WASHINGTON -- California Gov. Gray Davis will need more than a little luck to carry the day in the gubernatorial recall election now set for Oct. 7. As the campaign starts, he needs to gain ground quickly and mightily to remain in office. The voters are prepared to vote to oust him by margins ranging from 55 to 67 percent, depending on whose polls you read. And if that is not enough, the media blitz of the challengers, particularly Arnold Schwarzenegger, has left the governor without much visibility.
With a field of 135 candidates and only a few weeks until the election, the campaign can easily be compared to a circus. The craziness of the recall system that provides for a simple "yes or no" on whether to recall the governor, plus another vote for a candidate from the ballot to replace him, makes the election tough to manage and difficult to handicap. The first across the line in the electoral race will win and that could easily be a candidate with well less than a majority of the vote. At least 120 of them will receive less than 1 percent of the vote.
Schwarzenegger is not the only big name in the race. There are others, including former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth; two men that Davis beat in last year's election, Republican candidate Bill Simon and Green Party standard-bearer Peter Miguel Camejo; Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante; and the gadabout columnist, Ariana Huffington.