California Scheming

Rep

ublican Congressman Darrell Issa has been accused of trying to steal an election with his recall campaign against embattled California Governor Gray Davis. Now, as first reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, it has emerged that Issa was arrested in 1980 for allegedly trying to steal his own car.

Court documents contend that Issa, then 27, reported that his cherry-red Mercedes had been stolen from an airport parking lot though he knew that his brother had just sold the car to a dealer in San Jose for $16,000 on Dec. 28, 1979. The charges were ultimately dropped. Issa now says his brother "was a car thief" and denies any personal wrongdoing. "It was illogical to think that I would, in effect, steal my own car," Issa said in a statement last week.

He went on to become a multimillionaire by selling — yes — car alarms and is using his fortune to fund an anti-Davis campaign across the state, paying signature gatherers $1 for every name they get on a petition favoring a recall election. State election officials say Issa has so far submitted 376,008 names of the 897,158 required by law, and he shows no sign of slowing down, despite the stolen-car story.

Both Democrats and Republicans believe that a recall vote against Davis is inevitable — either in the fall or next March — and with Davis scoring as low as 21% in some polls, Republicans realize they have a chance to win back the country's most visible governorship. Issa may be too conservative (and abrasive) to win statewide office, but former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan tells TIME that he and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, both moderates, have talked about running against Davis. Schwarzenegger isn't discussing politics while he promotes Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which opens this week, but, says Riordan, "Davis' big worry is that it will be me or Arnold. I hope it's Arnold." Woe to the man who would try to steal his Hummer.