New West Notes

** COULD BE A SPECTACLE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will do a live Internet video question-and-answer session Tuesday morning at 10:30 AM. The event will be moderated by KXTV New 10 Sacramento political reporter Marcey Brightwell. According to Schwarzenegger aides, Brightwell will select questions submitted by the public and pose them to the former action superstar. The event can be accessed here. You can also submit your own proposed questions here.

** Meet the LA schools: Dropout rate? One of every three students. Only 13% of LA students read at grade level. Only 11% perform math at grade level.

Among students of color, it gets worse. Nine out of 10 Latino and black fourth-graders score below par in reading and math. Among Latino and black eighth graders, the numbers are actually, if you can imagine such a thing, worse.

Per pupil spending in the LA schools is 10% above the national average and over one-sixth above the state average.

** A reapportionment reform bill is wending its way through the California Legislature, and some politicians are optimistic. Not so Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, who in a spikily amusing talk at the monthly luncheon of the Sacramento Press Club, predicted it won’t happen in this election year.

** LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is unrepentant and ready to fight as he defends his proposed takeover of the long-troubled LA school district. More to follow.

** Cyber-Synchronicity: Thanks to New West friend and Nation magazine West Coast editor Marc Cooper, the column on “The Antonio Factor” quickly injected its content into the left-liberal The Nation and onto the wires.

UPDATE: Also picked up by the conservative Pajamas Media. (Yes, it is a new world in terms of branding, is it not?) Also national conservative radio host and New West friend Hugh Hewitt.

Bipartisanship isn’t just a buzzword. (That’s a little joke.)

** Another break for the newfound action governor. No strike by the threatening SEIU state workers, as KQED correspondent (and Press Club prexy) John Myers reported over the weekend.

With Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa visiting the Capitol today in an attempt to salvage his ambitious plan to take over and reform the historically troubled L.A. Unified School District, the Democrat has emerged as an unusual factor in this year’s unusual governor’s race. The former Assembly speaker, a rising Democratic superstar, is still officially neutral in the race between moderate Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Democratic challenger, Treasurer Phil Angelides.

Villaraigosa, a darling of LA progressives when he first ran for mayor in 2001 — the LA Weekly, for one, devoted issue after issue to extolling his various fantastic qualities — is taking on the powerful teachers unions in his bid to place the sprawling LA school district under the governance of a council of some two dozen mayors of communities within its boundaries, a council which he as LA’s mayor would dominate. As Villaraigosa, a former teachers union organizer, is very well aware, the unions have historically had tremendous influence over the school board. In order to avoid going the initiative route, an option now firmly under discussion in his circles, Villaraigosa needs support from the state. Governor Schwarzenegger endorses his plan. But support in the Legislature is far less certain, so much so that the mayor’s good friend and close ally, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, essentially summoned him last week to Sacramento for a rescue operation.

While Schwarzenegger supports Villaraigosa’s plan, Angelides does not. The powerful California Teachers Association (CTA), whose members participate in the various councils of the Angelides campaign and which contributed $1 million to the highly controversial pro-Angelides independent expenditure campaign principally funded by Sacramento development kingpin Angelo Tsakopoulos, is leading the fight against the mayor’s plan in the Legislature.

Ironically, Angelides supported a mayoral takeover scheme in Sacramento when his friend, the late Mayor Joe Serna — a one-time farm worker who was the first elected Latino mayor of a major California city — took on the Sacramento school board in 1996.

But the school takeover, while Villaraigosa’s top issue, is just one reason why he and Schwarzenegger have a certain simpatico.

The former action superstar’s longtime friend and ally, the moderate former mayor of LA, Dick Riordan, was a very important supporter of Villaraigosa when he first ran for mayor in 2001, breaking through in dramatic fashion in the first round of voting before losing the run-off to James Hahn. Schwarzenegger is known to like the style of Villaraigosa, a charismatic and dapper figure.

In more concrete and recent terms, Schwarzenegger has proved to be a key ally in other areas. His Big Bang Bonds infrastructure package was a godsend to Villaraigosa, as the transportation bond piece of it contains what would be crucial funding for the mayor’s dream of building “the subway to the sea” along the Wilshire Blvd. corridor. The governor also supported Villaraigosa’s hoped for park bonds, although that had to be taken out of the final version of the package in deference to Republican wishes to focus on more basic infrastructure needs.

