RIVERSIDE, Calif., 6 September 2003 — A panel of federal judges said yesterday it would not postpone California’s gubernatorial recall vote, removing one of the last legal barriers to the Oct. 7 election.
The decision came the morning after the US Justice Department made a formal determination that Monterey County’s hurriedly assembled balloting plans for the election to unseat Gov. Gray Davis did not constitute a violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.
Justice Department spokesman Jorge Martinez said yesterday that federal officials had signed off on Monterey County’s recall arrangements.
The three federal judges last week had delayed their decision on the pair of lawsuits filed by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in anticipation of guidance from the Justice Department.
The judges said yesterday they would give guidance to Monterey County later in the day on how it should go about mailing its 350 overseas ballots. They are considering allowing the county to send the ballots via e-mail.
Another legal challenge to the recall election is still pending in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. That lawsuit, filed by the ACLU, challenges the use of punch-card ballots in six counties. A hearing is scheduled Sept. 11.
The major candidates and the governor were back on the campaign trail following the first debate of the recall effort.
Arnold Schwarzenegger spent time at a voter registration rally Thursday, appearing unfazed by criticism of his no-show at the debate and expressing confidence that Republicans who think he’s too liberal will eventually support him.
“The question they have to ask themselves is: Do they want to keep Gray Davis in office or do they want to replace him with his twin brother, Cruz Bustamante, or do they want to have new blood in there, and someone that would be sympathetic to their causes?” Schwarzenegger told The Associated Press in an interview.
Gov. Gray Davis, meanwhile, received unexpected support Thursday from a member of Schwarzenegger’s team of economic advisers, F. Warren Hellman. Hellman, who has supported Davis in the past, contributed $50,000 to Davis’s committee against the recall. At an event in San Diego, Davis also said he would sign a bill Friday evening that would allow undocumented immigrants the right to legally drive in California.
“Most of these folks are already on the road anyway, driving illegally,” he said. “Now they will have to be tested. They will have to know the rules of the road.”
Schwarzenegger, an immigrant from Austria, has said that he will seek to repeal the bill if voters recall Davis and chose him as the replacement.
In the AP interview, he cast himself as the only candidate among the 135 on the ballot with true credentials on immigration, and he suggested that Democrats, such as Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the grandson of immigrants, have no right to use immigration issues against him.
“I don’t need to get a lesson from anyone else about immigration because I’ve been there. Whereas other candidates are maybe sons of immigrants, but I’m the true immigrant, OK? So let’s just make that clear.”
Bustamante, who is leading in the latest poll, came under fire for accepting $2 million in Indian gaming money that circumvented current campaign spending limits by funneling most of the cash to an old campaign account.
Davis was careful not to criticize Bustamante directly, saying that voters will decide what is right or wrong. “Certainly Indian tribes have a right to participate in the political process,” he said.
Davis was also quick to get back on the campaign trail Thursday after Wednesday’s debate, conducting a town hall-style meeting in another bid to reconnect with Californians.
He attacked Schwarzenegger’s claim in a new TV ad that California spends $29 million more each day than it is taking in. State officials say that under the new budget, which includes heavy borrowing, the state is bringing in about $6 million more each day than it spends.
