 
Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante got 35 percent in a recent Los Angeles Times poll on the Oct. 7 California recall election.
Bustamante leads recall pack
Democrat Cruz Bustamante leads Republican rival Arnold Schwarzenegger by more than 10 percentage points in a Los Angeles Times poll of 801 registered California voters considered likely to vote in the Oct. 7 gubernatorial recall election.
Bustamante got 35 percent to Schwarzenegger's 22 percent in the poll, which was conducted between Aug. 16 and Aug. 21 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.
Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock came in third in the poll, with 12 percent; businessman and former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth got 7 percent; and Los Angeles businessman Bill Simon, who was California Gov. Gray Davis' Republican challenger in November, got 6 percent.
Simon dropped out of the race yesterday, after the Times poll was completed, but even if all of his support went to Schwarzenegger (which is unlikely, given that Simon's supporters are right-wingers and Schwarzenegger is seen as a moderate), Bustamante would still enjoy a comfortable lead over Schwarzenegger.
Political commentator Arianna Huffington, who is running as an independent, got only 3 percent in the Times poll. Green Party candidate Peter Camejo, who came in third in the gubernatorial race in November with 5.3 percent of the vote, got only 1 percent in the poll.
"I strongly believe that the desire of Californians must come before the aspirations of any single candidate," Simon said in a statement regarding his dropping out of the race. "There are too many Republicans in this race and the people of this state simply cannot risk a continuation of the Gray Davis legacy."
Now only if Huffington and Camejo would show the same sense (and perhaps even the selflessless) as Simon, who is an idiotic egomaniac, and drop out.
At 3 percent and 1 percent respectively and only 43 full days of campaigning to go before the Oct. 7 election, it's not like Huffington or Camejo has a snowball's chance in hell. Their campaigns can serve only to siphon votes from Bustamante, who has the best shot at defeating the Republicans' attempted power grab in California.
The same Los Angeles Times poll showed that 50 percent of likely voters favor recalling Davis, 45 percent are opposed to recalling him, and 5 percent are undecided, so it's possible that Davis will survive the recall and keep his job.
The recall ballot will have two parts: The first part will contain the question of whether Davis should be recalled. If a simple majority votes not to recall Davis, then he stays in office. If a simple majority votes to recall him, then Davis is out of office and whichever recall candidate gets the most number of votes will be Davis' replacement.
Simon's name will still appear on the recall ballot, along with the names of 134 other candidates. Davis is not a candidate in the recall because the California Constitution prohibits his name from appearing on the ballot.
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