By William Booth and Rene Sanchez
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 8, 2003; Page A01

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 7 -- Angry Californians ousted unpopular Democratic Gov. Gray Davis Tuesday and replaced him with Republican movie star and political novice Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The unseating of Davis by Schwarzenegger represents one of the most remarkable turnabouts in California's political history -- a bitter defeat for state and national Democrats, and a giant leap forward for Republicans, who will wield power again in the richest, most populous state in the union.

With more than half of the vote tallied, the recall was winning, 55 to 45 percent.

"I will not fail you. I will not disappoint you, and I will not let you down," Schwarzenegger said in his victory speech at a Los Angeles hotel, where he was introduced by comedian Jay Leno.

Schwarzenegger did not mention any of the ills facing the state, including its massive budget deficit. But he pledged to work with the state legislature to solve California's problems and declared, "I know that together we can do great things."

Davis, who conceded two hours after the polls closed, is only the second governor in the nation's history to be recalled. Voters have told survey takers for weeks they were tired of his inability to fix the state's budget problems and weary of his constant fundraising, which led many here to say special interests held sway in Sacramento.

In his concession speech, Davis said he had congratulated Schwarzenegger and pledged a smooth transition in the days ahead.

"In the next few weeks, we'll have a new governor," Davis said. "I am calling on everyone in this state to put the chaos and the division of the recall behind us, and do what's right for this state."

Schwarzenegger did not just eke out a victory; he took a commanding lead, capturing nearly half of all the votes cast for the contenders to replace Davis. Voters bet on the sunny optimism of an untested celebrity candidate who has run a campaign short of specifics but flush with Hollywood drama, including announcing his run for office on Leno's late-night television show and late-breaking charges that he groped and sexually taunted women.

Davis's defeat was stunning because California is so solidly Democratic. Democrats enjoy a 10-point advantage over Republicans in registered voters. Davis was so dismissive in the early days of the recall election that he referred to it as "a joke" and nothing more than "political mischief" by gadflies on the fringe.

As polls tightened, prominent Democrats from former president Bill Clinton to nearly all of the current presidential contenders campaigned for Davis -- but it was all for naught.

Democrats once talked about a run by Davis for the White House. Now, his political career is in ruins. A few years ago, Schwarzenegger's draw was discussed only in box office terms.

California's county registrars saw large numbers of voters turning out throughout the day. There were reports of confusion at some polling stations because of the length of the ballot and the reduced number of voting places. Phones lines to county registrars were jammed with calls and often rang busy as people tried to find their new polling places.

There were also problems in at least one county, where the sample ballot and ballot at the voting booth were different.

Jesse L. Jackson, who spent the day with Davis, said the governor appealed to the California secretary of state to keep the polls open until 10 p.m. local time to allow more people to find their polling places. He was turned down and polls closed at 8 p.m.

Jackson said there were so few polling places on college campuses, for example, that "I'm sure there will legal challenges" in the days ahead.

Schwarzenegger, 56, cannot take office until Tuesday's results are certified by state election officials. That process could take a month.

Davis, 60, built his lifelong career of public service as a somewhat dull but steadfast centrist. He appears to have been abandoned by many in his own party, which until Tuesday held all statewide offices, both U.S. senate seats, the majorities in both houses of the state legislature and a majority in the congressional delegation.

Schwarzenegger successfully beat back allegations that he groped women, including 15 whose stories were reported by the Los Angeles Times five days before the election.

Exit polls showed he rallied Republicans to his side, and outpaced the other major GOP contender, conservative state Sen. Tom McClintock, according to interviews conducted by the Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, which are conducting exit surveys for The Washington Post and other media outlets.

Also in the running was Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante, a liberal and the most prominent Democrat in the race to replace Davis. Exit polls showed he ran well behind Schwarzenegger.

There were 135 candidates on the remarkable ballot, which ran to eight printed pages and included names of a porn star, a sumo wrestler, a retired meatpacker and a watermelon juggler.

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley declined to estimate the turnout before the polls closed, but he said the recall had no precedent. Almost 15.4 million voters -- a record number of voters for a governor's race -- were registered.

Typical was Maria Burnell, marking her choices in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles. "You had to really look for the name of your guy," Burnell said, referring to the eight-page punch-card ballot. "And then they kept telling us to watch our chads."

The fast-paced election -- the recall was certified only 76 days ago -- had state voting officials worried. They feared it would turn into a reprise of the Florida 2000 presidential election debacle.

The California Field Poll predicted that 10 million voters would go to the polls -- the largest number for a non-presidential election since 1982, when George Deukmejian defeated then-Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley for the governorship. About 11 million votes were cast in the 2000 presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

The Field Poll's Mark DiCamillo said that, traditionally, heavy turnout favors Democrats, because there are a lot more registered Democrats than Republicans. A high turnout brings younger voters and Latinos to the polls, to counterbalance the older, white electorate that consistently votes. But in this election, DiCamillo said, younger voters and ethnic voters appeared to be favoring recall.

The election was put on hold by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and allowed to go forward by the same court. The American Civil Liberties Union, representing several black and Latino civil rights groups, had argued that the use of outmoded punch-card machines in six urban counties would disenfranchise voters whose ballots would be misread or discarded because of hanging chads or other errors. But the appellate court decided that the rights of citizens to stage their recall election outweighed the possibility of some ballot error.

