If turnover, trauma likely

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - If Gov. Gray Davis loses the October recall election, his replacement will have a few weeks at most to assume command of the nation's most populous state and the world's sixth-largest economy.

Unless Davis is replaced by Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a fellow Democrat, some experts worry that such an abrupt change of power could lead to rash decisions.

Almost immediately, the new governor would need as many as 150 executives to take over management of the state bureaucracy. "It would be as if, after the Kennedy assassination, Lyndon Johnson was a Republican," said Barry Munitz, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust and the head of Davis' 1998 transition team. "It will be an extraordinarily complicated and challenging task."

Following a successful recall, the winner could take office as soon as the results are certified - a process that must be finished within 39 days and could take as little as two weeks, said Bob Waste, a professor of public policy at California State University at Sacramento.

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