MAYBE DAVIS RESEMBLES BOTH CLINTONS? :

Scandal could hit Davis hard : Costly Oracle deal may have lasting fallout (Will Shuck, May 3, 2002, The Record)

Whether or not the scandal over California's $95 million software deal with Oracle Corp. rises to the level of a political corruption case, it still has potential to color the gubernatorial debate in a way that benefits Republican challenger Bill Simon.

The Oracle fiasco is ugly and embarrassing. Billed as a money-saver, the software-licensing agreement could cost the state $41 million more than if there were no contract. It's led to three high-level resignations, provided the spectacle of police entering a state office building to prevent document shredding,

Gov. Gray Davis said Friday he's been working for weeks to rescind the contract, and that he continues to do so.

"In terms of the taxpayer, I'm determined to make it right for them. ... I'm as mad as anybody else," he said.

Meanwhile, the state attorney general continues to investigate. And Republicans beat the drum for federal officials to intervene.

For all that, experts say, it probably won't lead to criminal charges close to the governor.

For one thing, it's hard to imagine a governor with a $50 million campaign war chest promising a $95 million contract in exchange for a $25,000 contribution, said Bruce Cain, director of the Institute for Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. And proving that were the case would be extremely hard, anyway.

"You'd have to find a smoking gun," Cain said. "You'd need an e-mail or something in which the contract was promised. It just doesn't seem too likely."

The more likely outcome, Cain said, is that the Oracle story could give way to any number of other stories that reflect poorly on Davis' fund-raising activities.

"You put it together with the teachers union's complaint" that Davis opposed the union's proposed bills only after it rejected his demands for $1 million in campaign contributions, Cain said, "and it starts to look, if you like, kind of slimy."

"It becomes a story about the administration extorting groups that do business with the state. It becomes about shakedown," he said. "That makes character and honesty more important issues (in the campaign) than the ideological differences of the candidates.

"And that's disastrous for the Democrats," he said. "They want to talk about issues, because they've got a really conservative candidate (in Simon)."

That last point is quite right. The scandals may not have much effect on Davis, but the one thing they do is to provide Simon the devastating comeback in debates and interviews, when folks question him on issues he doesn't want to talk about : "Well, of course, what Mr. Davis is trying to do is change the topic to my personal religious beliefs from his administration's corruption." Posted by Orrin Judd at May 4, 2002 6:41 PM