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Arnold wins california { October 7 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/07/national/07CND-RECA.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/07/national/07CND-RECA.html
October 7, 2003
California Expresses Strong Dissatisfaction for Governor
By JOHN M. BRODER
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 7 - Millions of Californians went to the polls today to decide the fate of Gov. Gray Davis, expressing deep dissatisfaction with his performance in office and an apparent willingness to entrust the governor's office to a movie actor making his first run for office, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Polls closed at 8 p.m. Pacific time, official results were not immediately announced. But results of a survey of voters leaving the polls through early evening, conducted for The New York Times and other news organizations, showed that a majority wanted to oust Mr. Davis, and a clear plurality preferred Mr. Schwarzenegger as his replacement.
In interviews, those voters rendered an overwhelmingly negative verdict on Mr. Davis, who has spent virtually his entire adult life in politics and who was re-elected as governor just 11 months ago. Nearly three of four voters interviewed disapproved of his job performance, and four of five said they thought the economy was ``not so good'' or poor, a sharp increase from when Mr. Davis was re-elected.
Early evening exit polls showed that 56 percent favored a recall and 44 percent opposed it. Mr. Schwarzenegger held a clear margin over Lt. Cruz M. Bustamante, a Democrat, and State Senator Tom McClintock, a Republican.
Many who said they had voted for Mr. Schwarzenegger also said he had not put forward a specific enough plan for addressing the state's problems, the poll found. Mr. Schwarzenegger did not do significantly worse among women than among men, despite repeated reports in recent days of sexual misconduct by him. In fact, the vast majority of voters surveyed said they had made up their minds on whom to vote for more than a month ago.
In an interview tonight on ``Larry King Live'' on CNN, Mr. Davis was asked how he felt as he cast his vote and saw his name on a ballot for what may be the last time. ``It wasn't my happiest moment, but I knew it was coming for a long time,'' Mr. Davis said, adding philosophically about the voters, ``Whatever their judgment is tonight, I will accept it.''
Today's vote concluded 77 days of political mayhem unlike anything this state has seen. The race featured a crazy quilt of 135 candidates, any of whom, under the unusual rules of the recall, could have been elected with a simple plurality. But it ended in a close-in brawl between a seasoned political gut-puncher, Mr. Davis, and a willful newcomer, Mr. Schwarzenegger.
The race generated enormous interest in California and around the world because of the novelty of a recall and Mr. Schwarzenegger's star power. Californians followed the 11-week contest with an intensity usually reserved for freeway car chases and Oscar night. The candidates spent $83 million, more than $40 million of it on an downpour of television advertising in the race's closing weeks. The biggest single source of campaign money - $10.3 million - was Mr. Schwarzenegger's personal bank account.
Secretary of State Kevin Shelley estimated the turnout on Tuesday at 9.25 million voters, about 60 percent of the state's 15.4 million registered voters, compared with about 50 percent last November and 71 percent in the 2000 presidential election. If the estimate proves accurate, it will be the state's highest voter participation in a nonpresidential election since 1982.
Mr. Davis cast his vote in a real estate office on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood late this morning, the same place where Larry Flynt, the self-described ``smut-peddler with a heart'' and one of the candidates on the replacement ballot, cast his ballot a few minutes earlier. Mr. Davis was accompanied by his wife, Sharon, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has appeared several times on Mr. Davis's behalf to try to rally disaffected Democrats.
Mr. Schwarzenegger voted in the garage of a gated mansion in Pacific Palisades, near his home, trailed by a battalion of reporters and photographers. He put on glasses to study the ballot, which was several pages long.
``I just went through the pages,'' Mr. Schwarzenegger said. ``Instead of going through two pages, I just went through 10 pages, and you always look for the longest name.''
His wife, Maria Shriver, was by his side, as she has been almost constantly since last Thursday when new reports of sexual misconduct threatened to derail Mr. Schwarzenegger's march to Sacramento.
Discontent with Mr. Davis and the direction of the state was palpable at polling places from one end of this sprawling republic of 35 million people to the other.
