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Howard Dean: Schwarzenegger Vote Helps Bush
Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean says California voters would be endorsing the policies of President Bush if they re-elect Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in November.
Dean was helping fellow Democrat Phil Angelides, who is battling Schwarzenegger in the November election, spread one of his central campaign messages.
Surrounded by cheering teachers, nurses, gay-rights activists and firefighters at a labor union hall in San Francisco on Friday, Dean and other elected officials compared Schwarzenegger's record on the environment, deficit spending, immigration reform and corporate influence with the president's.
"There are a lot of similarities between George Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger," said Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. "America needs a new direction and California needs a new direction. And if Phil Angelides is elected, we will have a new direction for California and a new direction for America."
Matt David, a Schwarzenegger campaign spokesman, described the comparison as an attempt to distract voters.
Story Continues Below "Phil Angelides can invite whoever he wants to California to help out his messaging, but it doesn't change the fact that he is running a flailing campaign centered on $18 billion in higher taxes," he said.
Schwarzenegger campaigned for Bush during the 2004 presidential election but often has taken positions contrary to the Bush administration's, most notably on environmental matters and social issues such as embryonic stem cell research.
Dean's visit was one of two developments Friday indicating that trying to link Schwarzenegger with Bush remains a lynchpin of the state treasurer's campaign strategy. A fundraising letter sent on Angelides' behalf by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., struck the same theme.
In his remarks, Angelides relied on boxing imagery to persuade voters not to count him out of the gubernatorial race even though he trails Schwarzenegger in fundraising and public opinion polls.
"I'm a little battered, a little bruised," he said. "I've got a cut above the eye, but I'm a fighter, not a bleeder."
Dean also used the occasion to address the conventional wisdom that Democrats lose national elections when voters believe they are soft on defense.
He said the fact that Osama bin Laden is still on the loose five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack and that both Iran and North Korea have improved their nuclear weapons capability shows the nation is less safe today than when Bush was elected in 2000.
"The problem with Republicans is you not only can't trust them with your money, you can't trust them with defense," Dean said. Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said Democrats such as Dean put the nation at risk by opposing the war in Iraq and the administration's efforts to counter terrorism by collecting intelligence information domestically.
"If Howard Dean and national Democrats had their way, we would be abandoning the central front in the war on terror," he said.
© 2006 Associated Press.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: Inside Cover Stories
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