RECALL ATTRACTS A FIELD OF DREAMERS

Everyone has heard about the big names running for governor of California.
But the lengthy ballot for the Oct. 7 election includes dozens of
less-famous people who are just as serious about the issues -- and some who
just want to have fun.

LOS ANGELES -- There's the retired cop who wants to legalize ferrets as
pets. The tobacco-seller who says smokers are overtaxed. The married guy
trying to corner the singles vote. The structural engineer looking to call
attention to earthquake safety.

This is democracy, California-style, in the special election over recalling
Gov. Gray Davis. On Oct. 7, voters first will decide whether to oust the
Democrat incumbent. However they vote on that question, they'll next face a
confounding list of 135 candidates to replace Davis if he fails to gain
majority support.

By now, everyone knows the heavyweights: Hollywood superstar Arnold
Schwarzenegger; Republican Bill Simon Jr., who lost to Davis in November;
Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante; former Major League Baseball commissioner Peter
Ueberroth; columnist-author Arianna Huffington; and Peter Camejo of the
Green Party.

In a second category are what some observers call the clowns in a political
circus. Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt bills himself as ''the smut
peddler who cares.'' Porn actress Mary Carey says lap dances should be
tax-deductible. Angelyne, a blond entertainer who promotes herself on
Sunset Strip billboards, is running. Comic stars from past eras add to the
only-in-California atmosphere. They include Gallagher and former child
actor Gary Coleman of TV's Diff'rent Strokes.

But between the stars and the self-promoters are dozens of unsung
Californians running for governor to push their pet solutions to some real
problems. Some of them are certain they can win.

''For them, the movie isn't The Terminator. It's Field of Dreams,'' says
Jack Pitney, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College near Los
Angeles.

Schwarzenegger's leap into the contest last week has brought the election
enough attention to give obscure candidates the soapbox of a lifetime. Some
hope to spring a historic upset victory by focusing on a single issue to
target thin slices of the electorate.

How thin are the slices? Well, people who hate HMO arbitration panels, for
example. Or marijuana smokers. Or all those ferret lovers.

At least theoretically, thinking small could be a winning strategy. A
plurality of votes -- one more vote than any other candidate gets -- will
win the governorship if Davis is ousted on Question 1. There's no runoff. A
single-digit percentage of the vote could win.

Paul Mariano, 56, a Democrat and a deputy public defender in the San
Francisco Bay Area, says he's running just to point out that the recall
process is a dangerous crapshoot for voters.

Mariano says his first act as governor would be to appoint Davis as his
chief of staff. ''He won the governor's post in a full, free and fair
election,'' Mariano says. ''And it would be wrong to replace him in some
insane process that allows the 'Terminator' or a stripper or a comedian --
or me -- to win the highest office in the sixth-largest economy of the world.''

But Mariano is outnumbered by candidates who welcome the chance to have
their say. ''I would never be able to express my opinions in any way like
this under any other set of circumstances,'' says Joe Guzzardi, 60, a
Democrat from Lodi who teaches English to adults. He's running, he says,
because elected officials ''are not willing to discuss the great and
tangible economic harm of illegal immigration.''

Confusion on the ballot

The profusion of candidates is creating a mess, Pitney says. ''Openness is
good, confusion is not. The strategy of running to get attention for an
issue makes sense until the ballot starts to look like the census of a
small town.''

The lengthy ballot has kicked the special election's estimated cost above
$66 million. There may be long delays in counting votes. But the
little-known candidates make no apology. ''I don't feel guilty about the
ballot,'' says Paul Nave, 42, a former professional boxer. He's campaigning
to reduce spending on prisons by liberalizing drug sentences. ''To me, I'm
a legitimate player.''

Mathilda Karel Spak, a 100-year-old widow from Long Beach, answered a
newspaper ad placed by the 99=A2 Only stores that offered to pay the filing
fee for any 99-year-old. The company helped her file papers to run. She was
disqualified for failing to submit the required 65 signatures of other
politically unaffiliated voters. She says she'll run a write-in campaign.
Spak, who is a hospital volunteer four days a week, turns 101 on Sept. 5
and says she would have the oomph to fill out Davis' term and reverse
recent spending cuts in health services. ''I figure I have five good years
to work, and if I can't do it in five years, then I'm not worth a thing.''

