California: Recall Davis Campaign Off to a Great Start

What a couple of days we have had since the Secretary of State certified our recall petition. Obviously our media exposure has been limited by the necessary focus on the war, but even with that we have seen the strongest start of any petition drive in the history of our organization!

The first 24 hours brought more than 30,000 downloads of the petition! And this is only the beginning: I am seeing our links on more and more web sites and every day brings new E-Mail notices that explain to people on many activists lists that they can download the petitions on-line. We have secured the funding to put out at least one million petitions via the mail and that phase of the campaign will begin in the next few days.

Right now we need the folks that have already downloaded a petition to do three simple things that will greatly assist the recall campaign:

1) Please get the five signatures to fill your first petition as quickly as possible and mail it back to our office immediately. California law requires that we turn in at least 10% of the signatures needed to qualify, about 90,000, before the county registrars must begin to validate and count the signatures. We want to get this process started as soon as possible and these early e-mail petitions can get the job done in short order if everyone who downloaded sends that first one in RIGHT AWAY! After that the Secretary of State will be required to report how many we have collected each month and we are hopeful that he will post this on the web.

2) The power of the Internet is the ability to multiply our efforts with no additional costs: If everyone who has downloaded the petition would forward information about DavisRecall.com to just ten of their friends online and they in turn did the same next week, it could mean almost three million new people hearing about the recall in just over a week. I think you can see the potential, so please send one of the E-Cards from the web site to at least ten folks in your address book and encourage them to do the same! If you have a large address book you can send an E-card to yourself and then easily forward it to all your friends.

3) Finally, I need you to consider making a contribution to the recall campaign. We are using every dollar that comes in to get more petitions out the door and we will soon be overwhelmed with the work that is required to sort and process the petitions as they come back and getting them out to the various county offices. Even if you can only afford the minimum $10, please make an online contribution today! If you can afford more, that would be even more helpful for the cause. There are no limits on how much can be given and company or corporate contributions are welcome as well. If you prefer to make a contribution by check the mailing address is on the contribution page as well.

Again, I want to express my heartfelt thanks to those of you who have joined the battle for California early. If we all work together and do our part, we can achieve our goal of 898,000 valid signatures by July 4th and begin to put California back on the right path.

Well, God help us, I still think Californians should go slow until we have better word on who might be put forward on the Republican ticket if Gray Davis is recalled. The time to do that is now, not after the petition drive has been successfully concluded and the political pros no longer need any help from the rank and file.

I'd hate to see Davis replaced by Riordan. With Parsky in charge, that's only too likely.

Before this goes much further, people should be asking: Who is slated to take Davis's place?

You're so right!
Lots of PO'ed people would vote for a clean sweep of the StateHouse, when it begins to hurt enough (especially students and union people who have been double crosssed) at a regular election - but the horses are out of the barn for a quickie temper tantrum against only half of the problem.
This state only prospered when the libs were in the minority.
So,, Davis gets recalled (maybe) and the Dems continue to
be Rats, fuzzing up all the history and blame continuing problems on ,, who? not themselves - and they get re-elected.

You seem to have a misunderstanding of how the recall process works in California. Obtaining the required number of signatures triggers two provisions of California law. The first is to put the name of the target official on the ballot in a special election to decide the "yes-no" question of whether he should be removed from office.
The other provision, however, is the mechanism that replaces that official, if removed. It is a one-shot, winner take all election, the results of which are only tallied if Davis is removed. Any Democrat, Republican, or whatever who seeks to replace Davis (if he's removed) qualifies for that single ballot. The top vote getter in that special election -- which takes place at the same time as the recall election on Davis -- then becomes Governor.
No one, not the Republican Party or any other entity, gets to pre-screen or decide upon those candidates. One advantage for the Republicans is that high-ranking Democrats would shy away from that replacement election because even putting their name up implies that they expect Davis might be removed. And until he is actually gone, Davis remains a huge and vindictive power in California politics.
So, there is no way to do what you suggest, to "go slow until there is some idea of who will replace Davis." Every Californian has to decide first whether Davis should be removed. The campaign for who should replace him, will heat up once the press reports that 1) the petition campaign has gotten the Davis recall on the ballot (it is but a pipe dream until that point), and 2) opinion polls show that there's a reasonable chance that the voters will remove Davis. Only at that point do the campaigns of all who would replace Davis then appear on the political radar screen.
Does that clarify things a tad?

Congressman Billybob

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