In a Field Poll released Saturday, Bustamante had the support of 25 percent of 448 likely voters surveyed, slightly ahead of Arnold Schwarzenegger, with 22 percent. With the poll's margin of error of 5 percentage points, the two are essentially running even.

"This is going to be best chance ever in modern history to have a Latino governor in this state," said David Diaz, professor of Urban Studies and Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Northridge.

"There's going to be some Latinos who are going to say, 'You know what? The snowball's already halfway down the hill and if the governor is gone, Bustamante's got a hell of a shot,"' Diaz said.

Bustamante is the ranking Democrat in the field of 135 candidates who qualified last week for the Oct. 7 recall ballot. And he's also the most high-profile Latino in the race in a state where nearly one-third of the population is Latino.

"There is a feeling among Latinos that the time has come," said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles. "Cruz might be that person because he's a Latino and he has a prominent position."

Davis might be counting on Latino voters turning out for the recall, but he shouldn't expect it will be on his behalf, political observers said.

To some Latino political activists, Davis hasn't been the strong ally as expected, pointing to Davis' veto of Senate Bill 60 which would have allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain a driver's license.

"Gray Davis has played interesting politics with our community," said Xavier Flores, president of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the Mexican American Political Association.

"We feel he hasn't been there as staunchly as we would have liked. He dilly-dallied with (Proposition) 187, and didn't take the kind of decisive and immediate action we wanted to see. On other issues, such as SB 60, he took exactly the opposite position on several occasions," Flores said.

"We're hoping Cruz would be another governor altogether."

SB 60, sponsored by Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, has been revived in Sacramento, and Davis, in a policy reversal, recently said he is eager to sign it.

But what some say is politically motivated action may be too little, too late.

A Field Poll released Friday, for example, found that 55 percent of Latinos surveyed said they supported recalling Davis, just slightly fewer than the 58 percent of all Californians who want to see Davis out of office.

Proposition 187, a ballot measure to bar illegal immigrants from receiving many public services, was approved by a majority of voters in 1994, but many of its provisions were invalidated in court. Davis and Bustamante disagreed sharply over the state's strategy as the measure was tied up in court.

Los Angeles City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, who maintains strong opposition to the recall, can nonetheless see why Bustamante's candidacy may excite Latino voters and get them to turn out for the election.

The culture wars of the 1990s, Villaraigosa said, sparked polarizing rhetoric statewide over the anti-immigration and affirmative action propositions 187, 209 and 227. Now the Ward Connerly initiative, Proposition 54 on the Oct. 7 ballot, seeking to end the collection of racial and ethnic data by government agencies, may have opened old wounds.

"I think Latinos are looking for leadership to end the scapegoating, and someone who could unite us and not divide us and lead us toward a future where we focus on what we have in common," said Villaraigosa, a former state Assembly speaker.

Bustamante is not as well-known as Schwarzenegger, but that may be to his advantage after the disclosure by the actor's spokesman, ex-Gov. Pete Wilson, that the Austrian-born candidate voted for Proposition 187. That was a big mistake, observers say.

"It's playing big because there's nothing more negative in the minds of Latino voters as Proposition 187 and Pete Wilson," said Luis Arteaga, executive director of Latino Issues Forum, a San Francisco public policy and advocacy institute.

"I don't understand why they violated the first rule of campaigning: Don't (anger) people," said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, who characterized Wilson as the most "reviled person in the Latino community."

"I think Schwarzenegger had a shot at getting some Latino votes immediately coming out of the gate," Gonzalez said. That looks unlikely now, he said.

That along with Proposition 54 and Schwarzenegger's Proposition 187 stand are likely to result in an overrepresentation by Latino voters, Gonzalez said. About 2.5 million of the state's 15 million registered voters are Latino, he said, but that could grow as efforts by his nonprofit group, anti-Proposition 54 forces and pro-Democrat unions sign up more Latino voters.

"We are launching voter campaigns in a number of counties starting next week, places like Santa Clara, Los Angeles, San Bernardino," Gonzalez said. "We're really trying to go for it big-time. It's an important election."

"I absolutely believe Latinos will come out in greater numbers both because of the Ward Connerly initiative and Cruz Bustamante," said state Sen. Richard Alarcon, D-Van Nuys, head of the Latino Caucus' endorsement committee. He expects that his committee will endorse both a no on the recall vote and a yes on Cruz Bustamante as a backup.

Beyond his ethnicity, Bustamante's story will inspire voters, many believe, and makes an attractive candidate.

Bustamante grew up in the Central Valley town of San Joaquin, the eldest of six children. He worked in the fields while studying to become a butcher, although he had dreams of going to medical school and becoming a doctor.

His aspiration changed, however, when he worked as an intern for a congressman in Washington, D.C. During that summer, he has said, he learned that he wanted to make government work for people.

He was elected to the Assembly, and became its first Latino speaker, before being elected lieutenant governor in 1998.

"Cruz represents a great story of a working-class California that produced a statewide leader," Alarcon said. "And he represents the history of how you raise yourself up from your bootstraps and he can raise the state up by its bootstraps."

"He's going to be the savior for the Democratic Party," said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

Already it seems some are looking to Bustamante as the numbers begin to look grim. Even among organizations that steadfastly support the "no on the recall" stance, members are saying privately that they may change their public message.

A group of other Latino lawyers, law enforcement and business leaders met to denounce the recall attempt, Proposition 54 and Arnold Schwarzenegger -- but said nothing publicly about Bustamante.

"We have taken the position of 'no on recall,"' said Luis J. Rodriguez, president-elect of the La Raza Lawyers of California and board member of the Mexican American Bar Association said of the group's official position. "But if it comes to it, yes, we'll probably back the lieutenant governor. He's the most viable candidate."