A Bolder Bustamante Moves Leftward

In six weeks as a recall candidate, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante has hardened his previous middle-of-the-road affability.

While Bustamante may still joke about being overweight, balding and of only average intelligence, he now embraces subjects he previously treated with studied distance, including his Latino heritage.

“For those people who are still concerned by the fact that I’m Latino, let me answer it this way,” he said at an Oxnard rally last week. “I love my culture; I love everything about it. I love the language. I love the music. I love the food. Look at me, I really love the food.”

Known as a centrist during his career in Sacramento, he has taken aggressively liberal stands as a candidate on immigration and taxes, two subjects that have played prominently in Republicans’ attack on Gov. Gray Davis. He wants to raise taxes, and he thinks the state should do more to accommodate immigrants, even those in the state illegally.

As part of his new boldness, Bustamante has tweaked his party’s leadership and used his middle-class status as justification for stretching campaign finance laws.

Here’s what Bustamante has said on six themes that have evolved in his campaign, taken from speeches, interviews and debates:

Party Loyalty

The transformation from party go-along to Davis’ most threatening challenger follows a wavering course that started nearly four years ago. The fissure began with Davis waffling over the appeal of a court ruling that largely tossed out Proposition 187, the 1994 initiative that would have denied most public services to illegal immigrants.

“He’s a big boy,” Bustamante said at the time. “He can do whatever

As the recall petition gained steam in late spring, Bustamante insisted that the rift was behind them and that he would stand by Davis.

“I will not participate in any way other than to urge voters to reject this expensive perversion of the recall process,” he said in a statement in late June. “I will not attempt to advance my career at the expense of the people I was elected to serve. I do not intend to put my name on that ballot.”

As the state officer required to set the election, Bustamante selected the Oct. 7 date, and two weeks later jumped into the race, characterizing the move as insurance for the party.

“As much as we tried to stop the recall, as much as we tried to slow it down, no matter what we did, it did not seem to be working,” he said at an Aug. 6 news conference at which he announced his candidacy but reasserted his support for Davis.

“I hope he is able to beat the recall,” Bustamante told the New York Times the next day. “And we are going to be fighting to make sure, in fact, we do beat the recall. But if, in fact, he does not win, I believe we need another candidate, a serious Democratic candidate.”

Cracks appeared almost immediately in the “No on Recall, Yes on Bustamante” message.

The lieutenant governor told reporters that Davis needed to show more humility. “Californians are a very forgiving people,” Bustamante said. “What they don’t forgive is arrogance -- arrogance in leadership, arrogance in government, arrogance in people.”

While continuing to assert that recall leaders “have been trying to hijack democracy in California,” he gave ever more hints of his desire to replace Davis.

“Even though there are those who criticize the people who organized the entire recall activity as some right-wing conspiracy, the people who signed those petitions aren’t a part of some right-wing conspiracy,” he told CNN’s Judy Woodruff on Sept. 1, contradicting Davis’ line. “And they basically said two things: ‘We want everything up on the table. And we’re going to try to make an assessment of the governor and all that he represents and everything he’s trying to say.’ ”

By Sept. 7, Bustamante had all but declared a rift when asked why he wasn’t campaigning against the recall: “The governor is fully funding the ‘No on the Recall.’ They’ve got commercials up; they’re moving. I’m focusing on the second part of the question.... I’ve got to be able to make sure and distinguish myself in terms of my ideas and what I do, and so that’s where I’m focused.... How do you expect me to compete if I don’t focus?”

But in Wednesday’s debate, sponsored by the California Broadcasters Assn., a generally reserved Bustamante was most passionate when calling the recall “a terrible idea.”

“I think it’s bad for our state,” he said. “I know people right now who are organizing to recall the next governor if it’s a Republican. I think that’s a bad way of doing politics.”

Campaign Financing

“I’m not a rich man,” Bustamante said Aug. 19 during a KMEX-TV Channel 34 newscast. “I don’t come from a rich family.... There are something like 400,000 Latino-owned businesses in California. If each one gave me $10, just $10, it would be plenty.”

In the absence of such an outpouring, he turned to California’s Indian tribes. They gave about $4 million to an old campaign committee, allowing Bustamante to skirt new contribution limits created by Proposition 34.

Facing heavy criticism for the ploy, he defended his acceptance of special interest money.

“You know, the tribes are, I believe, they are showing the same respect that I showed them during the time when they had nothing,” he said during the Sept. 3 debate in Walnut Creek. “... And now that I’m running, I think that they are showing their friendship by helping me in trying to basically level the playing field.”

He told the Associated Press on Sept. 9: “We will do whatever the rules allow us to do. I have to compete with people who have almost unlimited access to resources.”

In announcing his candidacy Aug. 6, he praised gambling, the source of the tribes’ money, as a boon to the state.

“It’s one of the strongest parts of California’s economy,” he said. “It’s creating tens of thousands of jobs.”

When a judge ruled Monday that the use of the $4 million in tribal money was illegal, he ordered Bustamante to return it to donors. His campaign said it was already spent.

The lieutenant governor said the decision was “a total vindication of Cruz Bustamante.”