Bill Vaughn, 47, a structural engineer from Lafayette, is in the race to
call attention to earthquake safety. ''Structural engineers are practically
invisible in our society,'' he says. He is running to protest the state's
recent adoption of a building code that he says is weak on earthquake
protection.

Candidate David Laughing Horse Robinson, 48, is a technician in the art
department at California State University-Bakersfield. He says the state's
fiscal problems are causing his department to cut its budget 66% this fall,
and students will have to buy their own art supplies. Student fees will
rise from $700 a quarter to $1,000.

''Universities should be free,'' he says. A flat tax on everyone's income
would provide enough money to pay for that, Robinson says. He takes his
grassroots campaign up and down the state on weekends. ''It's just gas
money,'' he says. ''I've got my tent and my pickup.''

Robinson is the elected chairman of the 5,000-member Kawaiisu Indian tribe.
And he is one of the relatively few candidates who have run for anything
before. ''If you can do Indian politics, you can do anything,'' he says. By
his tribe's tradition, every vote must be unanimous. For sure, that won't
happen in the recall election. When Davis was re-elected last November, 7.7
million people -- 51% of the registered voters -- went to the polls
University of Southern California public policy scholar Sherry Bebitch
Jeffe says a million votes may be enough to win Oct. 7. That's the number
Ned Roscoe, 42, is shooting for.

Roscoe is co-president of the family-owned Cigarettes Cheaper! discount
tobacco chain. He figures that 2 million of California's 4 million smokers
will go to the polls. If he can get half of those smokers to vote for him,
he says, there's his victory. If he fails, he wants to come close enough to
scare politicians into ''realizing that they should be careful about
kicking smokers and soaking them for every new tax.''

Pot, single people and HMOs

Bruce Margolin, 61, Los Angeles director of the National Organization for
the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says he could win by appealing to those who
agree that marijuana use should be legalized. ''While all the other
candidates are infighting and beating each other up, there's going to be
room for somebody like myself,'' says Margolin, a Democrat.

Richard Gosse, 54, a Republican, says he is making a play for the 34% of
registered voters who are unmarried. The San Rafael author of eight books
about life as a single person says singles are overtaxed. Gosse, however,
has been married since 1999.

Gosse ran three times for local offices in Marin County, north of San
Francisco. He lost every time. ''I've always been in the middle of the pack
until now,'' he says. ''The pack is so big that I have a chance.''

Sharon Rushford, 52, owns a Santa Clara construction firm with her husband,
Gary. Five years ago, Gary's right leg was amputated. The couple said their
HMO erred and the leg could have been saved.

The HMO mandated out-of-court arbitration of medical malpractice claims.
The couple lost. Now she's using the recall election to tout an initiative
for the November 2004 ballot that would allow patients to avoid arbitration
and sue in court.

Georgy Russell, 26, a Silicon Valley software engineer, confesses to mixed
motives. She is focusing her campaign on other 20-somethings by backing
legalized marijuana and gay marriage. She's out to ''get people to think
more seriously about politics,'' she says. Also, she wants to ''provide a
fair amount of entertainment.''

Entertaining, she is. She has raised $5,000, mostly from selling ''Georgy
for Governor'' paraphernalia such as thong underwear, bumper stickers, caps
and T-shirts on her Web site, www.georgyforgov.com.

Her slogan: ''Brains, Beauty, Leadership.'' Her latest offering is a shirt
that reads, ''I asked Georgy out and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.''
''I think my lack of experience is an asset,'' she says about her campaign.
That's just what Schwarzenegger told Jay Leno last week.

Deluded as some may be about their chances, the long-shot contenders are
working hard. Roscoe is visiting smoke shops, going on talk radio and
appearing on local cable-access shows. His campaign agenda: ''Get people
registered, get them in on Election Day -- and hope that they can find my
name on the ballot.''