ALAMEDA — As the breakneck race toward the Oct. 7 recall election continues and the media spotlight shines on only a handful of the 135 candidates, 40 of the lesser-known entrants have decided to remind voters that they are still in the running.
Early Saturday, they gathered under a gunmetal sky at the USS Hornet aircraft carrier museum on the old Alameda naval base to establish the Candidates' Forum, a loose coalition designed to draw attention to their neglected campaigns.
Participants said they would meet weekly in cities around the state to give voters and the media a chance to meet the "other" candidates.
"A group of us running for governor decided that it was absolutely necessary for us to come together," said Jon Zellhoefer, a Republican from Mariposa, who helped organize the event. "We have people from all the parties with us."
Most knew each other only as names on a list, and sported handwritten nametags or campaign buttons on their lapels.
Badi Badiozamani, a businessman from San Diego with an earthy tenor voice, sang a short song he had written about the campaign. Daniel Watts, a wiry 21-year-old college student at UC San Diego, gave out little, neon-yellow handbills featuring his picture and Web address. Bill Tsangares, who owns a novelty store in Los Feliz, wore an army-green "Recall Arnold" T-shirt.
They shook hands, exchanged business cards and shared stories from the campaign trail or from auditions for "Who Wants to be Governor?" -- a game show being developed by a company called Mindless Entertainment. It will pit five debating candidates against one another for a $21,000 prize.
They also met for an hour in a closed conference room aboard the carrier to draft a mission statement, issued at a noon news conference by Jack Mortensen, a Folsom painting contractor who calls himself a "renegade Democrat."
"We need to take California government back and put it in the hands of the people, where our forefathers intended it," he said as 39 others listened.
Most of those in attendance seemed hopeful about the prospects for drawing attention to the extraordinary grass-roots response the nomination process attracted in the recall effort.
"It's like car racing -- no one can get to the front by themselves," said Jerry Kunzman, a Silicon Valley independent who is chief executive of the National Auto Sport Assn.
The tightest group at the pier seemed to be the small cadre of candidates who oppose the recall campaign.
