Recall Petition Close to Required Number of Signatures

June 13, 2003

By Peter Amherst
Copyright ahrc.com

The authors of the Recall Petition against California governor, Gray Davis, report that they have gathered over 700,000 signatures. They need 900,000 and are confidently predicting that they will secure these ahead of schedule.

If successful, this recall petition will represent a dramatic turnaround for Gray Davis. It was only a short 8 months ago in the November 2002 election that he was reelected for another 4 year term as governor of the largest state in the union. Why the sudden switch by voters? A staggering 73% disapprove of him. The reasons are multi-faceted but telling.

1. Davis barely won the election in November 2002 despite vastly outspending his Republican opponent, Dick Simon. Davis saturated television markets across the state from his seemingly limitless campaign chest. Simon limped along with the thinnest of T.V. campaigns. Despite this massive edge in campaign spending, Davis had a surprisingly thin margin of victory. It was said that if Simon was not so bad as a campaigner, Davis would have been trounced.

2. A few weeks after the election, Davis dropped a bombshell on California. The budget deficit would not be the mere $8 billion that he had mentioned during the campaign. It was now over $35 billion. Many Californians felt betrayed by Davis. Surely he knew before the election how much the deficit would be. He deliberately concealed it until after the election.

3. The economy in California was in the dumps. Silicon Valley, where just a few short years ago there were 2 new millionaires every day, workers were now on food stamps. While all of this could not be blamed on Gray Davis, nevertheless it served as a negative background against which many people judged him.

4. Davis had made major mistakes in the energy crisis. In the spring of 2000, Edison - the large electric company - had warned Davis of the looming electric crisis. Not wishing to tarnish the image of the Golden State just before the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, Davis ignored the warning. When the crisis struck in 2001 and the lights began to go out, Davis started to spend the state's surplus to purchase electricity at any cost. Within weeks, the surplus had vanished. Davis then entered into long-term electric contracts that proved to be a financial disaster. He is now trying to get out of them.

5. A deeper underlying cause of dissatisfaction with the voters against Gray Davis stretches back over many years - his insatiable thirst for campaign dollars. Homeowners who lived in homeowner associations had seen clear evidence of this way back in 1985, when he authored the Davis Stirling Act - the fundamental legislation that governs homeowner associations in California. He appointed the president of the leading homeowner association industry lobby group - Community Associations Institute (CAI) - to draft the legislation. He further told her to take care of all the interest groups. The result was a disastrous piece of legislation that allowed the lobby groups - primarily lawyers - to foreclose on homeowners for ridicuously low sums of money. In one case, the amount was a disputed $5 late fee.

Repeatedly over the years, Davis tapped the lobbyists' wealth for his own legislative ambitions. As governer, it was well known that you could not get a piece of legislation passed without a very generous donation to him. Of course, he always routinely claimed that donations did not influence his decisions.

So now, the eagles are gathering, waiting for the end of one of the more sordid periods in California history. If you wish to sign the recall petition against Gray Davis, you can do so by downloading the petition form attached below.


You can also view a sample petition which demonstrates how the petition should look when properly filled out.

Be sure to send in your completed petitions ASAP to the following address:

Recall Gray Davis Committee
P.O. Box 1445
Sacramento, CA 95812

Click here to go to the Recall Gray Davis Website