DAVIS-RECALL FOES LOSE TWO KEY COURT BATTLES.

Byline: Staff and Wire Services

Opponents of efforts to recall Gov. Gray Davis lost in two courts Friday, thus removing major obstacles for petitions to be certified as early as next week and the election to be held in the fall.

If counties report enough valid signatures on petitions circulated by GOP-led organizations, Davis could become the first California governor ever to face the electorate on a recall ballot.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge told attorneys for Taxpayers Against the Governor's Recall that he did not intend to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the secretary of state from certifying the recall until the group's allegations of illegal signature-gathering were investigated.

``I don't see the urgency in this, so I'm not going to grant it,'' said Judge Carl J. West. He said he would issue an actual order later in the afternoon.

Paul Kiesel, an attorney for the group, said he would file an appeal Monday if West's expected formal denial was issued.

Davis opponents want a recall election held this fall rather than consolidating it with the next scheduled statewide election in March, when a larger Democratic turnout would be expected because of California's presidential primary.

Recall advocates say they have turned in 1.6 million signatures to counties and hope the counties will have validated enough signatures to have Secretary of State Kevin Shelley certify a recall election Wednesday; they need 897,158 valid signatures to get the recall on the ballot.

Kiesel sought a temporary restraining order because the judge earlier in the week denied a request for a Wednesday hearing on a preliminary injunction and instead set it for Aug. 8.

``By the time we get to Aug. 8 the train will have left the station,'' Kiesel told the judge Friday.

Meanwhile, the 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento denied a request by the group for a stay of all signature verification until the outcome of pending lawsuits.

The appeals court also sided with the Recall Gray Davis Committee, which sued Shelley, a Democrat, and four counties to speed up signature verification.

The 3rd District said Shelley's instructions to counties were erroneous when he gave them an extra 30-day period to verify signatures rather than doing so immediately.

The court ordered Shelley to tell counties to simultaneously count and verify signatures or to tell the court by Thursday why he had not done so.

``We believe that the secretary of state's advice to the counties is correct and we look forward to the opportunity to demonstrate that to the court,'' said Shelley spokesman Doug Stone. He characterized the appeals court's action as ``a routine procedural device for getting issues before a court.''

Under Shelley's instructions, counties only have to report raw signature totals Wednesday and they would have until Aug. 22 to report totals of valid signatures.

The court said Shelley was mistaken in allowing the extra 30-day window and ordered him to instruct counties to report all valid signatures at the end of the 30-day period in which they were received. That would have the effect of requiring counties to verify all signatures they've received so far by Wednesday and report them to the state.

It has not been clear that counties would complete the verification by Wednesday.

Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters Conny McCormack had initially said she would not be able to verify all the signatures by Wednesday. Under Shelley's previous instructions, she had an extra month to do so, although most counties were choosing to make it by Wednesday anyway.

On Friday, she said that, given the court's instructions, she is doubling the staff dedicated to counting and will meet the Wednesday deadline.

``We're committed to doing it,'' she said. ``We'll make it, if we have to do overtime.''

For now she is trying to avoid overtime costs, given how cash-strapped the county already is, and is not asking her staff to come in over the weekend, but they might have to stay late Monday and Tuesday nights, she said. She earlier had about 30 workers counting some of the roughly 329,000 signatures submitted, and now she will have twice that many.