Politics

Davis Leads Calif. Cash Dash

August 30, 2003 / 12:52 PM EDT / CBS/AP

Embattled California Gov. Gray Davis is winning at least one race — the chase for campaign cash ahead of the Golden State's Oct. 7 recall election, according to campaign finance records.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is close behind, and facing questions over whether he is backing away from a promise to finance his own run, and taking money from firms that might do business with the state he leads.

Meanwhile, both leading recall replacement candidates fended off criticism for ties to controversial groups.

Schwarzenegger was called on by the League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation's oldest Hispanic civil rights group, to resign from the advisory board of U.S. English, which seeks to make English the official language of the United States. The Austrian-born actor refused.

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the state's Democratic lieutenant governor, shrugged off criticism of his affiliation in the 1970s with Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or MeCHA, a Chicano student activist group.

Critics claim the group holds extreme separatist positions, including the belief that much of the Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico.

In other developments:

Bustamante devoted much of his energy Thursday reminding voters they will be paying the highest gasoline prices over the Labor Day weekend. He accused the oil companies of price gouging and vowed to bring the industry under state regulatory control.

Former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth, a Republican, says if elected he would convene a special legislative session to approve spending caps.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it would hear a challenge Sept. 11 by the American Civil Liberties Union to review an ACLU lawsuit alleging that punch-card voting machines used in at least six counties won't accurately tally votes.

State Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres said the organization would vote Sept. 13 whether to endorse a replacement candidate, a change from its strategy of only opposing the recall.

Schwarzenegger won the endorsement of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the group that led the 1978 fight for anti-property-tax Proposition 13.

Several of the nation's most powerful interest groups say that despite high stakes they plan to stay out of California's recall, citing the high cost of campaigning there, the chaos of the race or simply a policy of skipping state elections.

Stumping for votes among the state's American Indians, Davis offered tribes a hand in picking the members of the state commission that oversees tribal gambling, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The records released Thursday show Davis has raised $4.2 million in two separate committees — the new Californians Against the Costly Recall and the long-standing Gov. Gray Davis Committee. He has spent about $1 million.

Bustamante, a Democrat like Davis, raised $333,000 with his official committee, Yes on Bustamante, and spent $135,000. But his recall committee, Californians for Stability, raised $30,000 during the filing period and has raked in more since then, including $100,000 from the powerful public employee union AFSCME.

Californians for Schwarzenegger, the Republican actor's official committee, raised $3.1 million — $2 million from the candidate himself. A separate committee, Total Recall, permitted to solicit unlimited sums, raised $100,000. The actor has spent about $2.6 million total.

Fundraising is something Schwarzenegger implied he wouldn't do, reports CBS News Correspondent Jerry Bowen. "I don't need to take any money from anybody," he said on August 6, when he announced his candidacy. "I have plenty of money myself."

On Thursday, Schwarzenegger defended himself on the radio talk show circuit, where he's doing most of his campaigning by telephone.

"It is wrong to take money for instance from a union when you have to negotiate with that union," he said on the radio.

But his donors are some of California's biggest special interests: Irvine Company, a developer; Emulex, which lobbies on corporate tax regulations; and Castle and Cooke, which backs corporate tax reform:

"I don't promise anyone anything. There are no strings attached to anyone," Schwarzenegger said.

"It looks like he's defining special interests as anyone who supports one of his opponents," says Larry Noble of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan Washington-based group that tracks campaign spending.

Schwarzenegger was stumping Thursday in Hispanic-heavy Central Valley, Bustamante's home territory, when the league challenged him to step down from U.S. English.

"So many of us support bilingualism and bilingual education and maintaining our culture and he's essentially saying it's not valid by being part of this board that has got this whole anti-immigrant, underlying racist mentality," said the league's Gabriela Lemus.

The league said it is not taking a position on whether Gov. Gray Davis should be recalled and will not endorse a replacement candidate.

Said Schwarzenegger spokesman Sean Walsh: "Arnold Schwarzenegger came to this country with a few dollars in his pocket and not speaking the English language, and he realized the importance of learning to speak English as quickly as possible to achieve your American dreams."

Schwarzenegger is just one of many prominent people on the group's advisory board, according to its Web site. Others include golfer Arnold Palmer, television personality Alex Trebek and actor Charlton Heston.

Bustamante, who leads Schwarzenegger in the latest polls, compared today's members of MeCHA to those when he was a student at California State University, Fresno.

"The students who are MeCHA today are just like the students when I was there," Bustamante said. "Pretty much they are trying to get an education. Most of the friends I went to school with are now either graduates from college or raising families."