Voters Recall Davis, Elect Schwarzenegger

Californians banished Gov. Gray Davis just 11 months into his second term and overwhelmingly elected action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace him Tuesday – a Hollywood ending to one of the most extraordinary political melodramas in the nation’s history.

Voters traded a career Democratic politician who became one of the state’s most despised chief executives for a moderate Republican megastar who had never before run for office. Davis became the first California governor pried from office and only the second nationwide to be recalled.

“Tonight, the voters did decide it’s time for someone else to serve, and I accept their judgment,” Davis said in conceding. He pledged to work for a smooth transition.

To the victor goes a spoiled American paradise – a state mired in economic troubles, awash with deficits, now governed by a Republican chief executive with no political experience and a Democratic legislature.

Partial returns showed the recall favored by 1,448,449 voters, or 55.9 percent, and opposed by 1,143,613, or 44.1 percent.

Other returns had Schwarzenegger ahead with 1,201,365 votes; Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante with 739,367; Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock with 303,043; and Green Party candidate Peter Camejo with 50,182.

“This is a great day for California. … In response to a common danger, the people of California rose to their duties and ordered a new direction for our state,” McClintock said in conceding.

Schwarzenegger prevailed despite a flurry of negative publicity in the campaign’s final days, surviving allegations that he had groped women and accusations that as a young man he expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler.

The 56-year-old Austrian immigrant – husband of television journalist Maria Shriver – finds himself in charge of the nation’s most populated state with an economy surpassed by only five countries. He takes office as soon as the election results are certified, no later than Nov. 15.

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