Angelides Pushes Tax, Fee Cuts

Mocha-tanned and wearing shorts, Tom Rossi of Redlands stood in front of Phil Angelides at a San Bernardino gathering Thursday and offered his thoughts on the Democratic gubernatorial candidate’s plan to cut taxes and college fees.

“I am something of a professional student, so I really like what you are saying,” said Rossi, a 39-year-old doctoral student who joked with Angelides about being on the “seven-year plan” for education.

Undecided in the race, Rossi was responding the way Angelides hoped: with an eye toward his pocketbook.

With about 12 weeks before election day, Angelides, the state treasurer, launched a new tax plan Wednesday that offers goodies for the middle class. He wants to roll back college fees, expand tax credits for families, cut taxes for small businesses and offer property tax and rent relief for the poor.

He is using the plan to paint himself as a common man, while characterizing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as being out of touch. On Thursday, he called the governor “clueless” and “from another planet,” and told folksy stories about his own middle-class parents.

“This looks just like the place I grew up,” Angelides, a millionaire, said as he walked up the steep driveway of a modest hillside home owned by two teachers in San Bernardino.

Angelides also sees the tax plan as a way to focus his campaign on working-class issues. Facing about three dozen people at the San Bernardino house, Angelides said Schwarzenegger has been “grinding down the middle class” and questioned whether the governor had any connection to working people because he “lives behind gates.”

Schwarzenegger, who spent Thursday campaigning and fundraising with former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, has tried to characterize Angelides as a tax-and-spender who would burden California families with $18 billion in tax schemes -- a figure Angelides has said is vastly inflated.

Matt David, the governor’s campaign spokesman, said the proposal Angelides introduced this week is “a tax increase disguised as a tax cut.”

Angelides has “spent his entire career fighting to raise taxes on the middle class,” David said, and “is not credible at this point.”

Under the Angelides plan, an earned-income tax credit for families making up to $46,000 a year would put up to $660 in their pockets. Those making up to $100,000 a year would see the dependent credit rise from $283 to $483, cutting taxes for about 1.5 million families.

But the candidate is sticking to his plan to raise taxes on Californians making more than $250,000 a year and closing corporate tax loopholes to bring in $5 billion. He says the combination of tax increases, tax cuts and “efficiencies” in government -- something Schwarzenegger promised and failed to deliver -- would balance the state budget and leave a reserve.

“The first thing I am going to do,” Angelides said, “I’m going to clean up Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget mess.”

Angelides was relaxed throughout the day, grinning widely as others talked and he listened. He was perhaps heeding advice from U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who appeared with him in the Bay Area on Wednesday and was overheard on a TV microphone suggesting that he lighten up in public.

Struggling to attract attention in the languid summer months, Angelides is still trying to overcome several months of negative advertising against him by state Controller Steve Westly, his opponent in the June primary election, and by Schwarzenegger since then.

Some of the effect may have been lingering Thursday, even though Angelides’ audiences were mostly made up of supporters who asked polite questions.

“This guy is a socialist,” said John McLaurin, 70, an engineer and Republican who attended Angelides’ rally at a Riverside ballpark Thursday. “I wanted to hear what he had to say. It didn’t change my impression.”

At a campaign forum in Anaheim, one Angelides supporter, high school science teacher Ted Shickler, 41, of Lake Forest said he would rather see the money spent elsewhere.

“Well, to be honest, tax breaks are great, but $660 -- I would rather see all that money spent to reduce the budget and I would like to put money back in the schools instead of giving it back to the middle class,” Shickler said. “Sure it sounds good, but it’s not a huge amount of money.”

Angelides said he would roll back fees at public colleges -- between $2,000 and $5,000 a year -- and scoffed at Schwarzenegger’s assertion Wednesday that fees at the University of California and Cal State campuses were “too low compared to the rest of the country.”

Angelides seemed to strike a chord with at least a few people on the issue. Stephanie Liggins, a San Bernardino teacher who made her lawn available to him, said her daughter is “getting ready to go to UC Davis, so when he talked about reducing tuition, I really responded.”

Schwarzenegger’s spokesman noted that Angelides stood silent while former Gov. Gray Davis raised college fees. And Schwarzenegger, he pointed out, brokered a deal with Democrats in the Legislature to cap increases at public colleges at 10% and rolled back a fee increase planned for this year.

Meanwhile, Rossi, who attended the San Bernardino event, said he was leaning toward Angelides after hearing him speak. He said he appreciated the opportunity to shake the candidate’s hand and look him in the eye.

“I am never convinced of the sincerity of politicians,” Rossi said. “If he does what he says he is going to do, he would be Superman, and I would be pleased.”