The governor and mayor are also allied in the drive to bring a National Football League franchise to LA. The two men lobbied the NFL owners in Dallas earlier this spring.

Finally, Schwarzenegger appointed the mayor’s sister, Mary Lou Villar, a judge of the superior court.

Then there is the question, as many whisper rather loudly in Democratic ranks, of ambition. Villaraigosa would like to be governor of California. If Schwarzenegger is re-elected, he will be term-limited out of office by the 2010 elections. Angelides, on the other hand, could be in office through 2014. Villaraigosa, at 53, is youthful and mediagenic. But waiting eight years rather than four could leave him out of office by the time his turn came around and not so much the fresh face.

Villaraigosa’s ally, Assembly Speaker Nunez, also has ambitions. Many say he would like to succeed Villaraigosa as LA’s mayor. At the Capitol reception for Mexican President Vicente Fox, Nunez, introducing the governor, gave a ringing endorsement of his leadership, describing Schwarzenegger (“the man responsible for getting California moving again”) in far more fulsome terms than he ever has Angelides, whose campaign he co-chairs.

Angelides styles himself in his campaign for governor as “the anti-Arnold.” But the real anti-Arnold, in the sense of being an ever persistent and effective foe of Arnold Schwarzenegger, was Nunez.

The feisty speaker, a one-time Golden Gloves boxer, harried the former Mr. Universe at every turn. But the antagonism between the two men grew into a warily mutual respect as adversaries as Schwarzenegger’s fateful 2005 special election agenda unfolded.

Finally, as I exclusively reported last summer, Nunez joined Schwarzenegger in marathon negotiating sessions at the governor’s LA mansion in an effort to avert the showdown at the ballot box. Although the effort did not succeed, Nunez came to appreciate and admire Schwarzenegger in the process. The stage was set for the speaker, the governor, and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata to work together on this year’s massive infrastructure bonds package.

It was no surprise this spring when Villaraigosa and former Governor Jerry Brown appeared at separate stops of the Schwarzenegger-Perata-Nunez statewide jet tour celebrating the bipartisan bonds passage.

Then there is the question of realpolitik.

“We all get a second term,” said one former governor a few weeks ago. Not since 1942, when Culbert Olson was defeated, has a California governor been defeated while running for a second term. He was defeated by Earl Warren, later chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The last incumbent governor to be defeated was legendary Democrat Pat Brown. After eight years as governor, and eight years as state attorney general just before that, he was going for a third term in 1966 when he ran up against Ronald Reagan.

Quite a few major California Democrats expect Schwarzenegger to defeat Angelides. Which does not mean that Villaraigosa will not endorse Angelides in the end.

One potential rival of Villaraigosa’s in a future gubernatorial race, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, is already out there for Angelides. Newsom likes Schwarzenegger, too, and hosted the governor’s global warming summit at San Francisco City Hall. In fact, he calls the governor “incredibly genuine and generous,” which is not exactly the norm for the crew around “anti-Arnold” Angelides.

But he has already campaigned with Angelides, appearing with him in San Francisco last week when the candidate made a third attempt at getting attention for his children’s health care proposal, which he says he modeled after Newsom’s program in the City by the Bay.

Is something like that in the future for Villaraigosa and Angelides? Probably not so long as Angelides follows the CTA’s lead on Villaraigosa’s school takeover plan.

A very interested bystander during the just past Democratic gubernatorial primary, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign is eagerly filling journalists’ e-mail boxes with missives challenging Democratic gubernatorial challenger Phil Angelides’ views and record. But with the nasty Angelides-Steve Westly joust, and its attendant e-mail war, having gone on for months before its merciful conclusion, Team Arnold is getting a less than enthusiastic response.

Yet campaign coverage will return in volume as the November election gets closer, so the Schwarzenegger line of attack is worth examining now for clues to the campaign ahead.

For one thing, the tone, while critical of the state treasurer, is not as nasty as that employed by the Angelides and Westly camps in their primary battle. The Team Arnold missives are more matter of fact in tone and factoid-packed. They come off as organized downloads of opposition research.

