*DUMP DAVIS: Democratic California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley certified July 23 that the drive to recall Democratic California Gov. Gray Davis had collected 1.3 million valid signatures, far more than the 897,158 needed to qualify the recall for the ballot.
The next day, Democratic California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante announced that, in keeping with the recall law (which requires a vote to be held between 60 to 80 days after certification), a special election will be held October 7. Candidates must file at least 59 days before that (August 9). To qualify for the ballot a candidate needs only to collect 65 signatures and pay a $3,500 fee. The ballot will have two parts: a "yes" or "no" on removing Davis, and a list of candidates from which to choose his replacement if a majority votes to recall. On that line, a simple plurality elects the new governor.
*SCRAMBLE TO SACRAMENTO: A mad scramble is now starting to succeed Davis in Sacramento. Green Party candidate Peter Camejo has announced but, so far, no Democrat has jumped in, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe has vowed none will. Nonetheless, the Washington Post reports some Democrats did approach Sen. Dianne Feinstein and former Rep. Leon Panetta about running, but were rebuffed. On the Republican side, Rep. Darrell Issa, who bankrolled the signature campaign with $1.7 million of his own money, is already campaigning. State Sen. Tom McClintock has formed an exploratory committee. Unsuccessful 2002 candidate Bill Simon has said he would reveal his plans July 26. And liberal Republican actor Arnold Schwarzenegger is playing Hamlet-"to run, or not to run"-at least in part because his wife, Maria Shriver, a Kennedy, would prefer that he didn’t.
*GRAHAM’S POOR INTELLIGENCE: While trying to impugn the credibility of President Bush on CBS’s "Face the Nation" July 20, Sen. Bob Graham (D.-Fla.), onetime Senate Intelligence Committee chairman turned demagogic presidential candidate, made a false statement.
Speaking of why he believed Bush should not have referred in his State of the Union Address to a British intelligence report that said Saddam Hussein had sought uranium in Africa, Graham said, "The United States sent [Joseph C. Wilson],an experienced ambassador [to Niger], who came back after a full review with a report that these were fabricated documents." In fact, Wilson never saw the forged memorandum of understanding purporting to show actual consummation of an Iraq-Niger uranium deal. Wilson concluded the documents were forged from newspaper accounts. "As for the actual memorandum," Wilson wrote in the New York Times, "I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors . . . and were probably forged." Well, at least Wilson read the newspapers carefully-more than you can say for Graham.
*THE I-WORD: Perhaps Graham was too busy out on the campaign trail implying that President Bush should be impeached to carefully study the factual predicate for this reckless charge. "If in fact we went to war under false pretenses, that is a very serious charge," Graham said in Concord, N.H., July 17. "If the standard of impeachment is the one the House Republicans used against Bill Clinton," he added, "this clearly comes within that standard." Of course, at Clinton’s Senate impeachment trial the only standard Graham applied was the Democratic credo of partisanship uber alles. He took an oath to God to do impartial justice. Then he voted that Clinton was "not guilty" of perjury and obstruction of justice.
*WE’LL TAKE IT: No doubt warming the heart of White House political director Karl Rove, Rep. Dick Gephardt (D.-Mo.) has decided to make the 2004 election a referendum on national security. "I’m running for President because I believe George Bush has left us less safe and less secure than we were four years ago," Gephardt said in San Francisco last week. Voters, he seems to believe, can be persuaded that the party of McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis and Clinton will do better on national defense than the party of Reagan, Bush and Bush. "It was the Clinton-Gore military that defeated the Taliban after September 11," claimed Gephardt, neglecting to mention which party controlled Congress-and Defense appropriations-in the final six years of the Clinton presidency.
*PINING FOR HILLARY: A new Survey Iowa poll not surprisingly puts Gephardt in the lead for that state’s presidential caucuses to be held in January: Gephardt 32%; Dean 19%; and Kerry 12%. If Sen. Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.) jumped into the race, however, she would lead in Iowa with 36%.
