It started with an e-mail message last week to this column from a reader, asking whether strict interpretation of the state constitution would automatically make Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante the governor should Gov. Gray Davis be recalled.

"I am mystified by the governor recall election talk," the reader wrote. "If I understand the California Constitution, if Gray Davis resigns, dies in office, goes into a coma or is impeached and removed, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante will become governor for the remainder of the term. So why not the same outcome if Gray Davis is recalled?"

He went on to note that the constitutional provisions for a recall election say that it would also include an election for a successor "if appropriate" and theorized that since the lieutenant governor would automatically fill a gubernatorial vacancy, a successor election would not be appropriate.

The theory was intriguing enough to raise with Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, who was tabulating names on recall petitions, and with Bustamante himself. Would it be possible for Bustamante -- who would have to call a recall election -- to limit the voting to Davis' recall? If so, it would mean that only Bustamante would be in line to become governor should voters dump Davis.

It would have been a very gutsy move on the part of Bustamante, one that would simultaneously shaft Davis by making the election solely a referendum on his governorship, the Republicans who wanted to run to succeed Davis, and other prominent Democrats angling to run for governor in 2006.

Shelley's office could offer no definitive legal rationale for holding a successor election, Bustamante's office would say only that he was seeking legal advice, and a column that explored the situation, published in The Bee a week ago, touched off a legal and political scramble. Four days after the column appeared, The Bee published an article based on an interview with Bustamante in which he said "he will leave to an independent commission and the California Supreme Court a decision on whether he becomes governor himself -- without an election to determine a successor -- if Davis is recalled."

"Article 5, Section 10 of the Constitution states the lieutenant governor becomes governor in the event of a vacancy," the article quoted Deborah Pacyna, a spokeswoman for Bustamante, as saying. "It provides that the state Supreme Court has exclusive jurisdiction to determine questions regarding succession. And it calls for a body, the Commission on the Governorship, to be created by the Legislature to consider such questions."

Reporter Aurelio Rojas' story hit the recall-jittery Capitol like a bombshell. The "Bustamante gambit," as some dubbed it, was in play, and other Democrats were clearly embracing it as a way of undercutting pro-recall Republicans, who denounced Bustamante for attempting, as they saw it, a coup d'etat.

As late as midday Wednesday, Bustamante appeared to be sticking with the plan, but by late Wednesday -- apparently faced with stiff media questioning and growing doubts among other prominent Democrats -- he was wavering. When Shelley announced Wednesday evening that the recall had qualified for the ballot with nearly 1.4 million valid signatures, he insisted flatly that "it must include the second question" of a successor. And on Thursday morning, when Bustamante formally called the special election for Oct. 7, he included a succession election and insisted that he never had pursued the other strategy -- reporters' interview notes to the contrary.

"I left it to the attorneys with the expertise to draft that language," Bustamante insisted in the face of very skeptical questioning. "I had no say-so as to the wording of (the proclamation)."

Later, in an interview, Bustamante characterized the succession scenario as "very interesting ... but it just didn't work out (from a legal standpoint), much to the disappointment of my mother."

Bustamante insisted that "I tried to bring clarity to the process," but the episode enhanced his reputation for waffling. As speaker of the state Assembly in the 1990s, he was often criticized for his all-over-the-map indecisiveness on key issues. In his one moment in the media sun as lieutenant governor, he provided new evidence for that evaluation.