Looking past Angelides

Lacking a strong contender for governor, Democrats in California are relying on a jumbled patchwork of other forces to rouse the party’s voters to cast ballots Tuesday and keep Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger from sweeping Republicans to victory in other races.

Democrats’ hopes are riding partly on the popularity of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is up for reelection, and former President Clinton, the star of television ads for Proposition 87, an oil-tax measure for alternative energy.

Democrats also are depending on a loosely tied alliance of niche campaigns to compensate for the weakness of state Treasurer Phil Angelides, the party’s nominee for governor.

In the Bay Area, a Democratic bastion where Schwarzenegger has made surprising inroads, abortion-rights groups are trying to draw women to the polls by warning of what they say are the dangers of Proposition 85, a parental notification measure.

In Fresno, San Jose and other cities, unions are using mail and radio ads in Spanish to inspire new Latino voters to cast ballots by portraying Schwarzenegger and other Republicans as anti-immigrant.

The wide mix of such efforts to motivate core Democratic constituencies offers scant hope for Angelides, who was running 16 points behind Schwarzenegger in a Field Poll last week. But it is crucial in tightly contested races for lieutenant governor, controller and secretary of state, strategists say.

Democrats in all of those races campaigned Saturday in Los Angeles with Angelides, who sought to capitalize on public anger at President Bush.

“We know in our hearts, George Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger are doing the wrong things by America and California,” Angelides told hundreds of cheering supporters at a labor rally downtown.

Sticking to front-runner custom, Schwarzenegger ignored his challenger as he campaigned Saturday in the northern Central Valley, Bay Area and Riverside, calling attention instead to $37 billion in public works bonds on the ballot.

“I’m not campaigning for myself, as you can see,” he said in Pleasanton, an upscale suburb midway between Oakland and San Jose. “I’m campaigning for the propositions, for infrastructure bonds. To me, that is extremely important.”

For Democrats, who have dominated the state in recent years with the notable exception of Schwarzenegger, the dearth of enthusiasm for Angelides has heightened the importance of the national election climate.

They are counting on the anti-Bush mood to drive supporters to the polls as part of a national wave against Republicans in the midterm elections -- even if the state’s political map, drawn to protect incumbents, denies most Californians any say in which party controls Congress.

“There’s a certain amount of emotion in all this,” said Democratic strategist Darry Sragow. “It’s Democratic voters making their voices heard.”

With the election two days away, Democrats must counter not just Schwarzenegger’s yearlong rise in popularity, but also what his advisors describe as a high-tech get-out-the-vote machine more ambitious than anything the Republican Party has tried before in California.

Similar boasting has proved hollow in past elections, leaving Democrats skeptical of the threat.

Still, Schwarzenegger, who visited party phone banks at each stop Saturday, is fueling the operation with appeals on illegal immigration, the No. 1 issue for voters, particularly Republicans.

In a phone message left by the party on voters’ answering machines, Schwarzenegger reminds them that he “agreed to put our National Guard troops on the border” with Mexico. “Now my opponent wants to take those troops off the border,” he said.

Schwarzenegger’s reelection campaign has left voters another phone message from San Diego County Sheriff William B. Kolender, in which the lawman hammers Angelides for supporting driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. “When it comes to illegal immigration, we just can’t afford Phil Angelides,” Kolender says in the message.

On the Democratic side, unions have made illegal immigration a prime focus of their own efforts to goad supporters to the polls.

In Fresno, Los Angeles, Orange and Santa Clara counties, labor is prodding Latino immigrants to vote by spotlighting some of the immigration stands taken by Schwarzenegger and two other Republicans: state controller candidate Tony Strickland and lieutenant governor hopeful Tom McClintock.

In Spanish-language radio ads, mail, phone calls and home visits, the group running the effort -- Strengthening Our Lives Through Education, Community Action and Civic Participation -- mentions the Republicans’ support for the Minutemen citizen border patrol and Proposition 187, the 1994 initiative to cut public services for illegal immigrants. “Our goal is to turn unlikely voters into likely voters,” said Javier Gonzalez, the group’s executive director.

Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said the approach taps the “enormous anger and resentment toward the governor” among some Latinos, encouraging higher turnout regardless of Angelides’ prospects.

“Getting rid of Arnold is enormous motivation within the labor movement and within the Latino community,” she said.

If other Democrats on the statewide ballot suffer any drag from Angelides, Strickland, a former Moorpark assemblyman, and McClintock, a Thousand Oaks state senator, are among the Republicans best placed to reap the benefits.

The Field survey of likely voters found John Chiang, a Democrat on the state Board of Equalization, holding a narrow lead over Strickland in the controller’s race, 38% to 31%, and Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi in a statistical tie with McClintock in the contest for lieutenant governor, 44% to 43%.

Also tight was the secretary of state’s race, with state Sen. Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey) ahead of Republican incumbent Bruce McPherson, 40% to 34%.

Apart from Angelides, the only statewide Democrat facing deep trouble is Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a candidate for insurance commissioner. The Field Poll found high-tech businessman Steve Poizner, a Republican, was leading Bustamante 46% to 37%.

In other statewide contests, Democrats are heavily favored over Republicans: Feinstein for U.S. Senate over former state Sen. Richard Mountjoy of Monrovia, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown for attorney general over state Sen. Chuck Poochigian of Fresno and Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer for state treasurer over Board of Equalization member Claude Parrish.

In the campaign’s final stretch, the tight races for controller and lieutenant governor have drawn a surge of money. In the battle for controller -- a job with broad power over tax policy -- unions and some Indian tribes have spent $2.9 million on Chiang’s behalf. Other Indian tribes, along with tax software giant Intuit, have put $2 million behind Strickland.

In the lieutenant governor’s race, labor’s concern that McClintock might win a platform to advance his conservative agenda has led to more than $2 million in union spending to boost Garamendi.

McClintock has drawn $132,000 in independent spending by supporters.

At the labor rally Saturday, Garamendi told the union crowd that Democrats could win Tuesday “with shoe leather, with telephone calls, with community outreach.”

Angelides’ constraints -- lackluster fundraising and a tangle of legal restrictions on campaign money -- made it necessary for a network of “boutique” get-out-the-vote operations to fill the vacuum, said Steve Smith, a Democratic strategist who works closely with unions.

One of them is a mail, phone and home-visit program targeting African Americans around the Bay Area and South Los Angeles.

Another is the San Jose mayoral campaign of Democrat Cindy Chavez, which has spawned a labor push for Latino turnout in the heart of the Silicon Valley, including automated phone messages from Clinton and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Democrats also hope that a handful of competitive congressional and legislative races will help party turnout in scattered pockets of California.

State party Chairman Art Torres said he expects early East Coast election returns to produce news of a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives before polls close in California. And that, he said, “will depress Republican turnout.”

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

Times staff writers Scott Martelle, Seema Mehta and Dan Morain contributed to this report.

For exclusive Web features, including the Political Muscle blog, go to latimes.com/californiapolitics.