Gov. Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger turned their focus on one another Friday in mutual efforts to frame the closing phase of the recall race as a showdown between the two of them.
The Democratic incumbent, renowned for brutal campaign ads against rivals, started running his first spot against the Republican actor, who has been attacking Davis in a commercial that began airing Monday.
"Why can't Arnold Schwarzenegger get his facts straight?" the narrator asks. "He has no experience, won't answer press questions, won't debate unless he has the questions in advance and didn't even bother to vote in 13 of the last 21 elections."
At a rally in Santa Monica, Schwarzenegger and his advisors also sought to cast the final stage of the race as a contest between the actor and the governor.
"The people have suffered enough under the hands of Gray Davis," Schwarzenegger said.
Both men were driven to promote a two-person race by their own strategic imperatives. Schwarzenegger's strategist, Mike Murphy, suggested that the actor had little to gain by engaging his rivals in the race to become Davis' successor.
"Our question now is, do we want to spend our time arguing with Cruz Bustamante, or Arianna Huffington, or the Green candidate, when the real question doesn't involve any of that," Murphy said. "It's whether you want Schwarzenegger or whether you want Davis. That's the question."
In the odd mathematics of the Oct. 7 recall election, Davis must win far more votes to keep his job than Schwarzenegger needs to take it. To survive the yes-or-no vote on the proposed recall of the governor, Davis must win more than 50% of the vote.
If Davis loses on the first part of the recall ballot, his job will go to whichever of the 135 replacement candidates gets the most votes. Thus, Schwarzenegger -- or either of his main rivals, Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) -- could become governor with considerably less than 50% of the vote.
In internal campaign polls, Davis continues to fall a few points short of the vote he needs to remain in office. But the polls show a swing of several points in Davis' favor if voters believe his successor would not be Bustamante but Republican Schwarzenegger, Davis advisors said.
