Gray Davis, likely the first California governor to face a recall election, desperately needs the state fiscal crisis to disappear, but his popularity -- and credibility -- have plummeted to such low levels that the more he tries to win public support for his budget plan, the less backing his approach appears to be garnering.

A new statewide Field Poll, released today, contains nothing but bad news for Davis. His approval ratings are continuing to sink, and Californians are spurning the new taxes he wants to reduce the budget deficit.

The poll bolsters Republican demands for balancing the budget through spending cuts rather than new taxes, and thus makes it even more likely that Democrats, despite their hold on the governorship and strong majorities in both legislative houses, will eventually cave.

The Field Poll -- which reinforces findings of other public and private surveys on the budget and Davis' very weak standing -- is being released as recall supporters announce that they are submitting nearly twice as many signatures as they need to force an election on Davis.

Davis has signaled that he will accept almost any budget that can pass the Legislature, even if it doesn't contain the billions of dollars in new taxes he has proposed, to remove the budget crisis as a factor in the recall. But the liberal Democrats who control the Legislature have been unwilling, at least so far, to make the deeper spending cuts or more extensive deficit borrowing that a no-new-taxes budget would require.

Davis' approval ratings in the new poll are a dismal 23 percent, very close to what recent polls taken by the Los Angeles Times and the Public Policy Institute of California have found. That's scarcely a third of the 62 percent approval he enjoyed in February 2000 -- and a level so low that he's easily the most unpopular governor in California history. Even among Democrats, Davis' approval rating barely tops one-third, and among Republicans, he has a 90 percent disapproval mark.

When it comes to the budget, Davis' support is even lower, with just 14 percent of those surveyed saying he's doing a good job, and while legislators of both parties receive marks almost as low, he's the only politician who must soon face voters, thanks to the recall election, so he's the one who would bear the brunt of Californians' anger at what they see as a dysfunctional state government.

Not surprisingly, the centerpiece of Davis' budget plan -- a rollover of the current deficit into a multiyear bond issue financed with a half-cent boost in the sales tax -- receives low marks from voters, with nearly 60 percent opposed. And by a more than 2-1 margin, those surveyed reject tripling automobile license fees, a step that the Davis administration has already taken without a legislative vote. The vehicle fee boost raises about $4 billion a year, but has also been one of the factors in the recall.

If the Field Poll contains nothing but bad news for Davis, both on his personal standing and the budget, its most telling finding, perhaps, is that as he and fellow Democrats trumpet new taxes, they appear to be losing in the public arena. In April, the Field Poll found that 62 percent of voters believed that a tax increase is necessary to solve the budget dilemma, but by last week, the percentage had fallen to 53 percent.

The Field Poll is being released as rumors of a no-new-taxes budget deal continue to swirl in the Capitol. The Senate's top two figures, President Pro Tem John Burton and Republican leader Jim Brulte, are trying to reach agreement on a scheme that would, through a complicated series of tax swaps, finance a multiyear deficit bond issue without raising any new net revenues. It would require additional spending cuts and/or bookkeeping maneuvers that most Democrats, especially those in the Assembly, oppose.

While Davis probably would accept a tax swap deal to put the budget behind him, at least until after the recall election, it would represent a major tactical victory for Republicans and a clear defeat for the Democratic advocates of new taxes. But the Field Poll indicates that Californians are so soured on their political leaders that they simply don't trust those who say that taxes are needed to solve the budget crisis.