Gray Davis

Joseph Graham Davis Jr. (born December 26, 1942), best known as Gray Davis, is an American politician who served as the 37th Governor of California from 1999 to 2003. He was re-elected to a second term in 2002, but on October 7, 2003, he became the second governor to be recalled in American history. He was succeeded by Republican Arnold A. Schwarzenegger on November 17, 2003 (see 2003 California recall). He is a member of the Democratic Party.

Governorship

With his political successes, he was strongly viewed as a possible Democratic candidate for President in either 2000 or 2004. The energy crisis of 2001 and budget deficit of 2003 hurt his reputation, and any talk of Presidential candidacy completely evaporated.

Related Topics:
President - Energy crisis - Budget deficit

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His early administration focused on balancing the state budget and education reform. An electricity shortage and rolling blackouts in the summer of 2001 contributed to massive state debt — and widespread grumbling about Davis's administration — as California chose to negotiate unfavorable long-term contracts with power suppliers in neighboring states rather than permit its major investor-owned utilities to raise rates to remain financially-capable of purchasing the power for their customers. Few other solutions were available to the state during the blackouts other than to let electricity rates continue to rise. In areas where this occurred consumer electricity rates rose up to 300%. To his credit though, the Davis administration licensed the first power plant construction in 12 years in April 1999 shortly after assuming office. That plant came online in June 2001, although the blackouts were caused more by the financial crisis than a literal shortage of generating capacity.

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Davis's popularity recovered somewhat months later as the crisis subsided and popular blame for the shortage was assigned in part to alleged market manipulation by companies such as Enron, though his buckling to the resultant price-gouging remained a negative factor in his 2002 re-election bid. Davis was also criticized for allowing state spending to increase to match a temporary surge in revenues associated with the short-lived dot-com boom. When the dot-com boom turned to bust, state revenues fell while ongoing spending commitments created deficits that still trouble California's state budget.

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Davis had claimed that he would remove MTBE (a toxic gasoline additive) from the state's gas. A year later he said, "Well, we wait a couple of years before we remove it." However, this never happened.

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During the 2002 election campaign, Davis took the unusual step of taking out campaign ads during the Republican primaries questioning the conservative credentials of Los Angeles mayor, Richard Riordan. Davis theorized that, as a moderate, Riordan could be a more formidable challenger in the general election than a conservative candidate, and sought to eliminate him in the primaries. The ads pointed out that Riordan held positions on issues such as gun control and abortion that were similar to Davis's.

Related Topics:
Primaries - Richard Riordan - Gun control - Abortion

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This strategy succeeded, and Davis was re-elected in November 2002 following a long and bitter campaign against Republican candidate Bill Simon, marked by accusations of ethical lapses on both sides and widespread voter apathy. He gained re-election with 47.4% of the vote to Simon's 42.4%. A memorable footnote to the race was that both Davis and Simon were brothers of the Zeta Psi fraternity (Davis at Stanford, Simon at Williams), and followed the gubernatorial term of another Zeta Psi brother, Pete Wilson, of the Yale chapter.

Related Topics:
2002 - Bill Simon

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