Suddenly, the man who’s been mentioned as a 2004 presidential contender could see his own prospects dimming faster than the office lights in Palo Alto. Last week polls showed that the once popular governor was paying a price for what he has called California’s deregulation “nightmare”– which Davis points out he inherited from his Republican predecessor. More than 60 percent of voters say they disapprove of Davis’s handling of the crisis, and his overall approval rating is slipping.
Hammered for not responding to the crisis last year, Davis is now aggressively trying to increase supplies and drive down prices. With state legislators, he cobbled together an $850 million scheme that would allow the state to purchase energy on the open market at lower costs and channel it back to the state’s bankrupt utilities for resale to consumers. From his darkened office in Sacramento, Davis says he talks “three times a day” to former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, now a co-chairman of Citigroup, “to make sure Wall Street understands what we’re doing.” In addition, Davis told NEWSWEEK he plans this week to appoint a “power-plant czar” who, he says, will “honcho” the completion of five power plants currently under construction in California and will expedite the permit process for several more. Altogether, Davis says, he plans to have 15 new plants under construction–the first in the state since the 1980s–before his term ends in 2002.
Conveniently, that’s just about when the chattering classes will start inspecting the field for the next presidential race. But, after an entire career spent in Sacramento, Davis, 58, still lacks the Washington connections a viable candidate needs. In the short term, he has other problems. His wife, taking his recent call to conserve energy to heart, turned off the heat in the governor’s residence. One night last week Davis says he donned “sweat pants, a very heavy sweat shirt and three blankets” for a snack expedition to the kitchen, where the temperature was 58 degrees. “It was too damn cold,” says Davis. But it must have been a welcome break for a governor who’s been feeling the heat.
