Posted on 09/04/2006 4:14:36 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SAN DIEGO
The state's Democratic leadership rallied behind gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides on Monday, seeking to spark a campaign that has struggled to connect with voters in his attempt to unseat Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Both candidates had full schedules on the traditional Labor Day start to the fall campaign, with Angelides speaking to union members and Schwarzenegger rallying campaign workers. The governor also made an appearance at one of Southern California's most iconic hot spots Muscle Beach in Venice.
Angelides followed a more typical path for the holiday weekend, addressing labor rallies in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego before a scheduled stop in Oakland.
His attempts to shore up the union vote come against a backdrop of a campaign that appears to be stagnating as Schwarzenegger has moved to neutralize opponents and gain favor with moderate voters.
A Public Policy Institute of California poll released last week showed Schwarzenegger with a 13 percentage point lead among likely voters.
Some of the state's top Democrats joining him on the campaign trail Monday sought to polish Angelides' image as a champion of middle-income Californians and undermine Schwarzenegger's populist credentials.
"You know what the next endangered species might be under this governor? It might be the middle class," state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell told about 300 union members from Riverside and San Bernardino counties during a labor breakfast in San Bernardino.
Some Democrats are concerned that Schwarzenegger's deal-making on a wide variety of popular issues may undercut Angelides' campaign. During the end of the legislative session last week, the governor struck deals with the Democratic leadership to curb greenhouse gas emissions, raise the minimum wage and force drug companies to offer affordable prescription medication.
The governor earlier this year reached a settlement with education groups over a disputed $3 billion in public school funding.
In passionate speeches in San Bernardino and San Diego, Democrats urged union workers to get active. They said unlike Schwarzenegger, Angelides has always supported workers' rights and the middle class.
U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer said union leaders should remind their members about Schwarzenegger's special election last year, which was widely seen as an attack on public employee unions. Voters rejected all four of the initiatives Schwarzenegger promoted.
"Now today he's posing with those same Democrats that he called girlie men. So what does that make him, a late-blooming girlie man?" Boxer said, using a phrase Schwarzenegger had once applied to California lawmakers.
"Will the real Arnold Schwarzenegger please stand up? Which one will we get? It's too big a gamble. I don't want to gamble with the lives and prosperity of my fellow Californians."
Schwarzenegger campaign spokesman Matt David said Angelides has a credibility problem on middle class issues. The governor has criticized Angelides for wanting to raise billions in taxes, even as Angelides released his own plan to cut taxes for some middle class families and close corporate tax loopholes.
David said the real Schwarzenegger is the one who has worked with Democrats to reach agreements on key issues this summer.
"Obviously, there's the special election. He's said that was an important learning experience," David said. "Since then, we've had a budget on time for the first time in six years, we've got infrastructure bonds on the ballot, we've got (a greenhouse gas agreement), minimum wage and other bills."
Angelides, during his speech to members of the AFL-CIO in San Bernardino, said he wasn't worried about the tepid financial support he had received so far from labor groups.
Many of those groups endorsed him even as they joined with Democrats to take advantage of the governor's generous mood on labor, environmental and health care legislation.
He said Schwarzenegger's recent deals with legislative Democrats amounted to a "death bed political conversion."
"He wants you to believe he is a new man, a new Arnold Schwarzenegger, just like his idol, the new Richard Nixon," Angelides said. "The fact is that the new Arnold Schwarzenegger is as fraudulent as George Bush's claim about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."
A tactic of Angelides' campaign is to link the Republican Schwarzenegger with Bush, who is deeply unpopular in California.
Angelides acknowledged that he has taken hits but said the Labor Day weekend represented the true kickoff to the campaign. He said labor groups already have done plenty for him.
"Look, I'm not daunted, and no one else should be," he told reporters after his appearance in San Bernardino.
Schwarzenegger did not take reporters' questions during his afternoon appearance in Venice, where he praised a Muscle Beach lifetime achievement award given to bodybuilding icon Joe Weider, who helped Schwarzenegger emigrate from Austria in 1968.
Schwarzenegger spoke after a line of bronzed and oiled male and female bodybuilding contestants paraded off stage. He received a thunderous applause from the crowd gathered around the famed weightlifting venue.
The governor avoided political topics during his remarks and signed a few autographs before leaving for a campaign appearance in Whittier.
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Associated Press Writer Alex Veiga contributed to this report from Los Angeles.
Politics has become such a tawdry PHILthy affair in California.
A choice between a left leaning lib Gubinor and a full-blown nutcase liberal, both supportive of a majority of the offerings of the dem controlled legislature and a Gub with an R that actually has signed off on most of it so far..
sigh.
We need at least one debate , for comedic relief , if nothing else,..
2 months to Judgment Day...
(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo! )
Phil Angelides....AL Gore without the charisma
Republicans extort their membership to avoid embarrassment.
It is difficult to believe that rational businessmen would underwrite the production of this unraveling farce.
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