Gov. Touts Education as He Adjusts His Campaign

After visiting schools in Fresno, Oakland and Los Angeles this week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pleaded his case Friday in a classroom in this San Diego suburb, pivoting firmly toward education as he seeks to retool his reelection campaign.

The move to an issue that voters have long seen as California’s most important challenge -- reversing the decline of its public schools -- came after months of constructing a campaign largely on the mistaken assumption that lawmakers would put his vast public works proposals on the June ballot.

“The key thing for us all is to provide the best education possible,” Schwarzenegger told students and teachers Friday in the library of the newly built San Elijo School here.

Though his public works proposal has had its own difficulties -- getting his own party up in arms, among others -- using education as a defining issue is also fraught with trouble for the governor.

Teachers unions persist in accusing him of shortchanging schools, as they did last year when they helped defeat four Schwarzenegger ballot initiatives. The Democrats seeking his job -- state Treasurer Phil Angelides and Controller Steve Westly -- are amplifying the charge and offering their own education prescriptions.

But with little more than 10 weeks left before the Democratic primary to choose Schwarzenegger’s opponent, Angelides and Westly also were quarreling with each other over two other key statewide issues: the environment and ethics. The sharpest attacks have come in public statements by campaign aides -- even as their television ads stick, for now, to positive portrayals of each candidate.

There was other evidence of the nearing election: On Friday, both Democrats won endorsements from the Sierra Club, with the group’s state chairman saying either one “would be the greenest governor California has ever had.” Schwarzenegger’s campaign, meanwhile, planned to begin advertising on television Monday.

For the governor, who has no major opponent in the Republican primary, the turn to education appears aimed partly at minimizing his eventual challenger’s presumed edge on an issue that typically favors Democrats.

“If you assume that the public employee unions are going to come after him this year as hard as they went after him last year, it’s going to be very tough for Schwarzenegger to win on the education issue,” said Republican strategist Dan Schnur, who does not work for the governor. “But by spending time and energy talking about education, he can turn it into something more neutral.”

The unions do plan to spend millions on their effort to boot Schwarzenegger from office. By their account, he has fallen $3.2 billion short of his pledge to restore school money diverted to close a budget gap two years ago.

“He’s hurting our students, and until he gets a plan to pay back that money, that’s going to be his record and his legacy,” Barbara Kerr, president of the California Teachers Assn., said in an interview.

In Sacramento on Friday, Angelides made the same argument at a protest by teachers outside the state Capitol. He drew a counterpunch from state Republican Party spokesman Patrick Dorinson, who said Angelides was trying to “camouflage his proposals that would increase taxes.”

“Gov. Schwarzenegger has increased education funding to record levels both years he has been in office without raising taxes,” Dorinson said.

Schwarzenegger advisors plan to make the open embrace of higher taxes by Angelides and, to a lesser extent, Westly, a key point of contrast in the general election race.

“That’s a big difference between the governor and them, and that will be a part of the discussion: whether that’s helpful or hurtful to the economy,” said Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Schwarzenegger campaign.

At the same time, Schwarzenegger’s call for $222 billion in public construction spending, which caused an uproar among conservatives, remains central to his campaign. His talks with lawmakers to put a financing plan on the June ballot collapsed last week, but he is still pressing for a November vote.

All year, Schwarzenegger has heavily promoted the plan’s school, highway and flood levee proposals. But every day since Monday, he has put a spotlight solely on school construction, along with his education budget.

At a Los Angeles charter school Monday, he listened to band students play brass and woodwinds, then watched youngsters stretch and run in a physical education class.

The next day in Fresno, he chatted with high school students in nursing, automotive and wood-shop classes. (He put a 2-by-4 in a vise and cut it with a power saw, but declined advice to wear safety goggles.)

On Wednesday, the governor promoted higher education for veterans at a press event in his Capitol office. On Thursday, he talked up school construction at an Oakland charter school.

As for the Democrats, both vow to restore the disputed school money, but their campaigns have focused more on higher education than on kindergarten through 12th grade. Westly’s main proposal is to make community college free for most students, and Angelides’ is to roll back the university fee hikes imposed under Schwarzenegger.

The environment -- a key matter to Democratic voters, particularly in Northern California -- also played out in the Democratic race this week as both an issue and an indicator of character.

Angelides, well known in state political circles for his harsh campaign tactics, has dropped his prior reluctance to attack Westly. His campaign press secretary, Brian Brokaw, told reporters in an e-mail that Westly had a “love for oil drilling” and had invested in “enough oil stocks to fill the Exxon Valdez,” including Spinnaker Exploration and Offshore Logistics.

In another e-mail, Brokaw accused Westly, a former top EBay executive, of earning “obscene profits” on initial public stock offerings that were “fixed” to benefit insiders such as Westly at the expense of average investors.

“I’ve owned literally hundreds of stocks, and there may have been some in energy companies,” Westly said in an interview. “But I think what’s important here is I’ve got a very strong record on protecting the coast.”

Westly has acknowledged paying insider prices for initial stock offerings that were cheaper than what average investors had to pay, but he compared the practice to “frequent flier” miles available to corporate executives.

Westly’s press secretary, Nick Velasquez, has denounced the “Angelides smear machine” for its attacks. But in a series of e-mails, he said Angelides “obliterated wetlands” as a developer, burying them “under miles of concrete and asphalt,” and was a partner in a firm that illegally dumped a million gallons of dredging spoils into Lake Tahoe, “one of the most pristine lakes in the world.”

Angelides has said that he was proud of his record as a developer and that he took pains to protect the environment around his projects. A senior advisor, Bob Mulholland, called the Lake Tahoe accusation “a completely phony charge.”

Angelides, he said, owned an 11% share of one condominium in a 22-unit project on the lakefront, and its management association was fined for dredging the adjacent marina and dumping the spoils in the lake. Angelides, he said, knew nothing of the dumping until it was done and took court action against those he believed responsible.

“He was a guy whose family occasionally used the condo,” Mulholland said. “That’s all.”