The major candidates for California governor struggled Saturday to rouse voters who have tuned out or grown turned off by months of ceaseless attacks, as the bitter contest hurtled into its final 48 hours.
Incumbent Democrat Gray Davis, the front-runner, had just a single event, a traditional get-out-the-vote rally at a Pittsburg union hall. "If you want to go forward, stick with the winning team in Sacramento," Davis told about 200 ironworkers, painters and machinists, who spent the morning knocking on doors, urging people to the polls. "If you want to go backwards, the other guy's your choice."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday November 05, 2002 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 12 inches; 439 words Type of Material: Correction
State politics -- Two stories in Sunday's California section incorrectly cited the last California election in which one party swept all the statewide offices. It last occurred in 1946.
Republican challenger Bill Simon Jr. covered more turf as he bid to make up ground, skipping up the coast from Santa Barbara to Monterey, then inland to San Jose and the Central Valley. "We only have to put up with Gray Davis for four days!" Simon shouted to roughly three dozen supporters at an airport rally in Santa Barbara. "Four more days," the crowd chanted.
Simon, who traveled with other candidates on the state GOP ticket, is seeking to buck history: It has been 60 years since a California governor was denied a second term.
Davis, a target in Republican races across the state, was trying to make history as well. The governor was hoping not just to win a second term on Tuesday, but also to lead Democrats to the first party sweep of statewide offices since 1950.
Whoever wins the governorship, he will have little in the way of a mandate, given a campaign focused more on tactics and innuendo than anything either man hopes to accomplish in office.
"After most elections, you've learned something about what voters think about taxes or crime or abortion or immigration," said Dan Schnur, a Republican communications strategist who sat out the governor's race. "In this campaign, the two most significant questions are whether Gray Davis has been a corrupt governor and whether Bill Simon has been a competent candidate."
Dispiriting as many find it, the race for governor will have important implications, not just in Sacramento -- where the next chief executive will immediately face a monstrous budget deficit -- but also in the 2004 presidential race, when California will figure heavily in both parties' calculations.
Despite tens of millions of dollars spent by the two leading candidates, the 2002 governor's race probably won't be the most expensive in state history; that contest, topping $118 million, was held four years ago. It likely will not even be the costliest this year; in the New York governor's race, three candidates, including a free-spending billionaire, will outpace California's.