Immigrants

A third-generation U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, Bustamante has championed the state’s legal and illegal immigrants.

“Few groups of people are more exploited, intimidated, used and discarded as immigrants,” he said at a Sept. 7 rally. “I will protect their human rights -- unlike Arnold.”

He has spoken of an “essence of humanity” that illegal immigrants possess as much as the native born.

“You know, I know that sometimes people think that their food comes from Safeway or Ralphs, but it really doesn’t,” he said in Wednesday’s debate. “It comes from 70% of the people who pick our food and put it on our table are these immigrants ... who work hard every day. They pay their taxes. They stay out of trouble with the law.... You know, for them not to be able to have a driver’s license or to be able to put their kids in school is just plain wrong.”

The comment joined two issues that have helped to shape Latino politics in California: Proposition 187 and the recent effort to make illegal immigrants eligible for driver’s licenses. Most Republicans in the Legislature opposed the driver’s license bill that Gov. Gray Davis signed this month after twice vetoing similar measures.

Republicans “don’t want our community to drive,” Bustamante told a Spanish-language TV reporter at a Sept. 18 news conference. “Why?” he asked. “They are doing the work that no one else wants to do. They’re paying taxes. They’re working hard, and they’re not breaking the law.... It’s very clear what is happening: The Republicans are against the immigrant.”

When a flap arose over Bustamante’s membership in the student group MEChA, the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan), he refused to disavow its published rhetoric advocating a Chicano state in the U.S. Southwest. Instead, he fell back on his reputation for moderation.

Addressing reporters in Sacramento, he said that the group was in the mainstream at Fresno State when he participated in the mid-1970s and that he joined a coalition slate in a failed run for student body president.

“I think the actuality of what takes place in those organizations is to provide student leadership,” he said.

Although Bustamante has no formal policy on immigration, he has indicated sympathy for legitimizing the status of the state’s illegal residents.

“I think that anybody who works and pays taxes ought to have a right for citizenship,” he said.

Taxes

Alone among the major candidates, Bustamante has proposed tax hikes to resolve the fiscal crisis.

“It is tough love, but the people of the state of California understand what it is to make sacrifices,” he said, announcing his plan in a mid-August news conference. “Everybody has to pay something.... The folks at the top have to pay their fair share. The folks at the bottom have to pay something, and the people being squeezed in the middle need some relief from the car tax and college fees.”

In parsing the plan, Bustamante called for higher property taxes for business, higher income taxes for the wealthy and higher excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol. He never defined the obligations of the “folks at the bottom,” but has implied that they are already pulling their weight. He has cited the statistic -- without identifying a source -- that each immigrant produces $1,400 more in taxes than he or she receives in benefits.

Unlike Republicans, Bustamante doesn’t want to completely scrap the vehicle license fee, which was tripled this summer. He would eliminate the tax for cars selling for less than $20,000. “In a budget with no tax increases, I find it awfully curious that the working families of California take the biggest hit on the car tax,” he said.

As a University of California regent, Bustamante fought tuition increases proposed as an alternative to further tax hikes. He lost, but the debate stirred a signature moment for the self-described “average” student. To a bureaucrat’s assertion that tuition is comparatively low in California, Bustamante retorted: “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

Business

Bustamante’s past civility toward business -- especially agriculture -- has given way to populist blasts at the oil and energy industries, as well as the nation’s largest retail company, which he accused of a new welfare scam.

“You know, when you have a mega-corporation -- the biggest in the history of the world -- like Wal-Mart who are underpaying their people and then as a result give them official documents to go and apply for food stamps and public health care, that’s a burden that taxpayers can’t afford any longer either,” he said during Wednesday’s debate.

In speeches laden with sarcasm, Bustamante has blamed energy companies not only for the blackouts of 2001, but also for the state’s budget shortfall.

“You know, in the state of California, if you walk outside of this building, if you are held up and the person takes your wallet, that person goes to jail,” Bustamante said in the Sept. 17 debate. “If you are able to hold up 34 million people, somehow that is good business.”

Acknowledging that he joined in the vote that deregulated the energy market, Bustamante called the decision a mistake that needs to be reversed. He also has proposed regulating gas prices.

“With gasoline being the absolute lifeblood of most California families ... it is about time that Californians had a say in being able to make sure that they are not being gouged,” he said during an Aug. 28 news conference outside a Sacramento gas station.

His Roots

Bustamante traces his current political character to his rural, working-class background.

“I came from those areas and those fields in the Central Valley,” he said during the Sept. 3 debate. “I’ve picked cotton, and I’ve picked peaches and done the kind of hard labor that has been out there in those fields.”

Addressing union members in San Bernardino on Sept. 1, he advertised that experience as a guide to his performance in office.

“Where you come from oftentimes determines who you are and the kind of politics you’re going to have,” he said. “It determines how you’re going to look at things and how you’re going to deal with things that come across your desk and across your life.”

When he’s in this vein, the affable, self-deprecating Bustamante still comes through.

“I’m an overnight success after 30 years of hard work,” he said in a Sept. 14 interview with the San Jose Mercury News. “Look, I’m a regular guy trying to do an above-average job. There’s nothing fancy about me, nothing flashy.”