People are starting to take the notion of recalling Gray Davis seriously.

Ignoring the issue of whether Lord Davis should be recalled...

Lemme get this straight. The author of that article claims that $2 million is required for a... signature drive? Is that "pay $2 million and you're guaranteed to get the signatures required"? Or something else entirely, like "if you can't get $2 million you can't ever possibly get the signatures needed"?

That's a *lot* of money for gathering signatures, that's all I can say.

Another point-- say the recall petition get's the required number of signatures. What Democrat is going to commit political suicide and have its name put on the ballot to replace Davis? If Davis isn't recalled, I would expect it would be remembered who let their name be put on the ballot. The alternative is to have an approved party hack run, so the result would be someone even worse than Ol' Gray (the Spiro Agnew option.) Heck, maybe even Gray hisself would be eligible, too.

Especially as I would expect the Stupid Party to, instead of coming up with a single suitable caretaker, end up having half a dozen midgets on the ballot to divvy up their 40%.

Politics of places that have no direct effect on my life, like Canada and California, can be so entertaining. Boxer, Feinstein and Pelosi, on the other hand...

Wait a minute. If Davis is removed, the Dem lite-gubnor, Cruz Bustaguttryingtospellhislastname, becomes gubnor.

Doesn't he?

Well, I just read the article, and that's just incredible. Somebody explain to me why California even bothers with a lieutenant governor?

In Oregon we've had a lot of trouble with signature petition drives. Up here some gathers get $0.50 per signature, lots of temptation to forge signatures and so forth. $2,000,000.00 for 900,000 signatures works out to $0.45 each. Hope somebody?s staking out the cemeteries.

I don't much care for Gray Davis, but Cruz Bustamante won't be much better. I'd much rather let Arnold Schwarzenegger run against the just-ending administration of a governor we don't like than against "THE FIRST HISPANIC GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA" --- be serious people, Davis is bad, but he won fair and square. Ya know?

This assumes that the petition drive would even be successful, which it *won't* be, and politics says that if you try to kill the king, and don't succeed, you are far worse off than before you drew the knife.

> Heck, maybe even Gray hisself would be eligible, too.

Not according to the recall law.

> Somebody explain to me why California even bothers with a lieutenant governor?

(1) It's a home for budding or bombing political hacks.
(2) It can be a way to keep the Governor from leaving the state. (GovJr can do things then, and they aren't elected as a slate.)

> Or something else entirely, like "if you can't get $2 million you can't ever possibly get the signatures needed"?

That's it.

> This assumes that the petition drive would even be successful, which it *won't* be, and politics says that if you try to kill the king, and don't succeed, you are far worse off than before you drew the knife.

That's not necessarily true. Roberti was seriously damaged even though he survived the recall vote. (That recall did make the ballot though.) Feinstein (while mayor of SF) wasn't.

No, I think there's a very good possibility of getting 900000 signatures. On the california website, (http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/ror/regstats_10-21-02.pdf), there are 22 democratic counties, and 36 republican ones. interesting, isn't it? but there are about 15 million registered voters, 35% of which are republican. (44% dem). So, there you have it. it is very possible to get the sugnatures.

I'm not the same John as the previous post, but I wanted to point out that $2,000,000 for 900,000 signatures works out to $2.22 per sig, not $.45 per sig. Assuming, of course, that the $2mil is used solely to pay collectors, which it wouldn't be. Presumably, it would also go towards printing costs and other such costs of running such a signature campaign. At 50 cents per sig, that leaves over $1.5 million to use for costs other than straight collection payments, which sounds fairly reasonable.

When you need that many signatures, there may also be some advertising -- like radio ads letting people know there's a recall signature-gathering campaign.

Radio is inexpensive, but California has a lot of markets.

my signature!to get governor davis out!
Carlene A Goodwin