Features

SACRAMENTO — Gray Davis has donated money to GOP gubernatorial candidate Richard Riordan’s campaign, but it’s not exactly how it looks. 

A Southern California computer consulting firm owner — who happens to share the name of the Democratic governor Riordan wants to unseat — donated $1,000 to Riordan’s campaign in November. 

“It’s definitely not us,” said Roger Salazar, the governor’s re-election campaign spokesman, Friday. 

Davis and Riordan, considered the front-runner for the GOP nomination in November, are locked in a fund-raising race in which each has collected hundreds of thousands of dollars weekly. 

The “Davis” donation to Riordan, however, is particularly ironic because Riordan has been criticized by fellow Republicans for donating $12,500 to Davis and thousands to other Democratic candidates in the past. 

Davis, the non-governor, said he knew it would raise eyebrows when he wrote the check to Riordan at a Beverly Hills fund-raiser on Nov. 5. 

“I thought it was going to be funny,” he said. 

He said he does, in fact, support Riordan. Davis, the computer firm owner, said he worked for the former Los Angeles mayor’s business team before he began his own company, he said. 

His full name is Wade Gray Davis, but he goes by his middle name and owns a computer consulting firm called Gray Davis & Associates in El Segundo, Calif. He said he is registered to vote as “declined to state,” and that he has supported Davis, the governor, in the past.