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By
Michael Finnegan
Los Angeles Times
January 22, 2006
OAKLAND — Settled in the back of a black sedan, state
Treasurer Phil Angelides jumped at the chance to take a call
from Lou Paulson, president of the California Professional
Firefighters union.
Paulson told Angelides that the firefighters, a nemesis of
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, would back him for governor.
Angelides said he was so thrilled — "honored beyond
belief" — that he had goose bumps. "I'd love to be
able to announce this publicly with you," he said.
"Can we do something tomorrow morning?" He grinned
and thanked Paulson. "Bye-bye, buddy."
With that, Angelides closed the flip-phone and raced across
the fog-shrouded hills near Oakland to his next campaign stop.
Just over four months before the Democratic primary for
governor, Angelides has commandeered the party establishment.
He has lined up support from more than three dozen unions,
200-plus elected officials and hundreds of other party
insiders. In most years, that would seal his victory.
But with state Controller Steve Westly ready to spend more
than $20 million of his personal fortune battling Angelides
for the nomination to challenge Schwarzenegger, the value of
that broad support base is less sure than it once was.
Westly's money — and the sheer volume of advertising it will
buy — threatens to offset Angelides' institutional edge,
said Eric Smith, a UC Santa Barbara political science
professor.
"That money is a wild card in here," he said.
Further heightening the uncertainty for Angelides is the
nature of Westly's approach: Early jabs suggest a tough brawl
in the making. The Democratic rivals barely differ on issues,
so the race is likely to hinge on personality and biography.
That poses a crucial question for Angelides: How well can he
withstand that sort of race?
So far, his main selling point has been the high-risk gamble
he took two years ago in standing up to Schwarzenegger at the
peak of the Republican governor's popularity, when no other
major Democrat — including Westly — was willing to defy
him.
"I am proud that I earned the label of the
anti-Arnold," Angelides told a roomful of rank-and-file
Democrats one recent morning in Van Nuys. "It is a badge
I wear with honor."
While he markets himself as a man who sticks to core beliefs
regardless of political cost, the Westly campaign counters
with an alternate version of Angelides: an arrogant and
entrenched Sacramento politician with a shady past as a
developer.
"He can, and often does, come off as an insufferable
know-it-all," said Garry South, a senior Westly
strategist who argues that Angelides will not wear well with
voters after they get to know him.
"You can try to lemon-freshen someone's basic personality
in a campaign, and you might be able to file off a few of the
rough edges, but ultimately the truth will out," South
said. "Voters get a gut sense of who you are and whether
they like you or not."
In a top-of-the-ticket race, likability can be important, as
Schwarzenegger's recall election showed. Those who know
Angelides well say he's smart, works hard and has a sense of
humor, despite his reputation as a wonk.
But he also tends to focus on minute tasks better left to
those who work for him, they say. Never seen as lacking
self-confidence, he often wedges his Harvard education into
conversation, a habit known to Ivy Leaguers as dropping the
"H-bomb."
"Do you know Cornel West?" Angelides asked on the
ride to an Oakland school that he once visited with the
renowned Princeton University scholar. "He and I both
grew up in Sacramento. We didn't know each other as kids
there, but we were the only two kids from Sacramento who went
to Harvard, class of '74."
At public events, Angelides makes a point of showing his
lighter side. In Van Nuys, he joked about the recent
motorcycle wreck that left Schwarzenegger with a stitched lip.
The crowd burst into guffaws when Angelides said he had ridden
to Van Nuys on his "hog" with his daughter, Megan,
in the sidecar.
"No accidents," he said. "And I want to be
clear: I'm fully trained and licensed as a driver."
The thin and bookish treasurer — many say he looks like a
nerd, even if he has shed the image a bit with frameless
glasses and a swept-back hairstyle — plays up contrasts with
Schwarzenegger.
"If you have any doubts about how different we are, I
suggest you just look at my body," Angelides, 52, an avid
tennis player, tells crowds in his stump speech. "Mine is
natural. It is God-given. There are no steroids."
