The recall campaign now underway will really be several campaigns in one. Each will operate in its sphere but will also overlap with the others at times. Following it all, and analyzing it, will be extremely tricky.

One of the campaigns will be about Gov. Gray Davis. Should he stay or should he go? Davis is the underdog in that race. A majority of the state's voters think he is doing a bad job and that the state is going down the wrong track. But that campaign won't be conducted in isolation. As Californians consider his fate, they will be thinking about question two: If Davis goes, who should replace him?

The governor had wanted this question to give people pause. But now, as the field shapes up, we know that there are plenty of candidates on the ballot we could imagine serving as governor. This hurts Davis because he risks becoming an afterthought as we rush to examine the shiny new alternatives in the political shop window. That's probably even worse for him than being hated.
But the "race to replace" will be conducted on at least two different levels as well. One is within traditional political circles -- the consultants, pundits and analysts for whom politics is job one. This is the realm where most of the candidates -- Cruz Bustamante, Bill Simon, Tom McClintock, Peter Ueberroth -- will be operating.

But there will be another campaign, on television entertainment shows, on college campuses, in movie lines and elsewhere, in which one candidate -- Arnold Schwarzenegger -- will be trying to reach and motivate the 7.6 million California voters who are registered but did not vote in the last election. If he can get just one out of seven of those people to vote this time, for him, those 1 million new voters would probably provide the margin he would need to win.

Arnold (everybody calls him by his first name, so I might as well, too) has a huge advantage with these voters. He has universal name recognition and the ability to reach them with an attractive message: We need an outsider to "clean up the mess" in Sacramento. These are people who cared enough to register to vote but did not vote last time. Most of them probably feel disconnected from their government. Arnold gives them a chance to plug in. And they give him a chance to turn the tables on the traditional political process.

Wealthy candidates have not fared well in California. And Davis and the Democrats have tried to paint the recall as tainted by millionaires seeking to buy the state's highest office. But Arnold isn't going to sit back and take that punishment. He has gone on the offensive, trying to make his wealth an issue to his own advantage. He has enough money, he has said several times, so that he doesn't have to take campaign contributions from the interest groups buying influence in Sacramento. He will make decisions "for the people."

We can debate forever how he will know what "the people" want or need, and whether the reviled special interest groups aren't simply collections of like-minded people. But Arnold's got a powerful line that will ring true to those voters turned off by the connection between money and politics, who think that every politician is in the pocket of the big contributors.

The other thing about these voters is that, being casual observers of politics, they probably care less about the nitty-gritty policy details than do regular voters. This plays into Arnold's other strength. He can appeal to them not with policy white papers but with calls for new leadership, shaking things up, bringing people together. He can run as the outsider.

Arnold, we have already learned, has only voted occasionally, and this can be a liability in a traditional campaign. But watch for Arnold to turn this one around as well. I predict he will not apologize for his infrequent voting but try to use it to his advantage.

"I have rarely voted because the candidates have all been terrible," he will say. "They have all been the same. Professional politicians who didn't connect with me, didn't speak to me."

He thus becomes the voice of the occasional voter, their poster child. He gives them cover for their own lack of participation, and a reason to change their pattern now: It wasn't your fault you failed to vote. It was the politicians' fault. Now, together, we can punish those pols for their sins.

Only one other candidate, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, has much chance of reaching new voters, of expanding the base. He would be the first Latino governor in modern times. California has about 2.5 million Latino voters. But exit polls suggest that only between one-fourth and one-third of them voted in the last election. If Cruz (yes, he's a one-name guy, too) connects with them, is adopted by them, becomes their hope and aspiration, he could generate significant new turn-out and benefit from it.

And his campaign for those votes will be largely unseen and, perhaps, undetected by the mainstream media, and by pollsters. Like Arnold's attempt to reach disaffected voters, we may not know if Cruz's campaign is working until Election Day.

Despite the record number of candidates, I would not be surprised if this became a two-man race. Arnold vs. Cruz. The immigrant against the son of immigrants. Both of them are going to do everything they can to expand the number of people paying attention to politics and participating in it.

Combine that with the more traditional, between-the-lines game played by most of the other candidates, plus the work of mavericks such as commentator Arianna Huffington, and you have the chance for a huge voter turnout, perhaps greater than last year, perhaps greater than any recent election for governor.

And I thought the recall was supposed to be anti-democratic.