Campaign Finance Laws Vex Gov., Foes

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, seeking to turn around his campaign, was tripped up by a campaign finance law Thursday, while his better-funded foes cut back public protests against him to focus on wooing early voters.

Attorneys for Democratic legislative leaders planned to appear in court today to press a suit against the Republican governor and a committee overseeing the campaign for one of his main initiatives, Proposition 77. The measure would authorize judges, rather than legislators, to draw boundaries for congressional and legislative districts.

In the suit, the Democrats are seeking to force the Yes on 77 committee to disgorge $1.14 million and return it to Schwarzenegger.

State law bars a candidate or officeholder from transferring more than $5,600 to another statewide candidate or officeholder. Schwarzenegger had given the $1.14 million to the Yes on 77 committee, which is controlled by Steve Poizner, a wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Schwarzenegger ally who is running for California insurance commissioner.

The suit comes a day after the committee gave back $1.75 million that Schwarzenegger had also donated to its effort.

Republican attorneys invoked the same law in a suit last week against Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles). The suit alleged that Nunez had violated the law; he then gave about $100,000 back to fellow Assembly Democrats.

“You could go with a lot of words” to describe the governor’s mistake, said Lance Olson, the Democrats’ attorney who plans to appear in court today. “I would go with ‘irony.’ ”

Attorney Tom Hiltachk, representing Schwarzenegger, shrugged off the matter, saying in a statement that the “money will now be used to support the governor’s entire reform agenda, including Proposition 77.”

With less than five weeks left before the Nov. 8 special election, both sides set their sights on voters who plan to cast early ballots. Early voting begins in some cities in the next few weeks.

The Republican Party has a big absentee ballot campaign in the works. Strategists for the opposition to Schwarzenegger said they would focus on making sure that their own supporters who wanted absentee ballots got them, as well as on walking precincts and manning phone banks to encourage people to vote.

“We’ve always run a very aggressive volunteer campaign ... and we’ll continue that until election day,” said Gale Kaufman, lead consultant for an umbrella group of public employee unions called the Alliance for a Better California.

Kaufman declined to comment on campaign strategy. But two other campaign sources confirmed that the protests that have dogged Schwarzenegger at his events for months would be reduced and confined to his fundraisers. The protests were too time-consuming, said the sources, who would not agree to be quoted about their plans.

“This is great: When I arrived here today, there are no protesters,” Schwarzenegger said Thursday at a stop in San Francisco, where he urged the League of California Cities to embrace Proposition 76, the measure that would cap state spending. “They always think they are going to intimidate me, that the protests are going to change my mind. Little do they know, those protests are nothing compared to the night I told the Kennedys I was marrying Maria.”

Both sides, meanwhile, continued raising large sums and spending heavily on television advertising. Schwarzenegger has raised nearly $35 million this year for the initiatives he is promoting. That’s half of the $70 million-plus raised by organized labor to oppose them.

The national office of the AFL-CIO donated $400,000 to help fight Proposition 75, which is among the measures backed by Schwarzenegger. It would restrict public employee unions’ ability to raise money for political campaigns by requiring members’ annual permission to use their dues for that purpose.

The California Teachers Assn. is by far the richest opponent of Proposition 75 and other initiatives pushed by the governor. In a declaration filed as part of a lawsuit in San Jose earlier this week, the 330,000-member public school teachers union said it had spent or committed roughly $55 million to battle the initiatives.

The declaration was filed in opposition to a suit by union foes who sought to block the teachers association from raising money from members to oppose Proposition 75. Attorneys for the union prevailed in an initial hearing Wednesday.

In an indication that the spending has stretched the union, it said in the declaration that it was seeking to double its $20-million line of credit to $40 million.

“We need the line of credit to be available for operating expense -- payroll, facilities maintenance and usual business operations,” said Beverly Tucker, the union’s chief counsel.

Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, raised $5.45 million in a 10-day period ending earlier this week -- or $545,000 a day -- at the same time he was signing and vetoing scores of bills passed in the final days of the legislative session.

In recent days, ChevronTexaco and William A. Robinson, the retired founder of the airfreight carrier DHL, each gave $250,000 to Schwarzenegger. Robinson has given $2.66 million to the governor’s campaigns and causes this year.

A. Jerrold Perenchio, chairman of Univision, the Spanish-language television network, gave $1.5 million this week to Schwarzenegger’s initiative fund. That pushes his donations to the governor and his causes to $3.25 million this year.

The governor’s campaign is spending more than $2.4 million a week on television ads airing mostly in the Central Valley and Southern California markets. He has limited his television advertising to cable in the Bay Area, where his campaign aides say support for his measures is weakest, and is not advertising on the more costly network affiliates.

Most public opinion surveys show the governor’s measures trailing. They include Proposition 74, which would make it more difficult for teachers to obtain tenure; Proposition 75, the union dues measure; Proposition 76, the spending cap; and Proposition 77, the redistricting measure.

But the governor’s aides said they remained optimistic. Campaign aide Don Sipple said, “We think we’re in the hunt.”