Their early areas of emphases include Proposition 13, Angelides’ spending programs and calls for increases in taxes, and the so-called “Jessica’s Law” anti-child molester initiative. It’s all part of a plan to create FUD, old marketing parlance for “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt” about the Democratic challenger.

The Jessica’s Law initiative, according to sources, will end up as one of Schwarzenegger’s anchor issues for his party’s base. As he has moved back to the center following last year’s rightward stab with the disastrous “Year of Reform” special election initiative agenda, the governor has given little so far to the Republican conservative base.

The Jessica’s Law initiative is a twofer for him, offering red meat to the base and potentially appealing to moderates. The latter is one reason why Angelides has been rather cagey on the issue. So Team Arnold has been dogging the Democratic candidate, having a prominent law enforcement figure in each area of the state that he visits challenge him to take a position on the initiative. Which he has not yet done.

Engaging the treasurer and former state Democratic chairman on taxes and spending is the centerpiece of Schwarzenegger’s anti-Angelides strategy. The Arnold camp is happy to engage Angelides in a debate over how much new spending he is proposing and how large the tax increases required to pay for it would have to be.

So virtually every day, at least during the week, Team Arnold sends missives discussing the programs Angelides has called for, how much they would cost, and how the $5 billion in tax increases which Angelides maintains is the total amount he would raise is allegedly inadequate to the challenge.

Angelides declared in a major speech on April 5th that he would raise taxes on the rich and close corporate tax loopholes to fully fund education to the Proposition 98-required level, balance the budget, and pay for other programs he’s calling for. The state’s revenue windfall and subsequent May revision of the governor’s budget enabled him and the education lobby to bury the hatchet and restore funds withheld from education as part of Schwarzenegger’s dealing in 2004 to get the budget under control.

But Angelides has since said that that is not good enough, that California must do more for education than simply meet the Prop 98 spending requirement. How much more remains unclear, though the candidate has said several times that spending should be further increased, by an undetermined amount, so that California returns to a point near the top among America’s states in per pupil spending.

Whatever that proposal may be or cost, in any event, Angelides is already committed to another $3.2 billion in education spending. With $3.5 billion for balancing the budget, he is already over the $5 billion he maintains is the upper limit for his still rather vague tax program.

When Angelides responded last week to Schwarzenegger’s still vague call during his bus tour to make 2007 “the year of health care,” he hastily rolled out a new policy proposal calling for universal health care coverage for children. Which would itself cost several hundred million dollars.

But the Schwarzenegger crew, while noting that, went beyond to remind reporters that Angelides, during his primary battle with the moderate Westly, endorsed a single-payer health care system which could be much more expensive.

They, like the Westly crew before them, note that Angelides has supported a wide range of tax hikes in recent years that would affect most Californians. Angelides counters that those tax hikes are not part of his current program, and were raised in the context of dealing with what was then a runaway state budget.

But Schwarzenegger is doing something that Westly could not, in a Democratic primary, boring in on Angelides’ views toward Prop 13. The venerable property tax limitation measure, adopted in a 1978 landslide, is a sacred cow in California. One Democratic strategist describes it as “the third rail” of California politics.

Angelides maintains that he would do nothing to alter its provisions for homeowners, and there is no reason to disbelieve that. He has made statements that seem more equivocal about the prospect of changing Prop 13 to raise taxes on commercial property owners, a so-called “split roll” measure that many Democratic elites support.

Nevertheless, recent efforts to “split the roll” of property taxes by initiative, most notably by Angelides’ key backer, the powerful California Teachers Association, have remained stillborn. Many Californians own investment property. And some strategists believe that any discussion of changing Prop 13 would alarm homeowners as well.

While his statements on taxing commercial property are less than definitive, Angelides has not endorsed a split roll property tax.

Democratic opinion leaders would have denounced Westly had he raised the Prop 13 flag with Angelides. But Schwarzenegger is under no such handicap.

As the campaign heads, seemingly, into a quieter phase before the fireworks of the fall, Team Arnold will keep pushing on these issues, working to create and cement impressions about the opposition. How successful they are in laying this foundation of FUD may well determine the outcome in November.

With all the talk about the former red state, Republican state, California, becoming a blue state — which is not quite as true as some think — there is someone talking about it becoming a purple state. That is California Republican Party chairman Duf Sundheim, who talked about his hopes for California during last week’s bus tour kicking off Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s re-election campaign against Democratic challenger Phil Angelides.

