• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

California Gubernatorial Campaign Gets Under Way

Posted on: Thursday, 8 June 2006, 00:00 CDT

SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Democratic rival, State Treasurer Phil Angelides wasted little time Wednesday in casting their nets across California for swing voters vital to winning the November election.

Each campaign was in full gear barely 12 hours after the polling stations closed _ Schwarzenegger, traveling by bus across northern California and Angelides, by plane in the south _ signaling the intensive wooing voters can expect over the next five months.

Schwarzenegger's team is honing his image as an incumbent who has morphed from action hero into a dignified governor adept at maneuvering Sacramento's political scene to get California back on track. Angelides' team is offering their challenger as a seasoned political veteran with the connections and solutions needed to get California back on track.

Sound similar? That's because the campaigns' target audience is the same: middle-of-the-road Californians, be they Democrat, Republican, independent or undeclared. They are the voters who swept Schwarzenegger into office in 2003, then trounced his special election initiatives in 2005.

"This is going to be a summer of moderation in California," predicted Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College. "Each candidate is going to portray himself as a problem solver and not partisan."

But many experts agree that it was the Democrat Angelides beat Tuesday who appealed to the sought-after swing voter, rather than the treasurer who is calling for new taxes and is embraced by public employee unions.

The defeat of state Controller and former eBay mogul Steve Westly means Schwarzenegger could have an easier time winning back these voters and securing his re-election, the experts predict. A June 2 Field Poll bolsters that view, finding Schwarzenegger ahead of Angelides by 7 percentage points among likely voters in the general election, 46 percent to 39 percent. By comparison, the governor's lead over Westly was only 2 points _ within the poll's margin of error.

"The Schwarzenegger people have been very disciplined in insisting it didn't matter which of the Democrats ended up as the nominee, but any time you get to run against an opponent who tatoos a $5 billion tax increase on his forehead is a pretty happy day," GOP Strategist Dan Schnur said Wednesday. With Westly, "it would have been tougher to pin him down."

But a win for the governor far from guaranteed. Less than half of Californians approve of the job he's been doing, despite the fact that he appears to have put last year's special election debacle behind him. He's gotten the Legislture to approve a $37.3 billion package to fix California's roads, schools and levees - which will go to the voters in November _ and proposed a 2006-07 budget that boosts education funding and pays down state debt, all plans favored by the voters.

In addition, the governor's campaign team is bracing for an anticipated backlash against Republicans in the wake of President Bush's low approval ratings and scandals in Washington.

Launching directly into campaign mode as Angelides and Schwarzenegger did Wednesday is also risky. Voters are exhausted from three years campaigning in the last 53 months alone, said Tim Hodson, executive director of the Center for California Studies at Cal State Sacramento.

And the multitude of Westly-Angelides attack advertisements failed to resonate with voters Schnur and others say, a phenomenon that experts say helped depress voter turnout Tuesday to the lowest for a primary in decades.

So how will a Schwarzenegger-Angelides race produce to keep voters engaged?

"You're not going to see the big scripted events with pre-canned questions. You are going to see the governor walking down the streets walking into restaurants talking to voters one-on-one, conveying his message and bold vision for California's future," said Matt David, a Schwarzenegger campaign spokesman.

"It'll be about Phil Angelides talking about California's needs, from education to infrastructure, homeland security and protecting the environment," said Angelides senior strategist Bob Mulholland. "You go to every village square and make that case to each citizen of this great state."

Behind the scenes, grassroots recruitment is also a top priority for both camps. Mullholland said the Angelides campaign is looking to recruit "up to 100,000" volunteers. Schwarzenegger's campaign team has told supporters in Orange County that their target is 90,000 volunteers, who will go door-to-door in the last days of the race to get out the vote.

___

(c) 2006, The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.).

Visit the Register on the World Wide Web at http://www.ocregister.com/

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

_____

ARCHIVE PHOTO on KRT Direct (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): SCHWARZENEGGER ANGELIDES

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Source: The Orange County Register

More News in this Category