To the Editor:

The recent front page story in the San Francisoc Chronicle said,

"State Democrats recall lessons of Florida: Republicans' 2000

tactics serving as a model for Davis' team" (The San Francisco

Chronicle, 30 June 2003). Not quite. If the Gray Davis team was

to really follow the Florida Republicans' 2000 election tactics,

they would first purge the California voter rolls of thousands and

thousands of legally registered Republican and conservative

voters with bogus charges of being felons, sex criminals or

somesuch. Then the Governor and his Secretary of State would

mount a blatantly fraudulent campaign to convince the

remaining voters that this was a legitimate action. Finally, they

would pull another legal coup and disqualify the recall petitions

and thus be able to avoid a recall election of Gray Davis.

The illegal voter rolls purging by Florida Republicans before the

2000 election allowed Bush to steal the Florida election and thus

steal the whole Presidential election and become the first

illegitimate President in over a century. Nothing like

that will happen under Governor Gray Davis. The real

lesson of the Florida election for Republicans is that

political crime pays big, big, big: obscene tax cuts

for the rich; corporate rape of the environment and

criminal wars without end. Who says crime doesn't pay?

Yours truly,

James K. Sayre

30 June 2003