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Governor goes negative in new ad

TV COMMERCIAL TAKES SWIPE AT ANGELIDES

By Kate Folmar
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau
SACRAMENTO - Potentially foreshadowing a long summer of negative television ads, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign team Friday debuted his first two statewide campaign ads since Democrats nominated Phil Angelides as their candidate for governor.

The first ad is an upbeat spot that begins ``Tomorrow is going to be better than today for Californians.'' It touts the governor's record reducing the state's deficit and cutting what's known as the ``car tax.'' It features clips of seagulls walking on a beach, cars tooling down roads and children running through a field.

The second ad is its flip side. It shows many of the same images running backward, plus one more: Angelides walking backward.

Why ``take California backwards to a time we never want to see again?'' the spot asks. ``That's where Phil Angelides has promised to take our families with $10 billion in new taxes. Or we can keep moving forward.''

The governor's strategists would not say how much of the undisclosed buy was devoted to which ad, and that mix could change. At a news briefing, a Sacramento television reporter volunteered that more than 90 percent of the spending at his station was devoted to the second spot.

``I wouldn't say that we started right out of the chute with a negative ad,'' said Schwarzenegger's chief strategist, Matthew Dowd, who said the spot has a ``high tone.''

On his campaign tour earlier this week, Schwarzenegger said the personal swipes Angelides and opponent Steve Westly took at each other helped drive down voter turnout, but he stoped short of swearing off negative ads.

At the ads' debut, Angelides' senior adviser, Bob Mulholland, was waiting by the elevators near the governor's fifth-floor campaign headquarters as reporters arrived. Schwarzenegger campaign aides escorted journalists out by a different route -- one that did not pass Mulholland. So he hopped on an elevator to the ground floor to meet the news media downstairs.

He would not disclose when Angelides' first ads would debut but he previewed a ``very aggressive Democratic campaign'' that portrays tuition increases under Schwarzenegger as tax increases and that links him to unpopular President Bush.

``I learned in Vietnam that if somebody is shooting at you, you shoot back,'' Mulholland said. ``Schwarzenegger is going to be sweating 24-7 for the next five months.''

Because Schwarzenegger's ad shows the treasurer, albeit in a humorous context, and mentions his name, it qualifies as negative, experts said. It isn't a character attack, but it portrays Angelides' proposals in an dim light.

Schwarzenegger had to ``come out swinging,'' said Democratic strategist Darry Sragow. ``It is a time-proven strategy. When you are an incumbent in trouble, your basic message to voters is, `I may not be great, but the alternative isn't any better.' ''

The ad makes some debatable assertions -- the amount by which Angelides wants to raise taxes and that taxes were ``soaring'' in days of yore.

Angelides has said he would raise taxes by up to $5 billion. He proposes to make corporations and Californians earning over $500,000 pay their ``fair share'' to boost school funding by more than $3 billion and roll back university tuition increases. He also supports a bill that would give health insurance to all uninsured children, which he says the $5 billion would also cover.

The Schwarzenegger ad contends that Angelides seeks to increase taxes twice that, but the governor's aides are including more than $2 billion that would have been raised by voter-rejected Proposition 82. It's included, they said, because Angelides supported it.

The tally also assumes Angelides would raise taxes to make good on his promise to wipe out the state's $3.5 billion deficit. Mulholland countered that fixing the deficit will take time.

One sentence in the ad references a time ``when soaring taxes forced jobs and businesses to flee our state.'' Schwarzenegger's strategists were hard-pressed to explain what those ``soaring taxes'' were, apart from an increase in the vehicle license fee under then-Gov. Gray Davis. That car tax increase was starting to take effect when Schwarzenegger rescinded it. They did reference a perception that California previously had a hostile business climate.

During Davis' tenure, there were tax decreases in the early years -- including reductions in the car tax and a teacher tax credit. Later came increases that did not affect most Californians, apart from the car tax.

Davis proposed tax increases when the dot-com bubble popped, but they weren't enacted.

``Tax revenues soared because income soared, but the tax structure did not change,'' said Brad Williams of the non-partisan Legislative Analyst's Office. ``It wasn't a case of the state imposing higher taxes on individuals or businesses.''

In an earlier recession, then-Gov. Pete Wilson signed a 1991 budget raising tax rates on the wealthy, which were later reduced.

Schwarzenegger has overseen the suspension of tax credits for teachers in 2004 and 2005, saving the state more than $300 million. He has also proposed doing so again in 2006 to conserve an additional $165 million.


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Contact Kate Folmar at kfolmar@mercurynews.com or (916) 441-4602 and read her at the www.mercextra.com/politics blog.
Perhaps without illegal aliens, new taxes wouldn't be necessary!?