Angelides, Westly Go Negative in Debate

Phil Angelides and Steve Westly turned a gubernatorial debate on environmental issues into a mudfest Wednesday night, as the two Democrats splattered each other with accusations over taxes, credibility and their records as millionaire businessmen.

Their stands on environmental matters were nearly identical: Both vowed to fight global warming, offshore oil drilling and nuclear power. Both pledged to take on the Bush administration at every turn.

At times, the two men vying to replace Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger used similar language to make identical points. In his opening statement, Angelides said he wanted to make California “a model of environmental action for the world to see.” Seconds later, in his opening statement, Westly said he wanted California “to set the standard again for environmentalism throughout the world.”

But it didn’t take long -- only about six minutes into the roughly 50-minute session -- for the two rivals to begin tearing into one another. Once the hostilities began, they never let up.

Angelides, the state treasurer, cast Westly as a latecomer to environmental battles who made money in oil stocks.

“Steve, if you’re so interested in cleaning up California, start by cleaning up your own investment portfolio,” he said at one point.

And Westly, the state controller, described Angelides as a developer whose suburban tract-home projects had ravaged wetlands and worsened sprawl around Sacramento.

“That sounds like bad environmental policy to me,” Westly said. “And I would just ask, is it really the Democratic thing to do to take 40% of your campaign contributions from developers? What are they trying to buy?”

With so little to set them apart on the environment, Angelides quickly zeroed in on a vote that Westly once cast on an obscure state board, the Pollution Control Financing Authority. Westly, Angelides and Gov. Schwarzenegger’s finance director are the three board members.

When the authority discovered that it was giving low-interest loans to dairies that were major polluters, Angelides pushed a moratorium on the loans and Westly supported it. But Westly later joined Schwarzenegger in refusing to extend the moratorium, Angelides said in one of his many attempts to depict his Democratic rival as too cozy with the governor.

“Steve Westly sided with Arnold Schwarzenegger and the big industrial dairies to block that moratorium,” said Angelides, whose aides distributed a list of Westly’s dairy campaign donors to reporters.

Westly, in turn, accused Angelides of distorting his record, saying that Angelides had approved more than $100 million in loans to dairies he described as “some of the worst polluters in this state.”

“I’ve stood up to the governor time and time again,” Westly said, recalling when he ignored Schwarzenegger’s order to withhold money from state colleges and universities.

Since many of their positions are similar, the candidates often used questions on the environment as jumping-off points to expand on other campaign themes, such as taxes.

“I’ll ask the big boys like Exxon Mobil to pay their fair share again,” Angelides said in arguing for increasing taxes on corporations and high-income individuals to raise more money for public schools.

Westly hammered Angelides on that proposal, pegging the cost in the range of $10 billion to $15 billion.

“That is not a recipe to fix this state,” Westly said. “That is a recipe for disaster.”

Westly took credit for producing $3.5 billion in revenue for the state by cracking down on tax cheats, a contention disputed by Angelides.

“Mr. Angelides is poking me, attacking the governor and the president,” Westly said. “I’ve been doing something constructive to bring money into government to fund the things we believe in like environmental protection and education.”

Both candidates used the debate to tout their records, before and after taking statewide office. Westly recalled working on alternative energy for President Carter’s administration and championing solar power as state controller. Angelides called himself a “pioneer” in building eco-friendly subdivisions and repeatedly declared himself proud of his record as a developer.

He also promoted his work to steer state pension funds into urban projects that prevented sprawl, describing himself repeatedly as an environmental leader and Westly as a follower.

“We need a governor who’s an engine,” Angelides said, “not a caboose”

Though the tone was sharp and tense -- both faces glistened with sweat -- the two abided by the ground rules and allowed each other to finish their answers before offering barbed responses. A rare moment of levity came near the end, when Angelides allowed as how Westly was a conservationist of a sort: “While I was doing the heavy lifting, he was conserving his energy.”

Westly fired back: “If only your environmental record, Phil, were as good as your sense of humor.”

The debate, which was sponsored by the California League of Conservation Voters, was at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance on the Westside. It will be broadcast Saturday at 3:30 p.m. on KABC-TV Channel 7. It was the second of three expected debates between Westly and Angelides; another will be held next week in San Francisco.

Going into the environmental debate, both candidates had won endorsements from Sierra Club California.

Club Chairman Alan Carlton has praised both for using their state jobs to fight pollution, saying either one “would be the greenest governor California has ever had.”

Westly and Angelides have also made the environment a mainstay of their campaign advertising. Mark Baldassare, research director at the Public Policy Institute of California, said the environment was “extremely important” to Democratic voters, many of whom believe that the Bush administration has “let them down on air, water and land issues.”

For Westly and Angelides, he said, the issue is especially important in coastal areas of Northern California, where many Democratic primary voters are liberals who rank the environment as a top priority in state elections.

Schwarzenegger has long promoted his environmental record, a crucial issue in his appeals to voters beyond his base of Republicans and conservatives. But polls have found relatively low public awareness of Schwarzenegger’s stands on the environment.

A Sierra Club report released in November rated Schwarzenegger’s environmental record as mixed. “Schwarzenegger is certainly greener than his gubernatorial Republican predecessors in many ways, but has quite a way to go to catch up to his immediate predecessor, Gray Davis,” the report concluded.