The Silicon Valley lawyer came on a few years ago to put a moderate face on the party, whose apparatus was traditionally viewed as right wing and increasingly out of step with a more Democratic-skewing state. Billionaire investment banker Gerald Parsky, President Bush’s man in California, and then state Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte, were part of a package deal of sophisticated overseers for the party.

Then Arnold Schwarzenegger came along. The action movie superstar and former Mr. Universe ran for governor years before his anticipated 2006, winning a landslide victory in the dramatic 2003 recall election which ended the governorship of twice-elected Democrat Gray Davis.

For more than a year, as Sundheim tells it, he was ecstatic. Schwarzenegger, who immediately became the most important Republican in California, notwithstanding his maverick views and less than fantastic relationship with President George W. Bush — his great friend in Kennebunkport, which he once frequented, was the first President Bush, who made him chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness — was a great success, achieving record levels of popularity.

But then things changed last year. “That was difficult,” says Sundheim of the ill-fated “Year of Reform,” in which the popular movie star governor morphed into a villain in his losing battle with iconic public employees over his special election agenda of four initiatives.

This year, things have been “better,” as he put it, but more complex for Sundheim.

Contrary to the hopes of last year’s victorious Democrats, Schwarzenegger has been in major recovery mode for months. But in recovering his political fortunees, the governor made moves that confounded and infuriated activists from the conservative base of the party. He hired a lifelong Democrat — a former top aide to recalled Governor Gray Davis and Democratic gubernatorial challenger Phil Angelides, a lesbian married on Maui, no less — as his chief of staff.

And while he brought on a new political team of hardball players from the Bush operation, they, too, were complicit in his move to the left as he embraced and championed the biggest public works spending program in California’s history.

Sundheim bore the brunt of the attendant rebellions. With his help, and the efficient work of Schwarzenegger’s new political team, the anti-Arnold right-wing revolt at last spring’s state Republican convention in Sundheim’s Silicon Valley home base proved to be much ado about not much.

So now, with the governor running against the Democrat most Republicans preferred as his opponent, Sundheim can dream again about the future. Well, as much as any state party chairman can dream about the future when his party’s incumbent president has the second lowest approval rating in California of any president in the history of polling.

Sundheim hopes, not for a red state future for California, for that is a pipe dream given the state’s emerging demographics, but for a purple state future, a melding of red and blue.

It seems a realistic hope, if not an entirely likely scenario, with Democrats in power proving repeatedly to overreach themselves as they did in the run-up to the recall of Gray Davis. And in Schwarzenegger, Sundheim has, as he puts it, his purple “prototype.”

But who is there on the horizon for Republicans besides the once biggest movie star on the planet? If there was ever a one-off, Arnold Schwarzenegger is it.

Indeed, the governor, who speaks often of change and crossing boundaries in politics, did little in the primary just past to promote a purple state future for his beloved “golden dream by the sea.”

Schwarzenegger, perhaps mindful of the need to avoid further alienating conservatives further, didn’t intervene in the primary to help his allies Abel Maldonado, who very narrowly lost the Republican primary for state controller, and Keith Richman, who lost the primary for state treasurer.

Why not? Sundheim won’t say.

Schwarzenegger did, however, prior to the primary, pluck two strong prospects for November from relative obscurity.

He made Bruce McPherson the incumbent secretary of state when he appointed him to replace Democrat Kevin Shelley, who was forced to resign under fire following several revelations about his mismanagement of the office. The former state senator and Santa Cruz newspaper publisher, the party’s 2002 nominee for lieutenant governor, has acquitted himself well in office and has a decent chance to beat the Democratic nominee, LA area state Senator Debra Bowen, an impressive individual in her own right.

He also made Steve Poizner a major figure in the party. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur ran a close race in an absolutely Democratic district for the state Assembly, spending $6 million from his personal fortune in the process. Schwarzenegger, and Sundheim, came to regard the brainy but rather modest Poizner as the saving grace of Schwarzenegger’s otherwise wholly unsuccessful intervention in the legislative races of 2004. So pleased with Poizner was the governor that he appointed him to the Public Utilities Commission. Notwithstanding the fact that Poizner had so many investments in telecommunications and other related high tech ventures that he could not possibly avoid running afoul of state conflict of interest regulations without divesting himself of much of his investment portfolio.

