more than 5 TIMES by the Secretary of State's office and the staff are telling us what a disaster Costa's operation is and how he can't get the basic elements of the petition right.
* We go to announce 100,000 signatures collected after we hand over 40,000 signatures to Costa's group (who we backed down to and allowed him to be the official proponent which means ONLY HE can turn in signatures... if we had done our own recall petition he had told us he would still go forward with his own separate one... the 2 separate recall petitions circulating which could not be added up together would have meant an end to the entire recall drive). We are supposed to meet Costa for the press conference and his people are supposed to bring the signatures. Costa at the last minute backs out. He says he cannot bring the 100,000 signatures, that it would be a security risk. We had wanted a UPS truck to meet us at the press conference so we could load up the boxes and have that visual of the signatures on their way to the county registrars office throughout the state. Instead Costa has us look like an idiot with empty boxes. We find out weeks later when the signatures finally arrive in TRICKLES to the registrars office that Costa never had 60,000 - he hardly ANY signatures. Since he had no website, no telephone number or separate recall committee in the early days, and no paid signature collecters, the ONLY people who had gotten signatures were the volunteer activists who in those early days signed up to www.RecallGrayDavis.com (the Kaloogian group). Costa is forced to get a website called DavisRecall.com and files papers providing notice of the launch of his political committee well after Kaloogian's Recall Gray Davis committee was up and running.
* Later Costa has the nerve to tell Darrell Issa and Dave Gilliard that we manufactured a fake press event with empty boxes and that Kaloogian can't be trusted. We are dumbfounded. But, again, we bite our tongues even after Costa is complaining he's not getting credit for the recall. Hint: Kaloogian would organize all of the Recall rallies for the campaign (the February one to launch it, the June one when it qualified, the one right before the election to get people to vote YES) and we'd collect the vast majority of the volunteer-collected signatures. Melanie Morgan recognizes Costa doesn't have his act together and begins telling her listeners to go to Kaloogian's RecallGrayDavis.com website. Soon almost every other talk radio host in the state is following suit and we put out a regular FAX/email flier called Radio Recall with updates/progress on the recall effort.
* Dave Gilliard and Darrell Issa came aboard late. But, without them there never would have been a Special Election. We couldn't have qualified that quickly. However, we would have qualified for the June primary election the next year. That would have meant it would have been harder to pass the recall (more Demo voters) but it also means McClintock would have been the GOP nominee for the replacement election.
That's your story. We (Kaloogian's group) ended up raising $900,000+ and collected over 600,000 signatures. Howard was on CNN, in George Will's column, was on Fox News Channel, MSNBC, etc.. etc...