The campaign against Gov. Gray Davis now looks almost certain to yield a recall election this fall. Instead of keeping the focus on the yawning budget deficit -- and maybe, just maybe, dealing with the state's broken system of governance -- Californians will treat themselves to an unprecedented second gubernatorial election in a year.

A divisive recall election won't be good for California unless the state's leaders take this as an opportunity to have a referendum on the Golden State's future. And that can only happen if the Democratic Party's senior leaders begin to take the recall election seriously.

So far, the Democrats have decided that the right response to the recall is to deny voters a choice. They figure that if no prominent Democrat stands to replace Davis, the state's heavily Democratic electorate won't dare vote to recall the governor, knowing that Davis would be replaced by a Republican.

Unless, of course, voters do just that. Polls show Californians favor recalling Davis, who is widely disliked and disrespected. Davis and his backers hope that voters will ultimately shy away from recalling the governor if his likely successor is an untested hard-line conservative like Darrell Issa or Bill Simon.

But what if pre-election polls show that the front-runner to replace Davis is not Issa but a Republican moderate like Richard Riordan, the former Los Angeles mayor? Democrats are kidding themselves if they think that a majority of Californians would never make that trade.

But more than politically risky to their party, the Democratic strategy is deeply cynical. No one in California thinks less of Gray Davis as governor than the top Democrats who know him best. They know he can't lead. They know he stands for little more than his own survival. They know that Davis is "the coin-operated governor."

Republicans look ready to use the recall to offer California not only an alternative to Davis, but also a choice of philosophies, from conservative to moderate. No one knows how the GOP field will eventually sort out, but it looks like it may include at least Issa and Simon on the party's right as well as at least one moderate from a list that includes Riordan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Assemblyman Keith Richman of Northridge.

Yet despite all they know about the governor's liabilities, the Democrats aren't offering an alternative. U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein would be the strongest Democrat in the field, according to the polls. There are other Democrats -- Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, Treasurer Phil Angelides, Attorney General Bill Lockyer -- who would at least give voters more of a choice in the recall election. But all have said they are sticking with Davis as the only Democratic candidate.

But if the governor survives, he will likely come out with deep political wounds, unable to lead or inspire. So California would have three more years of a scarred chief executive more beholden than ever to his special-interest donors. Are Democrats going to tell voters that Davis is all they have to offer?

California deserves better. A state condemned to suffer the confusion and distraction of a recall election should at least be given the opportunity for a real debate about its future, the debate that it didn't have last fall. Republicans at least respect voters enough to take the recall seriously. Where are the Democrats?