Although this fact was obvious, neither the governor’s aides nor Sundheim impressed this on Schwarzenegger, so happy was he about having found Poizner. Finally, reality dawned courtesy of Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, who informed Arnold that he couldn’t possibly confirm the otherwise well-qualified Poizner as a member of the PUC. Now Poizner is the Republican nominee for insurance commissioner against Schwarzenegger’s 2003 recall rival, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante.

After an unexpectedly topsy-turvy time Sundheim pronounces himself satisfied and hopeful about the fall election. Although most of the Republican nominees are conventional types whose prospects are uncertain at best, the party seems poised to make some more gains beyond its shutout status after the last general election four years ago.

** No, the Democratic Mayor of LA has not endorsed the Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

** Which statewide politician supported a ban on handguns?

** The Democratic gubernatorial candidate makes a bold bet. Someone else reports this one first.

** A good column on spurious objections to the death penalty.

With California’s state budget hung up, at least for the moment, on the politics of illegal immigration and children’s health care, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is right in the middle between legislative Democrats and Republicans. It’s consistent with his evolution from supporter of the anti-illegal immigrant Proposition 187 in 1994 to his dramatic declaration in 2002 that he opposed any Prop 187-like measure.

Schwarzenegger wants to add money for existing children’s health care programs at the county level, which service children who are here illegally. But he doesn’t want to start up a new program, which would begin the process of adding such immigrant kids to the state’s Healthy Families program, until he knows how the program would be paid for. Legislative Democrats want to do both things. Legislative Republicans want to do neither.

The amounts of money involved, $22 million for the existing programs, $1.8 million to start the process of adding illegal immigrants to Healthy Families, are minor, “budget dust” as one player calls it, in a $130 billion-plus state budget. But the implications are large.

The Department of Finance estimates that the ultimate cost of adding immigrant kids to Healthy Families would be $300 million. That’s not budget dust.

The former action superstar declared during his campaign in the 2003 recall that “We have to make sure that every child in California is insured.”

But critics say that little has happened since he became governor. Nevertheless, under Schwarzenegger, there have been increases so that over 90 percent of eligible California children are receiving health care through the Healthy Families program geared to lower income kids.

The governor declared last week on his bus tour that he wants to make 2007 “the year of health care, and other things” much as this has become the year of infrastructure. But does he have a plan yet? No.

When I asked him how he would get there, he said he would put together a summit, “with all the stakeholders.”

But since he doesn’t have a comprehensive plan yet, and doesn’t have a funding source for adding the immigrant children to Healthy Families, he’s not for spending the $1.8 million to begin putting that together.

It’s also a way for him to placate legislative Republicans.

In any event, one Schwarzenegger friend likes his positioning. “He has the National Guard on the border helping the Border Patrol but he’s not for denying health care to poor kids.”

Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger’s Democratic challenger, state Treasurer Phil Angelides, wants to expand the program and spend the money. He says he would fund this new commitment through his program of tax hikes on the rich and closure of mostly undisclosed corporate tax loopholes, which he maintains would amount to only $5 billion per year for all the new spending he is calling for.

Schwarzenegger’s views on health care for the children of illegal immigrants put him at odds with most Republican politicians. It wasn’t always that way.

In 1994, he voted for Prop 187, the anti-illegal immigrant initiative championed by then Governor Pete Wilson in his come from behind re-election campaign against then Treasurer Kathleen Brown. The measure denied education, health care, and other services to illegal immigrants. (After the campaign we learned that Wilson himself had employed an illegal immigrant, a fact which might well have led to a different outcome.)

But in 2002, while campaigning for his Proposition 49 after school programs initiative, Schwarzenegger declared his opposition to future Prop 187 type moves. In a question and answer session after his speech to the Commonwealth Club at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel, the former Mr. Universe said that he “would never stand in the way of a child going to school,” an answer which drew a standing ovation.

