Davis Recall Bid Misuses a Good Tool

Every California governor since Pat Brown has seen people take to the streets to gather signatures in an attempt to force a recall election. All of those efforts have failed.

This year, opponents of Gov. Gray Davis hope to buck the odds. They have until Sept. 2 to collect 895,158 valid signatures of registered voters (12% of the vote in the last governor’s election, in November). If they succeed, an election will be scheduled asking voters whether Davis should be recalled. Buoyed by promised financial backing from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), recall promoters are being taken seriously.

Let’s just imagine that recall backers are able to gather enough valid signatures. What few realize is just how weird a recall election for a partisan office would be.

Here’s how the process would work: If sufficient signatures were collected more than six months before the next scheduled election, a special election would be held, at an estimated cost of $25 million. If less than six months remained, the recall would be held at the next scheduled election.

The recall ballot would have two parts: the recall question itself -- “Shall Gray Davis be recalled from the office of governor?” -- and a list of candidates to replace the governor if the recall is approved. If a majority of the voters chose “yes” on the recall question, the votes for the candidates would be tallied. Only those who voted on the first question -- whether yes or no -- would have their votes counted for the second question. No matter how large the field, the candidate with the most votes would become governor.

The next governor could be virtually anybody. The requirements to get on the ballot are weak. There’s no limit to the number of candidates. There’s no party primary to winnow out the crackpots and those with narrow constituencies. There’s no runoff between the top two candidates to find a majority winner. If there are, say, 10 candidates on the ballot, one of them could win, theoretically, with just a little more than 10% of the vote.

The recall process is simply not designed to be a continuation of a partisan conflict by other means. It is not designed to rerun the previous election and come to a different result. Rather, it is designed to be like the ejector seat in a jet fighter plane -- a risky last resort worth the consequences.

The recall works best for a nonpartisan election in a community where a disastrous elected official has generated not only opposition but consensus on a replacement. Take the city of South Gate. Ruled by a corrupt clique of officeholders, South Gate voters turned their leaders out in a recall election in January and replaced them with activists who had led the charge for reform. Clearly it was time to press the ejector button.

At the state level, misusing the recall process could backfire for the GOP. Wouldn’t it make more sense to let Davis and the Democrats take the heat for the budget crisis and lose the next scheduled election?

What’s more, Republicans would need to rally around a consensus candidate, preferably a moderate. But will conservative Republicans be any happier to back a moderate in the recall election than they were to vote for Richard Riordan in the 2002 primary? And what about Issa? Having paid for the recall, is he going to step aside for another Republican?

A recall also could be counterproductive for Republicans if it is seen as partisan. If there is a special election, Republicans will have to explain why they are forcing taxpayers to spend $25 million in the middle of a budget crisis.

If the election takes place in March 2004, Democratic turnout would be boosted by a crowded presidential primary. In the admittedly unlikely event that a Davis recall leads to his replacement by another Democrat -- one who would not be term-limited in 2006 -- Republicans would surely regret having achieved the recall.

Meanwhile, even Democrats who dislike Davis have to worry about the recall. Do they really want to risk losing the governorship? Should they run one or more candidates in the election, just in case Davis is recalled -- or would that constitute a premature admission of defeat? Do they run a bizarre “ticket” that asks people to vote against recalling Davis but to also vote for a Democrat to replace him in case the recall succeeds? Will the long line of ambitious Democrats step aside for a consensus candidate?

These questions remind us why we have party primaries and general elections. Out of the stew of ambition and talent, a candidate emerges from each party and then faces the candidate of the other party.

The tools of democracy are marvelous things when used for what they do best. Applied to a statewide partisan office where the officeholder is highly unpopular but no danger to the community’s survival, and where there is and can be no consensus replacement agreed upon by the parties, the recall becomes a calamity. It’s tempting to reshape tools of direct democracy as potent weapons for never-ending partisan battles, but it’s the wrong way to go.