Californians are deeply pessimistic about the state's economy, with only about 20 percent calling it good or excellent, according to a survey of more than 2,800 voters conducted through the morning and afternoon by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for The Times and other news organizations. Last November, when Mr. Davis won re-election, more than half the voters characterized the state's economy as good, according to a poll conducted by The Los Angeles Times.
The exit interviews also found that a majority of voters had rejected Proposition 54, which has been called the racial privacy initiative and would bar state and local governments from collecting most data on race, religion and ethnicity. Ward Connerly, a University of California regent and longtime opponent of affirmative action, sponsored the ballot initiative.
The survey conducted on today includes questionnaires filled out by voters leaving polling places throughout the state, as well as a telephone poll conducted over the past week of those who said they had submitted absentee ballots.
``Gray Davis really made a mess out of California, so I was definitely yes on the recall,'' said Robin Cruse, 45, a stay-at-home mother from San Clemente. ``Arnold, I'm not 100 percent on him, but I thought he was still my best choice.''
Marc Vasquez, 58, said after casting his ballot in Fresno: ``The recall is something that we're privileged to have in this state. It's high time we have officials realize that they can be held accountable.''
Even among those who voted against the recall, there was broad unhappiness with the direction of the state and Mr. Davis's stewardship. Almost half of the recall opponents disapprove of the governor's job performance and three-quarters believe the state's economy is in bad shape.
Mr. Schwarzenegger and his chief Republican rival, Mr. McClintock, are viewed favorably by the voters, Mr. Schwarzenegger by half the voters and Mr. McClintock by about 55 percent, the poll found.
More than 70 percent of those polled said they disapproved of the job Mr. Davis was doing as governor, with a quarter saying they approved. Mr. Bustamante, the only prominent Democrat on the ballot, was viewed unfavorably by nearly 6 in 10 voters.
It may be some time before the effect of last-minute reports that Mr. Schwarzenegger groped more than a dozen women on movie lots and elsewhere can be fully measured. But at least some voters dismissed the charges as an act of desperation by Mr. Davis and his allies.
Skip McCown, 56, a Republican from San Diego, voted for the recall and for Mr. Schwarzenegger. ``It's curious that this spate of accusations came out three or four days before the election,'' Mr. McCown said. ``If anything, it makes me want to vote for him more. This is a Davis ploy. He's the king of dirty tricks.''
Supporters and opponents of the recall were largely divided along ideological lines. Three-fifths of those who voted to recall Mr. Davis are Republicans and almost half described themselves as conservative. Two-thirds of those who said they voted against the recall are Democrats and more than half defined themselves as liberal.
While Democrats hold a substantial edge in voter registration in California, Mr. Davis had trouble winning their loyalty. The voter poll found that about 18 percent of those who voted to recall Mr. Davis were Democrats.
Deborah Gittes, 42, a school administrator in Coronado, Calif., is a registered Democrat who voted to oust Mr. Davis and replace him with Mr. Schwarzenegger. ``Davis just messed things up,'' Ms. Gittes said. ``It's good to see Californians empowered themselves.''
As for the charges of sexual misconduct against Mr. Schwarzenegger, she said, ``There's all this debauchery in the film industry, and it's all brought up at the last minute when he's ahead in the polls.''
California has a long tradition of direct democracy, the legacy of Gov. Hiram Johnson of the Progressive Party, who introduced the initiative, referendum and recall to the state constitution in 1911. The state's voters have passed hundreds of laws by initiative over the last 90 years, many of them forcing elected state officials to try to finance programs mandated by the voters with tax revenues limited by those same voters.
Groups have tried 31 times to invoke the recall to remove California governors, including Republicans Ronald Reagan and Earl Warren, but this is the first recall attempt to qualify for the ballot. The last American governor to be recalled was Lynn J. Frazier of North Dakota, in 1921.
Shortly after Mr. Davis was elected to a second four-year term - scoring a surprisingly narrow victory over a political novice, Bill Simon Jr. - Republican political consultants and an antitax crusader named Ted Costa began exploring the possibility of recalling the governor. Their main complaint was that Mr. Davis had underestimated the size of the state's budget deficit in the fall campaign. By winter, it was clear that the state faced a $38 billion gap between expected revenues and planned spending, the largest state budget deficit in the nation's history.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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