The recall vote culminates a historic, dizzying political drama that has defied convention and, at times, explanation. California has never staged anything like it. Only one other governor in American history had been subject to such a recall election. That was in North Dakota, in 1921, and that governor was recalled.

This campaign, which has captivated the nation for the past two months, has unfolded in a state gone from boom to bust. California had a $9 billion budget surplus five years ago, when Davis took office, but it is saddled with a massive financial crisis.

The governor and state lawmakers have struggled for much of the year with a record $38 billion deficit. They have borrowed billions of dollars, raised college fees, closed health clinics, tripled car taxes -- and still have not solved the problem. Californians face an $8 billion state budget deficit, persistent unemployment and struggling schools.

Many voters are just plain mad.

More than 1.3 million of them signed petitions this summer to throw Davis out of office. In one September poll, only 27 percent of voters said that they trust the state's political leaders "to do what is right."

In the closing weeks of the campaign, Schwarzenegger surged ahead in the opinion polls, but his campaign was broadsided by allegations published in the Los Angeles Times that he had groped or sexually taunted 15 women over the last 25 years of his career as a body-builder and actor.

Schwarzenegger fumbled with his apology, alternately saying some of the stories were true, while not saying which ones. He did offer a vague but blanket apology for "behaving badly sometimes" with actions he thought were just "playful."

The women accused the movie star of propositioning them in crude manner; of running his hands up their shirts and skirts; and grabbing their breasts and buttocks.

Finally, another woman, number 16, appeared before the press in her lawyer's office on Monday to charge that Schwarzenegger pulled up her shirt and photographed her breasts while the two were together on the set of "Terminator 2" in 1991. Rhonda Miller, who was a stunt double, said Schwarzenegger also grabbed her breasts while filming "True Lies" in 1994. Her attorney is Gloria Allred, a prominent Democrat.

With hours to go before the polls opened, Schwarzenegger issued a statement saying he did not grab or photograph Miller's breasts, but he did apologize and said when cast photos appeared in the makeup trailer during the filming, he "on numerous occasions made crude comments."

When it began earlier this year, the recall movement appeared to be nothing more than a Quixotic quest by a small band of Republican gadflies who blamed Davis for much of what now ails California. For months after they began circulating petitions to oust the governor, even some GOP leaders were calling the effort pointless, and doomed.

Political activists had tried nearly three dozen times over the last century to recall California governors. None even came close to reaching the ballot, much less succeeding.

But the fate of this recall turned when Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a multimillionaire from suburban San Diego who made his fortune selling car alarms, decided to bankroll it. He spent more than $1.5 million enlisting an army of signature gatherers that swept across the state and tapped into the public's growing dismay with California's direction.

The recall election has galvanized voters unhappy with state politics like nothing else since the 1978 rebellion here against rising property taxes that led to the passage of Proposition 13. California has long embraced direct democracy, but the campaign of the past few months has been an entirely new, and more radical, vestige of that tradition.

Still, despite the fervor the recall created, many voters, especially Democrats, agreed with Davis's contention that it was partisan politics at its worst -- a Republican attempt to overturn the results of last year's race for governor, which Davis narrowly won.

But for the past two months the governor, who has worked in the top ranks of state government for nearly 30 years, fought for his political life -- and forsook his cautious, bland style.

He denounced the recall as a right-wing coup. He reversed position on controversial issues-signing, for example, a bill granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. In recent weeks, he also approved legislation that nearly sanctions gay marriage and greatly expands health care coverage to needy Californians, all in the hope of attracting Democratic voters. But recent polls showed not only that a majority of Californians favored recalling him, but also that as many as 30 percent of them were Democratic voters.

More than 2.2 million voters cast absentee ballots for the recall, exceeding the number cast in the 2000 presidential election. Absentees that arrived at the last minute were not counted Tuesday night because workers need time to verify the voters' signatures.

Depending on how many absentees arrived Election Day, between 500,000 and 1.5 million votes may not be counted for at least several days.

"Those received Monday and Tuesday will be done in a week or two," said Richard W. Bedal, county clerk-recorder in Santa Cruz. "That's a statewide issue. All the counties aren't going to be able to count the ballots they got today. If it's a close election, we may not know for -- we're telling people -- up to several weeks. We're preparing people for the worst."

In addition to the recall, two ballot measures were being decided: Proposition 53 would steer 1 percent of the state annual budget to fix California's roads, bridges and sewage plants, and Proposition 54 would ban the state from using race, ethnicity or national origin to classify people in public education, contracting and employment. Early exit polls suggested that Prop 54 was failing.

The cost of the election to California taxpayers was estimated at $67 million. More than $75 million was donated to the candidates and the recall campaigns.

As Davis faced the voters' wrath, the recall movement and campaign, which captivated the attention of the nation, might turn out to be another California export. Another 18 states have similar recall provisions, and already other activists are watching the Golden State and considering putting their own leaders before voters.

Staff writers Dan Balz and Evelyn Nieves in Los Angeles, Dan Keating in Washington and special correspondent Kimberly Edds in Sacramento contributed to this report.