Gray Davis goes electric

The California governor brings his Bush-bashing act to Washington.

By Jake Tapper

Jun 21, 2001 | Energy Secretary Spence Abraham was puzzled. It was the evening of May 3, and Abraham, at the behest of President Bush, was meeting in Sacramento with California Gov. Gray Davis to discuss ways they could work together to alleviate the state's energy crisis. Davis spent much of the time talking about the significant conservation efforts his wife has made to substantially reduce the energy bills at the governor's mansion. The meeting was very pleasant.

In the midst of their talk, however, Davis did something that Abraham and his staff thought odd -- a move symbolic of the controversial leadership style, which characterizes what critics see as Davis' mishandling of his state's energy problems.

Mid-conversation, Davis suddenly stood, walked over to the wall and turned off the overhead lights in the room, leaving some dimmer lights remaining on by the side. Davis' sudden conservation moment seemed even odder since it wasn't tough to notice that the building's air conditioning continued to churn out expensive energy-consuming chill, seemingly at full blast. To Abraham and his team, the move seemed a bit, well, weird.

Since that time, of course, the energy crisis has heated up and Davis has gone on the offensive. An energy debacle with a hundred fathers has seen each one deny paternity, Davis included. The Bush White House, demonized by Davis, no longer thinks him merely puzzling. He has become a thorn in their side.

This was evident Wednesday in Washington, where, in an expansive hearing room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Davis testified about energy prices before the Senate Governmental Affairs, chaired by Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn. Though myriad witnesses testified -- including the governors of North Dakota and Montana, the attorney general of Washington state and all five members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission -- Davis was clearly the main event. And it was Davis who was the target of all the vitriol from the Republican side of the aisle, a direct response to Davis' aggressive attacks against President Bush, FERC and the power industry.

It's been a calculated attack, one masterminded by strategist Garry South, as well as the former spinners for Vice President Al Gore, Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane -- the latter of whom was present at Wednesday's hearing. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out Tuesday, Davis' new political strategy has worked to a degree, as his poll numbers have begun to rebound. Davis scored another political victory on Monday when FERC voted for limited price caps on wholesale energy prices -- not all of what Davis wanted, but certainly much more than Bush ever wanted to give.

Davis, who faces reelection next year, took the offensive against the Bush administration in May, publicly shellacking the president during his visit to California. Davis has said that the state is "at war with greedy power generators from Texas." In the June 11 Los Angeles Times he said, "The name of this game is leverage. If you don't have leverage over these cowboys, they will steal you blind."

Now that Davis has kicked off his gubernatorial race by running against Bush, the Bush team is returning fire. In California, a new group called the American Taxpayers Alliance, with strong ties to both the RNC and power generators, is planning to spend up to $25 million in advertising against Davis on the energy issue. A key contributor to the group is Reliant Energy, a Texas corporation led by Bush's recount man, James Baker III, and Steve Letbetter, a major Bush-Cheney campaign fundraiser.

"Davis needs an enemy," says one Bush administration official. "He doesn't even have a political opponent in the state." The official argues that the Bush administration has complied with almost everything Davis has requested, except for price caps. And on Monday, FERC even caved on that -- even though Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer prefers to describe price caps as "a market-based mitigation plan."

In an interview with Salon earlier this month, South said the administration's assertion that it has given Davis everything but price caps "is like some murder defendant saying 'I did everything the victim asked me to do but save his life.' That's idiotic."

Davis pushed his cause even further Wednesday, taking his time before the committee to criticize FERC not only for taking its time on voting for price mediation, but for not taking action on providing $9 billion in refunds for Californians overcharged in the past. "To date, not a single penny in refunds has been returned to Californians," Davis said. "It is unconscionable for the generators to profit from their egregious overcharges. FERC must move quickly to enforce the law and order the energy companies to give back the money."

However well FERC-bashing has gone over in the Golden State, the room in Washington was full of skeptics. At the request of Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, the Energy Department had issued a report, "The Impact of Wholesale Electricity Price Controls on California Summer Reliability," concluding that two price cap proposals "are likely to increase the number of hours and the magnitude of the outages that California will experience."

Next Page: "The energy crisis in California is Gray Davis' Fault!"

• View blog reactions