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During the California Governor's Recall, the political fringe met the center. One year ago, a movement was started by professional political agitators to remove Governor Gray Davis from office – six months after the people had re-elected the man. Their movement somehow gave rise to a deeply popular revolt. The event came to epitomize the strange ability of the extreme left and the extreme right to agree. In this case, they agreed on the need for someone new in the state house. Lefties from candidate Peter Camejo to arch conservative State Senator Tom McClintock both wanted to boot Davis out of office.

One delightful side effect of the movement to chuck Gray Davis out of office was that so many people in so little time came to suspect that they might be the next governor. One hundred and thirty five candidates paid the $3500 and collected the 65 signatures needed to earn a place on the ballot. More than 500 went to the trouble of filing papers, most of whom were disqualified for one reason or another (in one case, for incarceration) . In Santa Clara County, for example, 10 people asked for the papers for every one who filed them.

If, say, 5000 people went to the trouble of getting the papers necessary to run for governor, how many hundreds of thousands considered it – if only for a moment? How many suspected that deep inside them, there lurked an excellent governor? The 135 candidates who actually put themselves forward – most of them with shocking sincerity - have been treated as a small distinct class of freaks, but really, they are only the few who took that last little mental step.

Those who opposed the recall argued that it was an insult to democracy. But others came to view the recall as democracy in it’s purest form. In any case, it’s hard to imagine that the people will ever again create such perfect chaos – or at least the appearance of chaos. It was a moment where California democracy decided to test its own limits and found that limits didn’t exist. That discovery can be made only once. These photographs try to capture the strange energy of a unique and historic exploration.