LYNDON JOHNSON once admonished his White House staff: “I expect a kiss-my-ass-at-high-noon-in-Macy’s-window loyalty.” No one’s going to mistake Gray Davis for LBJ–certainly not after the governor’s address yesterday afternoon in Los Angeles, broadcast live statewide. Davis didn’t demand loyalty, he begged for it in front of a crowd of about 200 loyalists. His wife, Sharon, was there too. She wasn’t wearing a Democratic cloth coat, and her husband didn’t invoke any dog’s name. Still, Davis’s 20 minutes had a “Checkers” feel to it–an angry, Nixonian feel, complete with an enemies list.
“The Republicans behind the recall say they want you to vote me out because of past mistakes,” Davis said. “My friends, they don’t give a rip about past mistakes–they want power for the future, and with so many candidates, they think they can get it with the support of a tiny fraction of California voters.”
That was as close as Davis got to contrition. The governor’s aides claim their man wrote his own speech. If so, it was black ink from a black heart. Davis didn’t make his defense personable, as he should have. There was no self-deprecating humor regarding his lack of people skills, no rhetorical embrace of his charming wife–not even any mention of how he’s a relative pauper compared to the millionaires who seek his job (a ploy Nixon used effectively in his 1952 address to the nation).
Instead, Davis made it clear that if he’s going down on October 7, he’ll go down swinging. At various times during his remarks–which were better suited for the Iowa caucuses, not the California recall–the governor assailed the usual GOP suspects: Blaming Enron and secret White House energy meetings; singling out the Golden State as a victim of a Bush recession; highlighting John Ashcroft’s assault on privacy rights; and painting the recall as the latest installment in an “ongoing national effort to steal elections Republicans can’t win.”
No wonder Davis is now less popular than Nixon at Watergate’s height. In a similar forum a half-century ago, Nixon stated his case better: “Why do I feel so deeply? Why do I feel that in spite of the smears, the misunderstanding, the necessity for a man to come up here and bare his soul as I have; why is it necessary for me to continue this fight? And I want to tell you why. Because you see, I love my country, and I think my country is in danger.”
Such is life for Gray Davis these days: desperate times calling for desperate measures. Going on statewide TV tends to backfire on California governors. My old boss and Davis’ predecessor, Pete Wilson, did it a decade ago, amidst a state budget crisis and his poll numbers worsened. Likewise, Davis took to the airwaves in April 2001 to try to convince the public that he had the state’s power crisis under control. The next day, California’s largest utility declared bankruptcy.
So why did Davis take another chance with a hyped TV address? What other choice did he have?
For openers, the Democratic governor needs to quell a rising rebellion within his own party. On Monday, a trio of labor unions and the legislature’s Latino Caucus came out in public support of Cruz Bustamante, the only prominent Democrat on the second half of the recall ballot. So did Senator Barbara Boxer and Representative Dennis Cardoza. A few more days like that and Davis is all but done.
The Terminator doesn’t help matters either. On Wednesday, Arnold Schwarzenegger will hold his much-anticipated economic “summit,” followed by a press conference. Also, on Wednesday, Californians will see their first Arnold TV ads–60-second spots that will cost $1.5 million a week. Davis won’t be able to get a word in edgewise no matter how hard he tries.
THERE’S NOT MUCH LEFT for Gray Davis to do–except throw himself on the mercy of the courts. And that may be his salvation: A merciful judge intervening to postpone the October 7 election.
Don’t laugh, it could happen. One suit pending in federal court–filed by the ACLU on the behalf of the NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project–asks that the recall vote be postponed until the state’s presidential primary next March because six California counties still use punch-card ballot. Yes, we’re talking dangling chads.
A second lawsuit–up north in San Jose–is driven by civil rights groups who argue that the special election forces change in county voting processes that, under the federal Voting Rights Act, need clearance from the U.S. Department of Justice so as to ensure minority protections. However, late on Monday Justice gave the green light for the election to proceed as scheduled.
Will either suit succeed in derailing the October election? Probably not the one in Southern California, where a decision could come as early as this Wednesday. The man deciding that case, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson, observed during Monday’s hearing: “There are always errors, different error rates with different methods of voting.” He also noted the legitimate need in “having the election go forward in a timely way.”
The San Jose case is not on the same fast track. The justice deciding that one has set an August 29 hearing date, and he’s issued a temporary restraining order preventing the issuing of absentee ballots in Monterey County. But that was before the federal approval.
At this point, invoking the memory of the Florida ballot controversy and other Democratic fears, phobias and pet bugaboos is Davis’s best, maybe his last, chance at survival. And maybe he gets lucky and a recall lawsuit winds its way to the Supreme Court. Then, he’d have a legitimate reason to complain about Republican-appointed justices.
Bill Whalen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he follows California and national politics.
