Angelides undaunted by numbers

Democratic gubernatorial challenger Phil Angelides swept through two Los Angeles neighborhoods Wednesday urging supporters to look at the broad themes of the fall campaign -- and shrugged off a new poll that shows his candidacy foundering less than a week before the vote.

“A poll’s a poll,” Angelides told reporters during a visit to the St. John’s Well Child and Family Center clinic in South Los Angeles, where he stressed his support for broadening access to healthcare and education for working-class families.

“I just don’t believe that in the end people are going to go for a governor who stood up each and every day for the most powerful of interests,” Angelides said. “This is a very fundamental-choice election.”

The Field Poll released Wednesday found Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger enjoying a 16-point lead, about the same as a survey released late last month by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The governor’s lead in the polls has set the tone for the campaign: As Angelides zips among appearances in L.A., San Diego, Sacramento and the Bay Area trying to rally traditional Democrats whose votes he should have sewn up by now, Schwarzenegger’s few appearances -- usually one a day -- are mostly spent campaigning for some of the initiatives on Tuesday’s ballot.

The biggest news of the campaign this week involved neither candidate directly: Sen. John Kerry’s flubbed joke at a Pasadena City College rally for Angelides on Monday that the White House claimed was an insult to the intelligence of those in military service, and for which Kerry apologized Wednesday. Angelides defended the Massachusetts senator outside the clinic.

“These Republicans are shameful; how dare they attack a guy like this who put his life on the line enduring God knows what during the Vietnam War,” Angelides said. “These Republicans will stop at nothing.”

The rhetorical blasts aimed at Kerry were intended to distract voters’ attention at a crucial stage of the election cycle, Angelides said.

“This is what they do; they distort,” he said. “The truth means nothing to them. Winning is everything. It’s an intentional attempt to distract people from the horrific failure of the Bush policy in Iraq.”

Schwarzenegger’s one public appearance Wednesday was at the Jack L. Schuetz Career Center, a vocational education school in Bakersfield, where the governor campaigned with Assemblyman Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) on behalf of the Propositions 1A through 1E construction bond issues on Tuesday’s ballot. Angelides also has campaigned for the measures.

The bonds are also to be the subject of a new television ad hyping bipartisan support for the initiatives -- including by Schwarzenegger and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The ad is to be unveiled today, but it was unknown how much money was behind it. An organizer for the ad campaign did not return messages seeking details, and a Feinstein advisor said she did not cooperate in the making of the ad.

In Bakersfield, Schwarzenegger and McCarthy underscored the compromise struck with Democratic legislative leaders that put the bonds on Tuesday’s ballot.

“We are very, very happy that both of the parties came together -- especially in an election year when normally not much gets done, as we can see all over the country,” Schwarzenegger said. “But in this state, we got a lot done.”

One of those measures, Proposition 1D, would provide $10.4 billion for public school and university construction, including $500 million for vocational education.

At the hourlong stop, the governor chatted with students who were learning to cook, detail cars and restore furniture.

“What we want to do, of course, is to create centers like this ... all over the state of California,” Schwarzenegger said. “We don’t have enough right now.”

He did not mention Angelides during the appearance, in keeping with his campaign strategy.

Angelides, who was to cap the day with a late-evening Democratic rally featuring former President Clinton, spent the morning at an ecumenical breakfast at offices of the Jefferson Park African American Voter Registration, Education, Participation Project, followed by the visit to St. John’s clinic, where he took part in a discussion on healthcare and cited his role as state treasurer in helping to provide grants to renovate neighborhood health clinics.

“I hope when I’m governor of this state we can do much, much more together,” Angelides said. “If you give me the chance to be your governor, I’m going to put expanding healthcare -- making it more affordable -- at the top of my priority list.... This is an issue around which I will take immediate action.”

In response to a question from the audience, Angelides pledged to shore up oversight of HMOs to ensure that they follow regulations, and work toward reducing the amount of insurance premiums that go to overhead and profits. And he condemned the growing disparity between poverty and wealth in California and the rest of the nation.

“The press tends to be more interested in the poll of the day at the very time that you have this enormous shift of wealth in this country that’s almost unprecedented,” Angelides said.

“There’s something wrong when all the benefits of the economic growth are going to the people at the top.... America was a richer and stronger country when we had a broad middle class.”

During an emotional moment, one Latino mother -- she said her son is stationed in Iraq -- told Angelides through an interpreter that her low-wage family relied on the clinic for healthcare, and that although she voted for Schwarzenegger in the recall, she was disappointed that he “didn’t do anything” after taking office to help families such as hers.

“You are why I am in this race for governor,” Angelides replied.

scott.martelle@latimes.com dan.morain@latimes.com For exclusive Web features, including the new Political Muscle blog, go to latimes.com/californiapolitics.