Target Practice

“Sharon Davis is a godsend,” says one ranking Democrat. “She’s so down-to-earth and personable, and you can see him light up around her, which is a nice change. And more to the point, she can go into places where he would stir up as much opposition as support, where she is all positive.”

For two days, we journeyed to such places, in the farther reaches of rural central and northern California, making our way through dusty farm and ranch country, past one of the highest mountains in the West, the mystical Mount Shasta, and on through the lush coastal zone of the far North Coast. The first lady -- who favors conservative St. John‘s knits with more daring Ferragamo accessories -- has a darkly conspiratorial view of some power companies, especially Enron, which she says wanted the state’s electric power-transmission lines to give it “total control over the California market.” Enron, she said, echoing other analysts, wanted to use such control “to force us into blackouts.”

But her view is generally sunny, especially next to her comparatively wintry husband, whom she describes as “not aloof, stoic.” She is equally at home delivering a fiery denunciation of her husband‘s Republican opponents at a Shasta County Democratic fund-raising luncheon as she is taking part in a tour of a progressive-minded natural-history museum -- made viable with Davis-supplied state funds -- in the right-wing Sacramento River city of Redding.

She ends the day at a shit-kicker restaurant in Red Bluff the night before a rodeo -- the Palomino Lounge, replete with a Gray Davis banner beneath a portrait of “Buffalo Bill” Cody -- headlining a dinner for Tehama County’s Democratic faithful. She cuts two hours of interaction short to catch her favorite show, The West Wing, in her room at the decidedly unchic Red Lion Inn.

Everywhere she receives glowing media coverage, with not a Republican protester or counter-spokesperson in sight. “We won‘t win in these communities,” she notes shrewdly, “but we can reduce the Republican margin.”

After more stops in Eureka and Humboldt County, we’re back to the airfield for the flight to L.A., where she will speak to the Women‘s Leadership Foundation, whose annual fund-raiser features a fashion show of prominent males, including L.A. Mayor James Hahn. “I couldn’t get Gray to do it,” she says, pausing before she laughs merrily.

In public, her husband seldom looks like he is having fun. But with the various facets of the well-honed Davis technique very much in gear, things are going about as well for him as they can be, given the recession and the state‘s budget and energy crises.