STOCKTON -- Bill Simon was nearing the end of a very long day, having arisen in the middle of the night to do a morning news show on East Coast time from a Los Angeles studio, then driven the spine of the state with stops in Bakersfield and Fresno.

But when he arrived here around dinner time to shake hands at a burger joint off Interstate 5, he looked inexplicably fresh, as if he were just starting out.

Politically speaking, that's exactly how Simon feels about the move to recall Gov. Gray Davis, the man who defeated him a year ago when Simon was the Republican nominee for governor. After a long and frustrating 2002 campaign filled with too many missteps, Simon suddenly has a chance to do it over again, hoping this time to get it right.

You can't fault him for trying. Here is a candidate who easily won the Republican nomination last year after the pundits said he had no chance. Then he came within 5 percentage points of defeating a governor who had all the advantages of incumbency and party registration in his favor. It's easy to overlook the fact that Davis beat Simon by only about 360,000 votes last year.

Not only that, but the heart of the negative advertising campaign Davis used to discredit Simon's business record has fallen apart.

The governor, for example, alleged that a savings and loan with which Simon was involved was so poorly managed it had to be bailed out by taxpayers. But a court has since ruled that the federal government, not Simon's investment group, was at fault in that case because the government wrongly changed the terms of its deal after Simon and his partners agreed to take over an ailing thrift and nurse it back to life.

In another case Davis used against Simon, a jury verdict for fraud was overturned by a judge. A third legal matter was settled out of court with a declaration from the parties that Simon had nothing to do with the dispute.

If not for the distractions of those charges, voters in 2002 might have paid more attention when Simon warned that the state's fiscal condition was far worse than Davis was letting on. While Davis was dodging questions on the potential size of California's deficit, Simon was telling anyone who would listen that the state would be more than $20 billion in the hole.

"We could say I told you so," Simon said Tuesday.

But not all of Simon's problems were caused by Davis. His own campaign was a mess, flailing about on whether to release his tax returns, sending mixed signals on gay rights and falsely accusing Davis of breaking state law by accepting campaign donations in a government office.

"You will always improve," Simon told me. "You should improve. I think I'll be a better candidate this time, yes I do. I think this time I can stick to message a little better."

The question is whether Simon's message will resonate any better this time around. Many of his positions are in conflict with the thinking of the Democrats who are still a majority of California's electorate.

Simon, for instance, wants to roll back many of the worker-friendly laws passed by the Legislature in recent years, saying that, in the long run, the new edicts hurt more workers than they help because they cripple employers. He would repeal scheduled increases in workers' compensation benefits, end the state's novel paid-family-leave law before it takes effect, and give employers and workers more flexibility by undoing a requirement that workers get overtime pay on any day they work more than eight hours.

On state fiscal issues, Simon is still sounding the alarm.

"This is about as serious a financial situation as I think I have ever seen where the wheels have not come off the wagon," said Simon, whose investment company has specialized in taking over distressed businesses.

Simon not only opposes new taxes, he also wants to repeal the recent car tax increase. He says he would close the gap in the budget with spending cuts and borrowing. But here his specificity ends: He hasn't produced a list of the significant cuts in programs that would be needed to accomplish his goal.

The holes in Simon's proposals, however, are the least of his worries at the moment. He has his fresh start, but now, unfortunately for him, he is not running against Davis. He is running against Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, three prominent Republicans and a cast of dozens.

One of the Republicans -- state Sen. Tom McClintock -- already has beaten him out for the coveted endorsement of the California Republican Assembly, a group of conservative Republican activists. Another, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has the status and the resources to suck the oxygen completely out of Simon's campaign. And a third, Peter Ueberroth, will try to portray himself as the solid businessman in the crowd.

Chatting with diners at fast-food outlets is nice. But Simon had better get some serious traction in this race soon or his personal sequel is going to turn out no better than the original.