Larry Diamond, Special to CalMatters Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University, ldiamond@stanford.edu. It’s game on for the recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom. The gubernatorial recall in 2003 that struck California like an earthquake seems like ancient history, so here is a quick recap in a bid to help California do it better than the last time. In that wildest of Wild West elections, there were 135 candidates running to replace Gov. Gray Davis, including movie stars, a porn star, a pornographer, recovering politicians and wannabes. The winning candidate, movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, had less than 50% of the vote, which means that more voters preferred someone else. Davis was thrown off the Survivor Island in a rather bizarre episode of reality TV.