A year later, with Schwarzenegger’s candidacy in the dramatic recall election just declared, Wilson, unbriefed as to the campaign’s message, got him in hot water when he declared on a national TV show that the brand-new candidate had backed Prop 187. And Schwarzenegger’s staff, not all of whom were familiar with the movie star, compounded the situation when spokesman Rob Stutzman said that the candidate would be very open to doing another Prop 187.

He was not, but that took awhile to straighten out. Schwarzenegger ended up doing well with Latino voters in his campaign. But he never had a Latino outreach program to speak of. And when Schwarzenegger told an LA radio show last year that the anti-illegal immigrant vigilantes who call themselves the Minutemen were doing a great job, his support plummeted.

But after his terrible “Year of Reform” last year, Schwarzenegger is back to where he was in 2002. Now, with old backers of Prop 187 no longer around him, the governor has brought on former Univision broadcaster and League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) director Arnoldo Torres, a one-time advisor to Jesse Jackson, to counsel him and run Latino outreach.

It’s not clear that either legislative Republicans or Democrats have thought through the implications of this budget dust-up over “budget dust.” The Republicans run the risk of looking churlish, with members of their own party in local office around the state supporting Schwarzenegger and the Democrats’ extra $22 million for existing children’s health care coverage. The Democrats run the risk of early exposure of a potential Achilles heel of a big initiative this fall, that would raise the tobacco tax to pay for health care. Much of the money would go to the care of illegal immigrants.

In the wake of the overwhelming defeat of Proposition 82, another tax somebody else to pay for a nice thing initiative, adding early to the weight of controversy around the tobacco tax measure is not well advised.

Democratic sources say they are content to sit back and let the governor get the necessary Republican votes, dealing away or line item vetoing in the process the radioactive $1.8 million preparatory funding for including illegal immigrants in the Healthy Families program. But it isn’t likely they’ll sit back for long, because Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez want a timely budget this year as well as they continue their bid to restore the reputation of the Legislature.

** Eagle-eyed readers report that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s TV ad mix has shifted more to the positive side. Of the two new ads unveiled last Friday, the ad attacking challenger Phil Angelides for wanting to take California “backwards” was running in a much heavier rotation around the state. But this week the rotation has shifted, such that the positive ad and the negative ad appear to be running about evenly now.

** Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s ambitious plan to take over the troubled LA School District is itself in big trouble in the Legislature.

** Schwarzenegger allies are jamming Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides on the “Jessica’s Law” anti-child molester initiative on California’s November ballot. Kern County District Attorney Ed Jagels is challenging the treasurer to take a position on the initiative during his visit to Bakersfield this afternoon.

Schwarzenegger developed strong ties with prosecutors around the state in 2004 when, with the assistance of former Governor Jerry Brown, he shot down a ballot initiative that would have modified the so-called three-strikes law. The initiative, which would have required that the third offense triggering life in prison be a violent crime, had a big lead in the polls before a furious late-breaking Schwarzenegger campaign against it doomed the measure.

** California’s state budget is still hung up at the noon hour over the issue of providing health care for children who are illegal immigrants.

** VARIETY REPORTS THAT A NEW “CONAN THE BARBARIAN” IS IN THE WORKS. Not King Conan, which would star Arnold Schwarzenegger, but a remake of the campy Hyborean Age epic, with the Conan role recast. Here is who should play Conan. Former Mister Austria Roland Kickinger.

** GOOGLE, WHICH PROVIDED MUCH OF THE RECENT CALIFORNIA REVENUE BOOM, IS SETTING UP ITS NEW GLOBAL DATA CENTER IN … OREGON. Uh-oh. On the other hand, the company just purchased its Silicon Valley headquarters, which it had previously rented.

California’s gubernatorial campaign TV ad wars are now fully engaged, with Democratic challenger Phil Angelides going on the air yesterday as forecast with an attack ad to match that of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both campaigns are mirroring attacks from the nasty Democratic primary battle just past.

Angelides’ TV spot, created by his new media consultant, veteran Democratic strategist Bill Carrick, is clever and amusing but reactive. It depicts a Schwarzenegger-like figure from the Terminator pictures riding a motorcycle backwards, keying off the governor’s ad showing a bird, a car, a skier, and finally Angelides himself, all going backwards. Angelides is spending a million dollars, much of what he had on hand, airing the ad over the next week. That’s about a quarter of what Schwarzenegger is spending on his advertising. (The haste with which the ad was done shows on screen where the text mirrors what the candidate is saying, that he will “rollback” college tuition and fees. In this usage, it should be two words rather than the one.)

