The US: With five days of campaigning left, the California recall election has become a trial of strength between incumbent Governor Gray Davis and insurgent challenger Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The Terminator star is so confident of victory that yesterday he outlined a plan in San Diego for his first 100 days in office, saying: "When I take office I'm going to take action."
On the first day he said he would repeal a car tax that tripled licence fees for Californians. He would re-negotiate union contracts and bring back business to California. He got a standing ovation for promising he would deny drivers licences to illegal immigrants and if the legislature did not repeal the measure "I will take it directly to the people". A new opinion poll in yesterday's Los Angeles Times shows that 56 per cent of voters now want to throw the Democratic governor out of office compared to 42 per cent prepared to keep him.
Schwarzenegger, running with the full backing of the Republican establishment, has surged to the front in the list of 135 candidates to replace Davis. He has the support of 40 per cent of likely voters, compared to 32 per cent for Democrat Cruz Bustamante and 15 per cent for Republican rival Tom McClintock. One of Schwarzenegger's harshest critics, Arianna Huffington, dropped out of the race, and called on her supporters to vote against the recall on Tuesday.
"I want people to vote their conscience, but make sure that whatever their vote is, it does not put Schwarzenegger in the Statehouse," she said. Her call may make little difference, as she had slipped from 3 per cent to 0.5 per cent support, but she vowed to highlight the movie actor's dismissive attitude towards women.
Schwarzenegger appears to have picked up most of the votes that would have gone to former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth, another moderate Republican, who withdrew after showing only 8 per cent support in the last poll. Bustamante aides said they hoped to pick up the Huffington votes and noted that their candidate had risen in the polls from 25 to 32 while Schwarzenegger had not risen above 40. Governor Davis is following a strategy of carrying out the state's business and campaigning with prominent out-of-state Democrats. Yesterday Democratic presidential candidate, retired general Wesley Clark, arrived to campaign with him, and former President Bill Clinton may also return to California to campaign with Davis.
"This is way bigger than Gray Davis," Clinton said in TV ads that ran yesterday. Schwarzenegger plans a four-day bus tour from San Diego to the state capital Sacramento beginning today. Meanwhile, Democrats are preparing a legal challenge to a close result that recalls Davis. Six California counties will use punch-card ballot machines on Tuesday, the same type that resulted in the "hanging chad" fiasco during the 2000 presidential election in Florida.