California Democrats have to make a fateful decision this week: Should they close ranks behind Gov. Gray Davis, who they believe is being unjustly persecuted by a recall? Or draft a candidate who is more likely to keep them in power -- but whose presence on the ballot could doom the unpopular governor?

With just days left for candidates to enter the race, the party is showing increasing anxiety and division about what to do.

Kern County Democratic Chairman Duane Moore wants to stop the historic recall election from producing a Republican winner at all costs. If that means putting a Democratic alternative to Davis on the ballot, he says, so be it.

"I think it's a strategy that needs to be discussed," he said. "I'd like a sure bet."

But Kennan Kaeder, who leads Democrats in San Diego County, disagrees. The only way for his party to thwart the recall, he says, is to cast it as a Republican coup and defend Davis, no matter how perilous polls look.

"There's always risk -- it's an election," Kaeder said. "The question is what is the right thing to do. We have to back the guy who didn't do anything wrong."

For his part, Davis, who is vowing to fight the recall to the end, said there is "virtual unanimity" among Democratic leaders to support him. "I think it's highly unlikely there will be any prominent Democratic candidates in the race," he told reporters during a campaign stop in San Francisco.

But some Democratic officials have become so fearful that he will not survive the recall they are making urgent new pleas to Sen. Dianne Feinstein to put her name on the ballot -- not to depose Davis, they say, but to give voters a Democratic alternative in what may be a huge field of candidates vying to replace the governor if the recall succeeds. The deadline for all candidates to enter the Oct. 7 recall election is Saturday.

"We've got to take the 1,000 most prominent Democrats in California, rent a big room and do some group therapy -- because we're not facing reality," Rep. Brad Sherman said in an interview Friday. "The wisest course for us is to persuade Senator Feinstein to run."

Sherman is among three House Democrats from California who publicly broke with their party's position on the recall last week and urged Feinstein, the state's most popular elected official, to enter the race. The others are Rep. Loretta Sanchez and Rep. Calvin M. Dooley, who issued a statement saying that it is "foolhardy for Democrats to gamble that Governor Davis can pull this out." Other Democratic activists have suggested that former California congressman Leon E. Panetta, who was President Bill Clinton's chief of staff, run in the recall.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) also appears to be getting nervous. In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News on Thursday, she said for the first time that the party may have to reconsider its uncompromising support for Davis this week if new polls show that Democratic attacks on the recall are not persuading voters to oppose it.

"If that strategy doesn't work, I'm mature enough and have been in this business long enough to say you don't close off other options," Boxer told the newspaper.

All summer, Feinstein has denounced the recall and said she has no intention of entering the election. Davis has said that he is speaking to her almost every day and that "no one has been more helpful" in giving him advice on how to campaign. Still, in public statements, Feinstein has been careful never to shut the door completely on a last-minute candidacy. "Nothing that I know right now interests me in running," she told MSNBC on July 24.

And after the House members from California pleaded with her to put her name on the recall ballot, she told the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, "It's a very heartfelt vote of confidence and I'm appreciative of it. But I have no further comment."

The recall election will present voters with a two-part ballot. First, they will be asked whether the governor should be recalled. Then they will be asked to choose a successor. Davis cannot run on the ballot. If a majority of voters reject recalling him, the rest of the ballot is moot. But if a majority oust him, the candidate who gets the most votes becomes governor. Davis is only the second governor in the nation's history to face a recall election; the first was in North Dakota in 1921.

Several Republican candidates already have entered the recall race, and either film star Arnold Schwarzenegger or former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan is likely to announce a campaign this week. No prominent Democrat has taken any steps to run.

Attorneys for Davis indicated today that they will ask the state Supreme Court on Monday to delay the recall until March because counties might not have enough time to prepare for an October date, the Associated Press reported. They also said they want Davis to be listed as a replacement candidate.

The mixed messages from polls are one reason that Democrats are conflicted about how to fight the recall. Every recent survey on the election that has been made public suggests that a slim majority of voters is inclined at this point to dump Davis. But the same polls also suggest that his best hope of surviving the election is to keep other prominent Democrats off the ballot. Pollsters have found that many voters would be less likely to support the recall if their only choices for governor besides Davis were GOP conservatives.

What is intriguing and dividing Democrats, though, is another common finding. If Feinstein enters the race, polls show, no Republican candidate, not even a moderate such as Riordan, appears to have a chance of becoming governor. But her candidacy also probably would cost Davis his job -- because many Democratic voters apparently would prefer to have her leading California.

"If you're looking at this from Davis's point of view, there is no question the best strategy is to have no other Democrat run," said Mark DiCamillo, the director of the independent Field Poll. "But if you're looking more broadly at the party's interests in the recall -- who's going to control the state -- that strategy is very risky."

Davis, who was reelected last year but whose popularity has plunged amid California's severe budget crisis, has two important allies in his fight to keep Democrats united behind him.

The first is Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence McAuliffe, who is vowing to raise millions of dollars for Davis's campaign and to bring the party's most prominent figures -- former president Clinton, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and former vice president Al Gore -- to California soon to defend him. McAuliffe told reporters last week that Feinstein is "100 percent supportive of Davis."

The second ally is San Francisco Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr., who led the California Assembly for decades and who is revered by many Democrats in the state. Last week, Brown summoned California's top Democratic strategists to his office and bluntly told them that the party's best game plan for defeating the recall is to remain unified behind Davis.

"The meeting opened and closed on the same note," said P.J. Johnston, Brown's press secretary. "We just have to focus on getting voters to say 'no' on the first part of the recall ballot."

If a Democratic alternative to Davis appears on the ballot, some party strategists say that would undermine a core part of Davis's strategyto persuade voters that the recall is illegitimate and would lead to a right-wing takeover of California. Other Democratic officials say that because nothing about the looming election is predictable, a candidate such as Feinstein could be on the ballot and still lose if the turnout of the party's bedrock voters is low.

But some prominent Democrats who support Davis are criticizing the governor's political style. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer told the Sacramento Bee a few days ago that Davis ran a "puke" campaign last year and warned the governor not to rely on harsh negative ads this time around. Even Brown told a San Francisco television station last week that it may be difficult to energize Democrats to back Davis because the governor has "zero personal relationships."

Sherman, whose congressional district is in Los Angeles, said he has been deluged with encouraging calls from Democrats since he publicly urged Feinstein to run. Davis, he said, cannot win without having her at his side telling voters to reject the recall -- but to vote for her in case it succeeds.

"It's obvious that this recall is real, and it's obvious that it could win," Sherman said. "This is going to affect the lives of 35 million people. And this is the only clear way we have to stop it."