Candidates race toward finish line

Candidates dashed across California on Sunday in a final burst of campaigning at churches, restaurants and rallies as thousands of volunteers besieged voters with phone calls and front-porch pleas for support in Tuesday’s election.

Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Democratic challenger, state Treasurer Phil Angelides, crossed paths midday at an Inland Empire memorial for firefighters killed in the Esperanza fire last month in Riverside County.

Apart from that somber break from the campaign frenzy, the gubernatorial rivals led the battles of their respective parties to gain a last-minute edge in races that are testing the strength of the Democratic Party’s dominance in California.

Capping his yearlong courtship of Democrats and independents with one last visit to an African American church in Los Angeles, Schwarzenegger kept his distance from more conservative Republicans on the ballot -- even as his vast political operation mobilized at full force for the GOP ticket.

In remarks wedged between a choir’s gospel numbers at Brookins Community African Methodist Episcopal Church, Schwarzenegger skipped over his fight for reelection. Instead, he called attention to the Kennedy pedigree of his wife, Maria Shriver, and extolled public-private cooperation in after-school care for children, drug abuse prevention, legal aid and jobs.

“Government alone cannot solve the problems,” he said. “Everyone has to work together.”

Campaigning in the San Gabriel Valley, Angelides stuck to his more combative approach. He told Democratic volunteers sipping tea at a Monterey Park dim sum restaurant that the Austrian-born governor “disrespects immigrants.”

“We deserve a governor who will bring us together,” said Angelides, who reminded the crowd of his own grandparents’ Greek origins.

For every candidate on the ballot, the rising popularity of voting by mail has limited the reach of such traditional appeals in the campaign’s closing days.

Secretary of State Bruce McPherson projects that 44% of the votes cast in the election will be by absentee ballot. By Friday afternoon, the ballots of at least 1.8 million voters had already reached county election offices.

Overall, turnout is expected to be modest. Roughly 8.7 million -- or 55% -- of California’s 15.8 million registered voters are likely to cast ballots by the time polls close at 8 p.m., McPherson said. That would put turnout above the 51% of four years ago, when Gov. Gray Davis won reelection, but below the 60% of October 2003, when voters recalled Davis and replaced him with Schwarzenegger.

This year, the governor’s race and high-profile ballot measure contests have driven political spending to record heights. All told, California candidates and ballot measure campaigns have raised nearly $637 million this year, according to the secretary of state’s office, although some double-counting could mean the actual number is closer to $600 million.

A large share of the money has poured into TV ad battles over Proposition 86, which would increase tobacco taxes to pay for health programs; and Proposition 87, which would tax oil companies to raise money for alternative energy. Outspent by oil companies on advertising, the Yes on 87 campaign showcased another celebrity supporter Sunday to draw free publicity: actor Leonardo DiCaprio plugged the measure at a Westside event with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

California candidates pursued less glamorous efforts to draw attention Sunday.

Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks, locked in a tight race for lieutenant governor with Democratic state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, extended his weekend RV jaunt around the state.

A day after hitting Stockton, Fresno and Bakersfield, with talk-radio interviews along the way, McClintock took his anti-tax message to Upland, Temecula and San Diego.

Republican attorney general candidate Chuck Poochigian, a state senator from Fresno, joined McClintock in a companion RV on Saturday in the Central Valley, but went his own way Sunday, stopping in Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Westminster’s Little Saigon and Santa Clarita.

Another Republican, insurance commissioner hopeful Steve Poizner, stayed off the campaign trail Sunday amid polls showing him comfortably ahead of Democrat Cruz Bustamante, the lieutenant governor.

“He is actually spending time with his 14-year-old daughter at her softball tournament,” said Poizner spokesman Jennifer Kerns.

On the Democratic side, Garamendi raced to five African American churches in South Los Angeles as he tried to firm up support.

Garamendi and John Chiang, a Democrat in a close race for state controller with former Republican Assemblyman Tony Strickland of Moorpark, zeroed in on their Republican rivals’ opposition to stem cell research over the campaign’s final weekend, using it to portray them as outside the California mainstream.

Strickland, who hopes his fiscally conservative record will outweigh the financial credentials of Chiang, a member of the state Board of Equalization, deployed his own version of star power in the campaign’s final weekend: He featured former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in TV ads calling him “Tony the Tiger.”

But the highest-profile race remained the contest for governor. With polls showing Schwarzenegger holding a double-digit lead, Democrats had trouble gilding the grim prospects for Angelides. Before a Van Nuys campaign rally with Angelides, the party’s candidate for secretary of state, state Sen. Debra Bowen of Marina del Rey, said of the party nominee for governor: “Who knows? He could win.”

In remarks to the crowd, Angelides conceded that he faced a tough race, given the “ton of money” that Schwarzenegger has received from “his corporate buddies all over the country.”

Working families, he said, “know Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Bush won’t lift a finger for them. That’s why they’re counting on us to win this election.”

Schwarzenegger and Shriver wrapped up the campaign day at the Los Angeles Jewish Home for the Aging in Reseda, where the governor professed his affinity for the Jewish people and Israel.

Schwarzenegger boasted of what he considers his success in jump-starting the state’s economy, reforming workers’ compensation and placing public works bonds on Tuesday’s ballot.

“All of those things were done because Democrats and Republicans have worked together in Sacramento, which is much more than we can say about Washington,” Schwarzenegger told more than 100 people seated around folding tables in the center’s community room. “In Washington, not much gets done at all because they are all fighting.... But in Sacramento, we’re all getting along now.”

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michael.finnegan@latimes.com

seema.mehta@latimes.com

Times staff writer Scott Martelle contributed to this report.

For exclusive Web features, including the new Political Muscle blog, go to latimes.com/calpolitics.