Like Schwarzenegger’s attack ad, which recycles Angelides’ narrowly defeated primary rival Steve Westly’s attack on Angelides for supporting $10 billion in new taxes — Angelides says it is only $5 billion, to cover a growing number of new spending commitments — the state treasurer recycles a primary attack on Westly in his attack on the governor.

“Just like George Bush, Schwarzenegger’s saddled us with billions in debt,” the Angelides announcer declares as the Terminator figure rides his motorbike backwards to the strains of a reverse looped soundtrack.

What Angelides’ attack ad does not say is that most of Schwarzenegger’s borrowing was done to cover operating deficits run up during the governorship of recalled Governor Gray Davis. Angelides was treasurer during Davis’s governorship and, like the rest of the Democratic Party, went along with the policies of the former governor and of reigning legislative Democrats.

There were serious constitutional questions about the borrowing employed by Davis and legislative Democrats to paper over the operating deficit, so Schwarzenegger and the Democratic Party joined together to dispel those questions by having a public vote in the spring of 2004 on bonds to finance the deficit.

Although the bipartisan deficit bonds initiative started out in a deep hole in public opinion polling, Schwarzenegger and Democratic leaders — including all the co-chairs of the Angelides for Governor campaign — succeeded in persuading a landslide majority of California voters that the bonds were a necessary evil.

The only prominent statewide figures who stood against the deficit bonds were Angelides and conservative state Senator Tom McClintock, who is now Schwarzenegger’s running mate. While other Democrats moved to work with the former action superstar after his October 2003 election, embracing him in his bipartisan reformer mode the first time around, Angelides opposed him from the moment of his election. His state treasurer’s office sent out a raft of press releases denouncing Schwarzenegger beginning even before he named his transition team.

When the deficit bonds were first approved by then Governor Davis and the Democratic-controlled Legislature, Angelides issued a few statements of objection. He then, as a dutiful Democrat, went along with the program. Only after Schwarzenegger moved to make the deficit bonds constitutional did Angelides turn his occasional objections into a crusade.

The ad also says that Schwarzenegger cut education funding. In fact, actual state spending on education has increased sharply throughout Schwarzenegger’s governorship.

As part of a deal with the education lobby to begin bringing the runaway state budget under control during his first year as governor, Schwarzenegger gave the schools less money than they were owed under the Proposition 98 40 percent requirement. He then reneged on a deal with the lobby to “pay back” that money in his next budget, helping spark a war with public employee unions that culminated last November in the defeat of his 2005 special election initiative agenda.

This year, with state coffers brimming with revenue from California’s economic recovery, Schwarzenegger struck a deal to repay that money and “fully fund” the schools. The California Teachers Association pronounced itself satisfied and endorsed the governor’s budget proposal.

** Exactly as predicted and in the form predicted here at New West Notes, Phil Angelides has a brand-new attack ad on Arnold Schwarzenegger today. How much is he putting behind it? Heheh. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: A reader asks which of the Terminator pictures the opening sequence in the Angelides TV attack ad was lifted from, or inspired by. (“Ooh, an excuse,” as my ex-wife would put it.) Ahem. Without “researching” the question, my opinion is that the opening sequence of Angelides’ latest TV attack ad is lifted from/inspired by T3.

Incidentally, although I have worked with a couple Academy Award directors — and am an admirer of consultant Bill Carrick, who I have recommended on several occasions — I should probably refrain from offering stage directions for my very old friend, Phil Angelides.

The Steve Westly campaign became somewhat exercised when I blasted Angelides’ cinema verite attack ad on the controller for breaking his positive campaign pledge. Because the Angelides ad, rushed onto the air, was terrible. In the very immediate wake of criticism, Angelides promptly yanked it in favor of an ad which, natch, actually properly framed the situation.

** Meanwhile, with circulation plummeting, the Los Angeles Times looks to be in play. That paper has been in deep guano ever since its failed hit on Schwarzenegger at the very end of the 2003 recall. Kudos to New West friend Kevin Roderick at LA Observed for his “Chandlers Drop Bomb On Tribune.”

