Gov.’s Ads Will Pick Up Where Westly’s Left Off

Only days after an onslaught of negative TV ads ended in the Democratic primary, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger launched his own critical ads Friday saying his opponent Phil Angelides wanted $10 billion in new taxes that would “take California backward.”

The Schwarzenegger advertising blitz, scheduled to run statewide in Spanish and English, is designed to dampen any enthusiasm for Angelides after he won the Democratic nomination this week.

The Republican governor was virtually silent during the primary as Angelides and opponent Steve Westly tore into each other. Polls showed the negative tone of the campaign turned off voters, damaging their perception of Angelides and leading to one of the lowest turnouts for any California election.

Schwarzenegger also unveiled a positive ad promoting himself as forward-looking. But several TV stations said most viewers would see an ad with Angelides walking backward and a voice-over warning against returning to an era “when soaring taxes forced jobs and businesses to flee our state.”

As the ad demonstrates, taxes are expected to be a key issue in the campaign. But the wording of the ad raised questions because under Gov. Gray Davis, whom Schwarzenegger unseated three years ago, some specific business taxes taxes decreased and the income tax rate did not go up. In his final months in office, Davis raised the state’s car registration fees. But Schwarzenegger immediately repealed that increase upon taking office, so it had a nominal effect on the economy.

Steve Schmidt, Schwarzenegger’s campaign manager, defended the statement that “soaring taxes” forced companies to leave the state before the GOP governor won the recall. He cited Schwarzenegger’s overhaul of the state workers’ compensation system, which has reduced insurance rates by about half, as evidence that the governor improved the business climate.

Schmidt said Angelides’ desire to raise taxes would be a centerpiece of the Schwarzenegger campaign. “I’m not sure who will talk more about his tax increase, Phil Angelides or us,” he said.

In response, Angelides pollster and political advisor Paul Maslin said Angelides wanted to tax “the wealthiest of the wealthiest” and “close corporate tax loopholes,” restoring the tax rates under two former Republican governors: Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson.

“Arnold Schwarzenegger won’t ask any of those people to pay any more, and that’s a pretty interesting distinction,” he said. “Whose side is he really on?”

The Schwarzenegger campaign lists more than $10 billion in government programs Angelides has promoted on the campaign trail: erasing the budget shortfall, increasing school and preschool spending, and expanding healthcare coverage and college fee assistance. They would have to be financed by tax increases, the governor’s campaign said, echoing an argument made during the primary campaign by Democrat Westly.

But Angelides said Friday the real tax increase figure is about $5 billion.

Expanding college grants and healthcare for children would cost $815 million a year, and “fully funding schools” while closing the state budget shortfall would cost $3.5 billion, his campaign said.

“We never said it. It’s completely false,” Angelides advisor Bob Mulholland said about the $10-billion figure, which the campaign also disputed when Westly raised it.

The Schwarzenegger ads are set to run on cable and network TV in 11 areas, including such small markets as Palm Springs and Eureka.

Maslin declined to say when the Angelides campaign would resume its own TV advertising, which stopped Tuesday.

The launch of Schwarzenegger’s ad campaign came as both sides began outlining the contours of their efforts leading up to the November election.

Schwarzenegger plans to highlight several traditionally Democratic issues to bolster his appeal to moderate voters. In campaign appearances this week, he cited the environment and healthcare.

Angelides took up healthcare himself Friday in East Los Angeles at a health clinic with Latino children and their parents. Angelides promised he would sign legislation that would expand health insurance for 800,000 children of families that can’t afford their own.

He said the governor had broken promises to give schools more money, to expand access to healthcare for children and to balance the state’s budget.

“The only promise he has kept is to protect the multimillionaires and corporations from giving up any of the big tax breaks that he and George Bush have given them,” Angelides said.

Schwarzenegger promised during the recall to provide healthcare coverage for all uninsured children but has not accomplished that goal. Matt David, a campaign spokesman, said the governor has helped raise enrollment in the state’s Healthy Families program to more than 90% of those eligible, and labeled Angelides’ efforts as “his typical negative attitude and pessimistic rhetoric.”

Maslin, Angelides’ strategist, said Schwarzenegger had yet to move the state forward as his ad declared.

“Give me a real live, solid accomplishment that this guy has made in the last three years now,” he said. “A whole lot of people are coming up blank.”