Seven months after he won reelection in what could have been the final race of his career, Gov. Gray Davis is mounting yet another statewide campaign -- this time to crush a drive by Republicans to recall him from office.
Davis had hoped to use his second term to repair an image tainted by his response to the California energy crisis and his dogged pursuit of campaign money. But now, amid rising anxiety over the recall among Davis supporters, the Democratic governor once again is fighting for sheer political survival.
To plot strategy against the recall, the tight-knit team that guided Davis to victory in the gubernatorial elections of 1998 and 2002 has reassembled informally over the last several weeks, mainly on conference calls.
Among them are Garry South, the governor's former chief campaign strategist; pollster Paul Maslin; media consultants David Doak and Tom O'Donnell; former Davis cabinet secretary Susan Kennedy; the governor's chief of staff, Lynn Schenk; and his top fund-raiser, lobbyist Darius Anderson, according to people familiar with the matter.
"All of us who used to be part of the old team are coming together, and we're going to do what we can to fight this thing," a Davis advisor said.
The Davis brain trust, now enlarged to include former Al Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, has worked without pay to shape the campaign plan, the advisor said. In charge of executing it is Steve Smith, who took a leave of absence as state labor secretary last week to lead the new committee set up to save Davis: Taxpayers Against the Governor's Recall.
The committee has hired two former Davis fund-raisers to collect as much as $4 million, organizers said. If the recall qualifies for the ballot, Davis is expected to raise millions more for a full-scale television ad campaign.
People close to Davis say he was determined after his reelection to regain his public standing by minimizing his political fund-raising and showing the kind of leadership in the state fiscal crisis that many Californians thought he lacked during the electricity debacle of his first term. Even now, Davis, who was deeply engaged in oversight of previous campaigns, has made a point of staying relatively detached from the anti-recall effort, they say.
