Gearing up to save his political life in the next six weeks, Gov. Gray Davis acknowledged making mistakes in handling California's electricity and budget crises, while accusing Republicans of trying to steal the governor's office in a recall election set for Oct. 7.

As he worked to dispel the notion that he is personally responsible for the state's budgetary and energy mess, Mr. Davis' fellow Democrat Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante came out with his own economic platform for the campaign he is running should Mr. Davis be voted out. And actor-turned-candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger prepared a public kickoff Wednesday for his own team's prescription's for California's crisis.

If the majority of voters cast Mr. Davis from office, a new governor will be chosen at the same time from a list of more than 130 candidates. They range from dozens of political unknowns to Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and Mr. Bustamante. In his prepared remarks, Gov. Davis called the recall "part of an ongoing national effort by Republicans to steal elections they cannot win."

However, in the coming election, Mr. Davis is running less against an opposition party or individual opponent than against his own record -- or at least voters' perceptions of that record. With that in mind, he balanced taking blame with mounting a strong defense in remarks prepared for a speech Tuesday night at the University of California's Los Angeles campus.

"I could have been tougher in holding the line on spending when we had surpluses," he said in the prepared remarks. But he added, "Most of the increases on my watch went to schools and health care. I make no apologies for that."

After winning a landslide victory in 1998, Mr. Davis entered the governor's office with a booming economy producing a gusher of state tax revenue. The bull market for stocks was a particularly rich source of revenue for a state loaded with Internet and other high-tech companies. Tax revenue from capital gains and executives cashing in stock options jumped from $2.6 billion in fiscal 1996, ended June 30, to $17.6 billion in fiscal 2001. (Overall state government tax revenue into the so-called general fund, which pays for the majority of public programs, reached a peak of about $75.7 billion in fiscal 2001.)

But in mid-2000 things started getting darker for Mr. Davis. The state's electricity-deregulation plan, hatched before he came to the governor's chair, went badly haywire. The state suffered through soaring wholesale power prices and occasional blackouts. While many parties could be blamed for the electricity debacle, many people focused on the state's chief executive. Mr. Davis was alternately accused of ignoring the burgeoning crisis for months and then taking panicky actions that cost consumers billions of dollars in higher long-term electricity bills. While the governor's defenders argue that he has gotten a bum rap, they also acknowledge that his credibility was badly hurt by the power crisis. In the remarks for his speech Tuesday night, Gov. Davis said, "I know that many of you feel that I was slow to act on the energy crisis. ... That's a fair criticism."

Weakened by the electricity crisis, Gov. Davis won a close re-election victory last November in this heavily Democratic state against conservative Republican businessman William Simon. Then came what could be his Waterloo on the state budget.

In December, Gov. Davis announced that the state faced major budget shortfalls. By May of this year, he was predicting that the accumulated shortfall in the general fund could reach $38 billion by the middle of 2004 unless drastic steps were taken to decrease spending and increase revenue. One major factor in the state's fiscal problems was the crashing end of the great stock-market party of the 1990s. In fiscal 2003, California's tax revenue from capital gains and stock-options-related profits had tumbled by more than two-thirds from their peak, to an estimated $5.2 billion.

This bombshell reversal of fiscal fortunes has provided much of the fuel for the recall effort, which began earlier this year. Critics say Gov. Davis failed to prudently plan for the inevitable receding of the bull market and then hid information about the growing problem until after last November's election. In his remarks Tuesday night, Mr. Davis called that latter accusation "ridiculous."

The governor and his defenders say that he did expect a falloff in stock-related revenue. But they add that neither he nor almost any other political leader or business forecaster expected the depth of the fall in the stock market or the general economy.

Even some of his critics acknowledge that Gov. Davis recognized early on that soaring stock prices couldn't last indefinitely. "Gray said in 1999 that this was a one-time gain and we should spend it on one-time projects" such as upgrading transportation systems, says Jesse Huff, the policy director for Mr. Simon, who is running again for governor in the coming election. Yet, as Mr. Huff sees it, as the tax revenue poured in, Mr. Davis caved in to Democratic constituency groups and Democratic legislators who increased funding for continuing programs. The governor found "the pressure from the legislature was too great," he adds. The governor's defenders note that he did direct money into one-time projects.

Part of the problem for any California governor is that state finances operate under various voter-imposed constraints. For example, having already imposed property-tax caps, several years ago voters passed an initiative specifying spending minimums for public schools, which now claim about 40% of general-fund tax revenue. Another big-spending item, health care for the poor, tends to go up automatically as case loads rise with population and escalating medical costs.

Nor does Gov. Davis hold the kind of sway one might expect in a state where the legislature has a big Democratic majority, say some observers. For one thing, passing a budget needs a two-thirds majority in each house of the legislature. Redistricting and term limits have made the legislature more fractious and partisan and less willing to find compromises.

Gov. Davis's credibility hasn't been helped by the arcane nature of the California budget process. Some observers say it is almost impossible to determine the true state of the state's fiscal health, given the complexity of the process -- which recently included what became known as a "triple flip" of revenue among various state funds to help balance the current-year budget. Edward Leamer, a management professor at UCLA, jokingly suggested that "if we ever catch Saddam Hussein, we should make him read" California's budget documents as punishment.

The recently enacted budget for the year ending June 30, 2004, was largely a stopgap measure that pleased nobody, including Gov. Davis. And various gubernatorial hopefuls are beginning to put forth their own budget prescriptions.

Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Bustamante presented an economic plan that he said would increase state revenue and cut costs by a total of about $12 billion. Few of Mr. Bustamante's proposals contained particularly new ideas, state budget analysts said. For example, his plan to reassess property taxes on corporate buildings has been kicked around for much of the past decade. Similarly, Mr. Bustamante's proposals to raise taxes on cigarettes and increase the taxation on households in higher-income brackets were both included in previous budget proposals by Gov. Davis, which were rejected by the state legislature.

Mr. Bustamante vowed, however, to push his plan through, even if that meant bypassing the legislature and putting the measure on a ballot for voters to decide.

Mr. Schwarzenegger, by far the highest-profile figure in the field of candidates, is scheduled to release his economic proposals at a meeting Wednesday in Los Angeles.