You know, some years ago, I looked at buying the Washington Monthly. With a deep-pockets partner or two, obviously. One of whom was not Madonna, despite reports at the time. (Hey, MK, and New Republic associates of the era.) A familiar name or two has surfaced with respect to the LAT.

UPDATE: Subsequent to my intense and then waning interest in the venerable neoliberal publishing property, the Washington Monthly magazine was purchased outright by a member of the Tsakopoulos family, sans partners. Not that I have been paying attention to what Angelo and company have been up to these last several years …

** The action governor did not put out his extemporaneous remarks for Flag Day. But here they are. You know, with an immigrant gal pal and having worked for many years, on and off, with a union that deals with immigrants more than any other, I think I have an inkling what it is like to deal with the enormity of being an American of sorts once you are here. Arnold Schwarzenegger gives a little sense of that, in his inimitable way, with his bootleg Flag Day remarks in Orange County.

In the aftermath of last week’s nasty, muddy Democratic gubernatorial primary, the victor, state Treasurer Phil Angelides, is having to try repeatedly to get his message across in his challenge to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. On Monday in San Francisco, appearing with popular Mayor Gavin Newsom, he made a third try at getting his new proposal on children’s health care across. But he again received scant press coverage.

Last week, appearing at the Roybal Comprehensive Health Center in East Los Angeles, Angelides said that as governor he would provide health care to all California’s children. How would the program be funded? His centerpiece program of tax hikes on the rich and closure of corporate tax loopholes, which he says amounts to $5 billion, would again be the source of the revenue for this new program.

Angelides endorsed Santa Monica-based state Senator Sheila Kuehl’s controversial single-payer health care bill as part of his primary battle with his more moderate rival, state Controller Steve Westly. During a local Los Angeles Democratic endorsing session, Kuehl dramatically spoke to the group by phone, blasting Westly for not adopting Angelides’ stance of backing her single-payer health care plan.

Angelides hasn’t talked about that program since the primary election. But his campaign criticizes Schwarzenegger for doing nothing on health care, vetoing bills last year that would have expanded children’s health care by 800,000 people.

On Wednesday, Schwarzenegger had called for a summit “with all the stakeholders” to develop a new health care system covering all Californians. He has previously opposed universal health care schemes such as the Kuehl bill, primarily for their expense, but says now that he intends to make 2007 “the year of health care, and other things,” just as this year became the year of infrastructure.

With his initial proposal for children’s health care lost in the media jetwash surrounding Schwarzenegger’s bus tour and TV ad campaign, Angelides tried again with an event at the end of last week in San Diego. But he didn’t make it to the event.

When some media outlets reported that he had missed his flight, Angelides instructed his aides to make sure that the press knew the flight was delayed. He also, according to inside sources, expressed his wish that he had a plane, as Schwarzenegger does.

Campaigning around the state by commercial air, especially running a tough race for the state’s highest office, can be very problematic. Flights are missed, flights are delayed, flights are canceled, flights can be inconvenient for scheduling purposes. Angelides has frequently used a plane belonging to his longtime patron and partner and campaign finance co-chairman, Sacramento development kingpin Angelo Tsakopoulos. But that would be a poor idea now, in the wake of the highly controversial independent expenditure campaign on Angelides’ behalf funded by Tsakopoulos that proved decisive in Angelides’ narrow primary win over ex-eBay honcho Westly.

On Monday, Angelides again rolled out his proposal on children’s health care, at a lunchtime Chinatown health center event with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, calling Newsom’s “Healthy Kids” program in San Francisco “a model for the state.” Although this event was earlier in the day, and despite Newsom’s presence, press coverage was scant.

The San Francisco Examiner published a brief article. The San Francisco Chronicle ran only a brief blog item, which focused not on Angelides’ health care plan but on his “recycling” of anti-Westly rhetoric for use against Schwarzenegger, and of some vagueness around his position on Proposition 13.

When Angelides’ plan does receive more attention, there will be another controversial element besides how it is paid for. One-third of the children to whom coverage would be expanded would be, in the words of a children’s health care advocate, “undocumented immigrants.”

Illegal immigrants are covered under existing children’s health care programs. But expanding coverage at this time could be controversial, especially among Republican legislators whose votes would be needed for any tax increase.