October 7, 2003: California voters recall Governor Gray Davis. He did not deserve this.
Joseph Graham Davis Jr. was born in 1942 in The Bronx. His grandfather, William Rhodes Davis, was a wealthy businessman who betrayed America by aiding Nazi Germany. His father, Joseph Graham Davis Sr., was an advertising executive for Time magazine, and an alcoholic. His mother nicknamed him "Gray" for "Graham." In 1954, the family moved to Los Angeles.
He graduated from Stanford University, where he starred on the golf team, and Columbia University Law School back in New York. He served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, earning a Bronze Star. He also saw that those serving, those wounded, and those killed were disproportionally poor: Black men, Hispanics, and Southern whites.
This spurred him into politics. He helped elected John Tunney (son of former Heavyweight Champion Gene Tunney) to the U.S. Senate in 1970, and Tom Bradley to be the 1st black Mayor of Los Angeles in 1973. In 1974, he ran in the Democratic Primary for Treasurer of California, but lost. Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, son of former Governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, was elected Governor that year, and took Davis on as his Chief of Staff. It was joked that when Brown ran for President in 1980, challenging fellow Democrat Jimmy Carter, Davis was the one really running the State.
Davis was elected to the State Assembly in 1982, and State Controller in 1986. He lost the Democratic Primary for Senate to Dianne Feinstein in 1992, but was elected Lieutenant Governor in 1994, despite the Democratic nominee for Governor, State Treasurer Kathleen Brown (sister of Jerry and daughter of Pat), losing to incumbent Republican Pete Wilson.
He was elected Governor in 1998, winning 58 percent of the vote against Dan Lungren, the State's Attorney General and a former Congressman. He vastly improved the State's education system, reduced crime, and legalized same-sex domestic partnership (though not marriage). In spite of a Statewide electricity crisis all through calendar year 2001, he was re-elected in 2002, albeit with a plurality vote in a 3-way race: He got 47 percent; the Republican nominee, Bill Simon Jr., a far-right banker and the son of a U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, got 42 percent; and Peter Camejo, an environmental activist nominated by the Green Party, got 5 percent.
But budget issues, wildfires in Southern California, and the lingering anger over the electricity crisis made him very unpopular in 2003. Darrell Issa, a far-right Congressman from San Diego, gathered enough signatures to trigger the State Constitution's recall provision, in the hope that he would be elected Governor.
Davis called the recall election an "insult" to the 8 million voters who had voted in the 2002 gubernatorial election. He tried to depict the recall as a $66 million waste of money that could allow a candidate with a very small percentage of the vote to become Governor -- potentially, someone who was very liberal or conservative, as there are no primaries in a recall election. He was right.
Where he was wrong is that he tried to run against the recall Yes/No vote itself, instead of against the candidates that were trying to replace him. And while the candidates running against him, most but not all of them Republicans, ranged from the qualified-on-paper to the absolutely ridiculous, including a porn star, one name stood out: A wealthy real estate investor who also happened to be one of the most famous actors in the world, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Let's be clear about this: Had the man who ended up running against him been a previously unknown businessman named Arnold Strong (which is the name that Ahnold used in his first U.S. movie), Davis would have won. But, for the 2nd time in less than 40 years, California was fooled by a bunch of grumbling conservatives who hoped that a celebrity, a popular actor, could fool the voters into thinking he was moderate enough, and then they could enact their agenda.
There were 2 questions on the ballot:
1. "Shall Gray Davis be recalled (removed) from the office of Governor?" The "Yes" vote was 55.4 percent. Davis won Los Angeles County, the San Francisco Bay Area, and 3 of the 4 coastal Counties north of the Bay Area's Marin County. That was it: Everybody else voted "Yes."
2. "If Davis is recalled, who should replace him as governor?" Schwarzenegger got 48 percent of the vote. Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, the leading Democrat, got 31 percent. The next-highest candidate, State Senator Tom McClintock, got 13 percent. He was elected to Congress as a Republican in 2008.
Schwarzenegger was elected to a full term in 2006, getting 56 percent of the vote against State Treasurer Phil Angelides, who got 39 percent. Angelides won the Counties of Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, San Mateo, San Francisco, Alameda and Marin. "The Governator" won the other 52 Counties.
As with Ronald Reagan, elected a Republican actor as Governor backfired, very badly, and California descended into the kind of crises that made what it had before seem tame. And, as with the first time, voters turned to Jerry Brown to get them out of it. Brown had been the State's youngest Governor, and he became its oldest. And, as with the first time, it worked.
Schwarzenegger hasn't run for public office again, although that is due as much to his health issues as to the political climate of America in general and California in particular. But he has been one of the Republicans who opposed Donald Trump. As a native of Austria, he knows how bad Fascism is.
Davis has never run for public office again, either, and has returned to the practice of law.
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October 7, 2003 was a Tuesday. There was only 1 score on this day, and it was in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The Florida Marlins defeated the Chicago Cubs‚ 9-8‚ on Mike Lowell's pinch-hit home run in the 11th inning. The Cubs had tied the game at 8-8 on Sammy Sosa's 2-out‚ 2-run homer in the bottom half of the 9th, to send the game into extra innings. The teams combined to hit 7 homers, to set an NLCS record.
Everyone talks about Game 6 of this series. They never seem to consider that if the Cubs had simply won Game 1, there never would have been a Game 6.
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