Public employees supporting Democratic gubernatorial challenger Phil Angelides sought Monday to hang last year's special election around Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's neck, saying the Republican incumbent still thinks his failed initiatives contained "good ideas."
Representatives of firefighter, police, nurse and teachers unions gathered outside a hotel where Schwarzenegger was about to give a speech to hold the governor to answer for his comments in Saturday night's debate, when he said "there were good ideas there" in the special election. Voters, however, rebuffed the Schwarzenegger-backed plans on spending control, "paycheck protection," teacher tenure and legislative redistricting.
"We are here to tell you that your ideas were not good," said Bobby Weist, president of the Davis Firefighters Local 3494. "Your attempts to silence the voices of working families and your attacks on the public safety officers, teachers and nurses who serve our communities were not a good idea."
Schwarzenegger campaign spokeswoman Julie Soderlund said that the remarks during the debate and afterward did not take away from his often-repeated comments that the special election, overall, was a mistake.
"The message was delivered and it was received that the people of California wanted him to come back to Sacramento, working in a bipartisan way with legislators, and that's what he's done this year," Soderlund said.
The Schwarzenegger campaign, meanwhile, released two new ads Monday, one extolling his economic record and promising that he "will keep moving California forward." The other takes on Angelides, the state treasurer, for his positions on universal health care and the fact that he was cited for destroying wetlands by the Environmental Protection Agency during his previous career as a developer.
The Angelides campaign also is set to go on the air today with a statewide TV ad that strategist Bill Carrick said is designed to introduce voters to Angelides "so they have a better understanding of him."
Angelides, campaigning in Modesto, asserted Schwarzenegger "lied to the people of California" on education spending, and also lied when he said "he didn't want to cut the pensions of teachers, firefighters and police."
Schwarzenegger campaign spokeswoman Katie Levinson said of the treasurer's statement, "Desperate times call for desperate measures for the Angelides campaign."
At the DoubleTree Hotel near Arden Fair mall, where Schwarzenegger was about to address a gathering of hundreds of school counselors, the unions blasted the governor for his "good ideas" comment at the debate.
Asked to recount any mistakes he made that he might regret, Schwarzenegger said Saturday that on "all the various different reforms that we had in mind last year," the blunder came when he "went too fast."
"I pushed too fast," the governor said. "There were good ideas there, but I did not bring all the legislators on board. I didn't bring people together enough, and therefore the thing failed. But I learned my lesson from that."
At a news conference after the debate, Schwarzenegger said he still thinks "it was a terrific idea" to overhaul the state's budget and redistricting systems, as generally laid out in Propositions 76 and 77, which he pushed. He did not mention the details of Proposition 75, the measure that would have required public employee unions to obtain the annual written consent of individual workers before spending their dues money on politics, or Proposition 74, which would have extended tenure terms on schoolteachers.
"Some of the other things were not perfectly worked out," Schwarzenegger said at the news conference. "And I think the message became very clear from the people. They sent the message, 'We didn't like the initiatives, you rushed it, go to the legislators and work it out with the legislators.' "
The Proposition 76 spending control initiative included a provision giving the governor authority to enact midyear budget cuts. Soderlund said Monday that while the governor still favors the idea of having the power to cut budgets in the middle of the year during fiscal emergencies, he would not use the authority to slice into the state's Proposition 98 education funding guarantees.
She said he would include teachers "in any effort to improve California's education system," including enacting policy changes that challenge their tenure protections. As for the union dues measure on last year's special election ballot, which Schwarzenegger supported but did not author, Soderlund would say only that the governor "supports comprehensive campaign finance reform."
Angelides' campaign organized the public employee unions' news conference outside the hotel.
"That was one of the most revealing moments of the debate," said Angelides campaign spokesman Brian Brokaw, "when Schwarzenegger said that his special election ideas ... were good ideas."
The union leaders expressed major anxiety over what they fear Schwarzenegger will do to their pensions if he beats Angelides.
Last year, the governor proposed an initiative that would have installed a 401(k)-type program for new public employees. He discarded it, however, after Attorney General Bill Lockyer adopted ballot language saying the Schwarzenegger plan would eliminate death benefits for the spouses of public safety workers killed in the line of duty.
"He thinks that taking retirement benefits away from firefighters, teachers and police officers is a good idea," Weist said. "He thinks that taking away benefits from widows and orphans from fallen firefighters and police officers is a good idea. I'm here to tell you those aren't good ideas, and that I think that if he is re-elected, that I know he's going to be coming after the pensions of firefighters, teachers and police officers."
Schwarzenegger pledged during the debate, in response to a question from Angelides, that "I will never take away the pension or the disability or the death benefit from anyone -- the firefighters, the police officers or anyone else as far as that goes. So you can stop that hype right there."