Of more consequence, he takes on Schwarzenegger for student
fee increases at public colleges and universities, and for
billions of dollars in new state debt that postpones
California's reckoning with its chronic budget shortfalls.
Angelides calls himself a champion of "progressive
values." As state treasurer, he has pushed public pension
funds to dump tobacco stocks, invest in urban renewal projects
and pressure corporations into cleaning up the environment. A
close ally of labor, he also supports abortion rights, gay
marriage, gun control and driver's licenses for illegal
immigrants.
If he makes it into a general-election race, his call for
increasing taxes could pose problems; Schwarzenegger has been
steadfast in opposing higher taxes.
"Instead of asking students to give up their dreams, we
ought to be asking some of the wealthiest people to pay a
little more," Angelides told students in the Oakland
school library.
Though siding with liberals, Angelides in other ways has stuck
to the political center. A death penalty supporter, he opposes
a moratorium on capital punishment. He also has declined to
criticize Schwarzenegger for denying clemency to death row
inmates. And despite his call for massive new infrastructure
spending, he advocates fiscal restraint.
"Instead of borrowing billions and billions and billions
of dollars — and loading the debt on our kids — I promise
you I'm going to do what Bill Clinton did when he got to
Washington: I'm going to balance the budget," he told the
Democrats in Van Nuys.
Angelides grew up in the same Sacramento neighborhood — Land
Park — where he and his wife, Julie, have raised their three
daughters, who are 18, 21 and 27 years old.
Now a multimillionaire, Angelides grew up in a middle-class
household. His father, the son of Greek immigrants, designed
heating and cooling systems for the state. His mother, a
homemaker of Greek origin, emigrated from Egypt.
From ninth to 12th grade, Angelides attended boarding school
in Ojai, then went to Harvard, where he majored in government.
On a break from college, he ran for City Council in
Sacramento. All of 19, he lost. After he earned his bachelor's
degree, he returned to Sacramento and got a job with a housing
agency in Gov. Jerry Brown's administration, then served as an
aide in the Legislature.
Angelides also became an aggressive campaign fundraiser. What
started small — he and his wife once threw a Velveeta cheese
party that raised $10,000 for a Sacramento council candidate
— grew into a major sideline. He collected more than $2
million for Michael Dukakis' presidential campaign in 1988.
His success at raising money helped propel him into the job of
state Democratic chairman in 1991. As party leader, he
presided over a major resurgence, culminating in the 1992
elections of Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein.
At the same time, his real estate business flourished, thanks
largely to his patron and investment partner, Angelo
Tsakapoulos, a major developer of suburban tract housing
around Sacramento.
Their projects also provided fodder for Angelides' eventual
political rivals.
Matt Fong, the Republican who defeated him in the 1994
treasurer's race, alleged in one ad that Angelides was sued
for fraud and failure to pay his bills. The spot also linked
Angelides to a $100,000 fine for dumping sludge into Lake
Tahoe.
An Angelides spokesman dismissed the ad as a collection of
"false and misleading accusations," but Westly's
campaign has signaled that it plans to mount similar attacks.
In his two winning campaigns for treasurer, Angelides stressed
his business background. This time, he has stuck largely to
broader issues, especially education. His demeanor also has
changed.
Before the Schwarzenegger era, Angelides typically came off as
"measured and subdued," but lately he has turned
into a fiery "pound the table" type, said Bruce
Cain, a political scientist who directs the University of
California Washington Center.
"He seems to have had a bit of a makeover," Cain
said. Like 2004 presidential contender Howard Dean, he added,
Angelides "seems to have captured a lot of the anger that
Democratic loyalists have about the Republican Party."
Angelides is counting on that to carry him to the party
nomination and beyond.
"I'm not going to run as a pale version of what the
Republicans have brought to this state and this country,"
he told the crowd in Van Nuys. "I'm going to run as a
Democrat standing proudly for our values."
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