| In the interest of speed and timeliness, this story is fed directly from the Associated Press newswire and may contain spelling or grammatical errors. |
LOS ANGELES (AP) Many times in California's history, the state's top two elected officials have served together while also representing different political parties. But never before have the governor and lieutenant governor been forced to work together so quickly after being rivals for the same job.
Voters in Tuesday's unprecedented recall election catapulted Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger into the governor's office, replacing Democrat Gray Davis, while his primary Democratic rival, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante who finished second among replacement candidates will remain in his present job for the next three years.
Bustamante said Tuesday that while the recall campaign was sometimes a bruising one, he was prepared to move on as long as Schwarzenegger was willing too.
``You meet on the battlefield and fight your battles but when the battle is done you have to be able to work for the people of California,'' Bustamante said.
Experts say that unlike the president and the vice president, the duties of California's governor and lieutenant governor rarely overlap. The lieutenant governor's role is to fill in for the governor if he is unable to serve or is out of state. Most of the time, the lieutenant governor just baby-sits during the chief executive's absences.
One exception, however, came in the late 1970s and early 80s when Republican Mike Curb served as lieutenant governor during Gov. Jerry Brown's administration. Curb exercised some gubernatorial prerogatives, such as making policy proclamations and a judicial appointment, during Brown's frequent absences while was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.
``Curb thought he was really the governor and there were a couple of situations that really caused some trouble,'' said Larry Berg, founding director of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. But Berg said such conflicts are rare.
California has had a governor and a lieutenant governor of different parties 20 of the past 25 years, including the four years that Davis was lieutenant governor under Republican Gov. Pete Wilson.