Recall ballot offers 135 choices to replace Davis
AP
SACRAMENTO — Voters will have 135 candidates to choose from to replace Gov. Gray Davis in California’s historic recall, the secretary of state’s office said Wednesday after certifying the ballot.
The final list was whittled from 247 would-be governors who submitted papers to run in the Oct. 7 special election, disqualifying 112 potential candidates because of incomplete paperwork.
The one-of-a-kind ballot will likely surpass any previous number of gubernatorial candidates in one election, which would probably be fewer than a dozen, said Bruce Cain, a political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
“There’s nothing comes close,” Cain said. “I think it’s fair to say it’s a record, and probably a national record.”
The final list of candidates contained the well-known, the anonymous and the offbeat.
The state’s 15 million voters will get to see a sample ballot from the first Assembly district, said Doug Stone, a spokesman for the secretary of state. The names will be rotated in each of the 80 districts by a randomly selected alphabet system selected Monday to eliminate potential advantages of those with names near the top.
The election is expected to cost up to $67 million and deficit-strapped counties are tapping emergency reserves, using money budgeted for the March primary and hoping the state makes good on its previous history of paying for special elections.
With 55 days until the election, some of the expected front runners were plotting strategy, making appearances and taking shots at the competition.
Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who gave his campaign $1 million Tuesday, recruited billionaire investor Warren Buffett as a senior financial and economic adviser, the latest in a number of personnel moves by the Republican’s team.
The chairman of Berkshire Hathaway is a Democrat and will bring together other business leaders and economists to address the state’s financial issues, said Schwarzenegger spokesman Sean Walsh.
“It is critical to the rest of the nation that California’s economic crisis be solved, and I think Arnold will get that job done,” Buffett said in a statement.
Davis appeared with a group of abortion rights activists in San Francisco to announce his support for five bills before the Legislature that would expand sex education for teenagers and improve access to emergency contraception. The crowd cheered when he reaffirmed his commitment to reproductive choice.
“In my first inaugural address, in January of 1999, I said to those who would deny a woman’s right to choose, ’don’t waste the Legislature’s time because it will not happen on my watch’ — and I have kept that promise,” Davis said.
Davis told reporters he has taken counsel recently from former President Clinton, saying, “I find his advice wise, useful and I frequently adopt it.”
Several of Davis’ strongest supporters announced plans for a broad grass roots anti-recall campaign aimed at everyone from environmentalists to seniors to union workers.
A coalition of groups including the Sierra Club, the California National Organization for Women and the California Congress of Seniors, have agreed to help the governor through mass mailings and phone banks, said Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO.
Political commentator Arianna Huffington said she will campaign with Green Party candidate Peter Camejo to push a progressive agenda. Both candidates said they will consider stepping down if the other pulls ahead in polls.
“The way things are looking now, it’s much more likely that I’ll be the one that will have a real chance of winning,” Huffington said. “If Peter somehow catches fire, I’ll consider it.”
Huffington railed against Schwarzenegger, who has become the early front runner in the latest polls.
“This is a man who’s a Bush Republican and therefore would be the kind of governor that would introduce the same polices to California,” she said.
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