Angelides Has Few Options Remaining to Narrow Gap With Schwarzenegger

As fall approaches, Treasurer Phil Angelides seems to have only two accessible paths to reach the governor’s office, both of them steep.

* He must wrap President Bush so tightly around Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in voters’ minds that they “send a message” about the botched war and other Bush blunders by rejecting the governor’s reelection bid. Schwarzenegger, after all, did play a significant role in reelecting Bush.

* Angelides must remind voters of Schwarzenegger’s inconsistencies in rhetoric and behavior since being elected and get people seriously thinking about whether this governor should be trusted again.

Beyond that, Schwarzenegger could stumble badly, embarrassing and disgracing himself. But forget it. That’s every losing candidate’s fantasy and it almost never happens.

Schwarzenegger’s handlers seem to have him well under control. And aides likely won’t be providing any more links on the governor’s public website to his recorded private bull sessions.

Angelides currently is making a major effort to link the front-running governor with the unpopular president.

The Democratic nominee is doing that in practically every third sentence. Touting his education proposals Thursday at an L.A. event, Angelides went on and on about the Republican pair, while acknowledging that Schwarzenegger recently has been running from Bush:

“Arnold Schwarzenegger has treated George Bush like a guy with the bird flu....

“Unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, I’m not going to be a lapdog when it comes to dealing with George Bush.... They’re on the same team....

“People ought to be clear about this race: There is a Democrat, then there is a Bush Republican trying to fake like he’s a Democrat to save his own job.”

Angelides 10 days ago launched a statewide TV ad campaign reminding voters of how Schwarzenegger helped Bush capture Ohio’s decisive 20 electoral votes in 2004. If Bush had failed in Ohio, he would have lost the presidency. A shift of only 1% of Ohio voters to Democrat John Kerry would have reversed the outcome.

Four days before the election, Schwarzenegger appeared with Bush at a campaign rally in Columbus, where the former Mr. Olympia is a fan favorite because of his annual bodybuilding show there. The event was televised all over Ohio, and some footage is shown in the Angelides ad.

You’ve probably seen it by now. Schwarzenegger is standing at the podium, finger pointing in the air, leading the chant: “Reelect George W. Bush.” Behind him is the smirking president. A narrator intones: “130,000 American troops remain in Iraq ... gasoline prices are up ... Arnold Schwarzenegger’s for George W. Bush. Is he for you?”

It’s the best Angelides ad of his campaign -- and one of the best for any candidate this year.

Before it ran statewide -- at a cost of roughly $2 million per week -- the spot was tested in the Monterey media market.

There, ad rates are relatively cheap. Angelides spent $185,000 on a two-week penetrating buy last month, according to his strategist and ad maker, Bill Carrick. But first the campaign polled voters and found that the Democrat was trailing by 10 points. After the ad run, another poll was taken and Angelides had pulled even, Carrick says.

The spot also was run on cable TV in Sacramento, San Francisco and L.A. “to create some buzz and hopefully stimulate fundraising,” the strategist adds. But this was a very small buy of only $125,000.

Angelides’ poll jump in the Monterey market is logical considering the territory: The three counties of Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito all went for Kerry -- the first two by landslide margins.

Statewide, Bush lost to Kerry by 10 points. Since then, the president has become even more unpopular. So it makes sense that the ad could hurt Schwarzenegger in the big anti-Bush regions of Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Besides trying to stir up anger at Schwarzenegger for bailing out Bush and prodding voters into sending the president a message, Angelides’ strategy is to emphasize that he’s the real Democrat and the governor -- centrist or not -- is a Republican.

To win, Angelides will need at least 80% of the Democratic vote, Carrick calculates. But in an August poll by the Public Policy Institute of California, the candidate was drawing only 58%. Carrick insists that’s not unusual at this stage of a race.

Virtually everyone I’ve talked to outside the Angelides camp agrees that tying Schwarzenegger to Bush is Angelides’ best shot. But nobody thinks it’s much of a shot.

If it were a U.S. Senate race, the Bush-Schwarzenegger connection would be a ripe target. But a state governor -- especially a celebrity California governor -- is usually out of range from presidential ricochet.

Also, skeptics point out, Schwarzenegger and Bush disagree on many things: global warming, stem cell research, offshore oil drilling, abortion....

Plus, notes political analyst Tony Quinn, “Schwarzenegger has been poaching a lot in the Angelides fishing pond” -- preempting the Democrat’s issues on public works investment, the minimum wage, school funding, the environment....

But this opens up another narrow path for Angelides. He can ask: Which governor would voters be reelecting?

Schwarzenegger’s political cleverness in morphing back into a civil, conciliatory centrist, from a strident “starve-the-government-beast” conservative raises a question about his true convictions and commitment. Can he be trusted?

This was the guy, after all, who was going to sweep all the special interests out of the Capitol and wound up hitting them up for record amounts of political money.

Stay tuned for those TV spots.

Angelides does have two routes to the top: The Bushwhack way and the trust trail. He probably needs to climb both. And they look very precipitous.

*

George Skelton writes Mondays and Thursdays. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.