To date, most of the rhetoric from all three candidates in the California governor's campaign has been focused on bread-and-butter issues: jobs, the economy, education, taxes, management of the state budget.

It's a very safe bet that more emotional, hot-button issues will eventually emerge. There was some tentative movement on that front at the Democratic convention on Saturday, initiated by Controller Steve Westly in his speech to delegates seeking their endorsement for governor.

In two, one-line passages he brought up both same-sex marriage and immigration.

On same-sex marriage: "I believe that any two people who want to get married should have the right to do it and not treated as second-class citizens."

On immigration: "I believe we should respect immigrants and give every immigrant a path to earn citizenship."

I asked Westly after the speech if he was breaking new ground, or merely expressing support for proposals in Congress that would grant paths to citizenship for illegal immigrants who have been in the United States for at least two years. He said that it would be the job of Congress to decide on a time limit, but that he supports the general concept. Then he slyly mused over whether his opponent had even bothered to mention the issue — cited by respondents in a Public Policy Institute of California poll released this week as the No. 1 issue they'd like to see candidates talk about.

"I don't recall whether my opponent even mentioned immigration today," Westly said. "Didn't he? Hmmm. How 'bout that?"

Westly clearly believes that he has a chance to do very well among Latino voters in the primary. There will be no running from the issue in the fall, so Westly seems to be taking the initiative to discuss the issue now, seeking an advantage over rival Phil Angelides.

Angelides, like Westly, supports same-sex marriages. Since Westly brought it up, I asked state Republican Party Chairman Duf Sundheim this afternoon whether he thought the issue would be a part of the fall campaign between the Democratic primary winner and GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Sundheim's answer was intriguing. It won't be an issue, he flatly predicted.

It won't be an issue, he suggested, because Schwarzenegger is "sensitive" to the rights of gays and lesbians. Eight years after the state GOP supported the successful Proposition 22, which said that marriage in California should be between "a man and a woman," Sundheim indicated the issue may not carry the political weight it once did. Voters, he said, "can respect people who come down on one side or the other on that issue."

The Los Angeles Times was apparently victimized by a leak on Friday that became the talk of the state Democratic convention. At a few minutes until midnight London time, the Financial Times of London published on its Web site the results of an L.A. Times poll scheduled to be released on Saturday. Problem is, midnight London time is 4 p.m. on the West Coast, meaning that the Times got scooped on its own exclusive poll.

But what was embarrassing for Times must have been dispiriting for Phil Angelides, who is hoping for some momentum coming out of the convention of party loyalists who in the main back him over opponent Steve Westly in the Democratic primary for governor.

The horse-race poll in the Times became the third in 10 days to show Westly with a lead over Angelides. This one pegged the margin at 13 percent. The Field Poll put it at 11 percent, and the Public Policy Institute of California scored it at 6 percent. Perhaps more damaging for Angelides, however, is that the Times poll showed Westly leading Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger by 9 percentage points in a trial heat. It showed Angelides and Schwarzenegger in a tie.

Today convention delegates will vote whether to endorse Angelides. It will take a 60 percent majority to make that decision. To the extent the Westly camp is arguing that delegates should restrain themselves on the endorsement because their man is more electable, the new numbers could prove to be very untimely for Angelides.

As Election Day nears, expect the Steve Westly gubernatorial campaign to make greater use of Anita Yu Westly, a Chinese immigrant with who could help significantly with Asian voters, who make up about 11 percent of the California electorage.

The Asian-Pacific Islander voter is heavily Democratic, but varies widely by country of origin. Chinese and Hmong are the most decidedly Democratic. Anita Westly said she intends to become more active in all voter outreach efforts, but particularly in Asian communities.

There is one slight problem, however. Anita Westly was born in Hong Kong, and her native tongue is Cantonese. Most Chinese immigrants in California speak Mandarin.

Anita Westly says she's taking lessons, but acknowledges that her 5-year-old son is probably doing a little better than Mom in picking up the language...

Ventura County Democrats can bring with them to Sacramento a smidgen of good news when they arrive at this weekend's state Democratic convention.

According to Secretary of State Bruce McPherson's registration report 60 days before the June 6 primary, Democrats have made slight gains in Ventura County. Since 60 days before the 2004 presidential general election, they have cut the Republican advantage in the county from 11,189 to less than 10,000 — to be precise, 9,947.

The intriguing part is that most of the gain has come in the GOP bastion of Thousand Oaks, where Democrats have gained 414 voters and Republicans have lost 227. That means Democrats have cut into the Republican edge in Thousand Oaks by a full 1 percent -- not much, but statewide Democrats would surely take it.

The 60-day report shows that the Democrats' advantage over Republicans statewide continues to shrink. In that same time span — since the 2004 presidential election — the Democrats' edge has shrunk from 8.2 percentage points to 8.1.

Doing some research over the weekend, I Google'd the phrase "Angelides for governor" as a means to quickly find the Democratic treasurer's candidate Web site. At the top of the search results, against a pale blue background, indicating a paid listing, was a link to "Steve Westly for governor."

I note today that the Google protocols have changed -- now when you search "Angelides for governor," the link to "Steve Westly for governor" appears at the right of the listing of search results as a "sponsored link."

Either way, it's a clever use of Internet adverstising — about what one would expect from a campaign for the first candidate for governor with a background in Internet commerce. And, also, of course, from a campaign that doesn't appear to be concerned about how much it spends.

If you have any problem with double vision, the following could compound your problem...

PALO ALTO, CA (APRIL 20) – Controller Steve Westly’s campaign for governor today announced it has won the endorsement of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW)...
“We believe you will be a Governor who will strongly represent the interests of farm workers and all the people of California. You have [also] demonstrated a strong and consistent commitment to fairly remedying our nation’s broken immigration system,�? wrote Arturo Rodriguez, President of the UFW, in a letter announcing the organization’s endorsement of Westly’s candidacy.

SACRAMENTO, CA (APRIL 20) – The United Farm Workers (UFW) today endorsed California State Treasurer Phil Angelides’ campaign for Governor....
“We believe you will be a Governor who will strongly represent the interests of farm workers and all the people of California,�? UFW President Arturo Rodriguez wrote in a letter to Angelides. “You have demonstrated a strong and consistent commitment to fairly remedying our nation’s broken immigration system."

OK. You read all that right. The UFW endorsed Westly AND Angelides, using the exact same language. It seems to be a trend. Look again — and again — at the following two press releases:

PALO ALTO, CA – Controller and State Lands Commission Chair Steve Westly’s campaign for Governor today announced Westly has been endorsed by the largest environmental organization in the state, Sierra Club California.

SACRAMENTO, CA -- The Sierra Club, the largest environmental organization in California with approximately 200,000 members, today announced its endorsement of State Treasurer Phil Angelides' campaign for Governor.

What's the deal? Obviously, these groups are covering their bets. But the dual endorsements would seem to benefit Westly most of all — much more so than if the groups had taken the other route given that they couldn't choose between the two Democrats, which would have been to offer no endorsement at all.

Angelides has an impressive -- even overwhelming -- list of endorsements. Westly, on the other hand, still needs endorsements to prove his bona fides to a great many Democratic voters. Any endorsement, even a diluted endorsement, helps Westly make his case.

Judging from the harsh questioning this morning from three of the five committee members, it looks like the movement to pass a bill to establish public financing of political campaigns in California this year could be in a heap of trouble.

Assemblywoman Loni Hancock's bill was the subject of a hearing in the Senate Elections Committee, and it got a hostile response from three of four members present — including two Democrats whose support will eventually be needed to move it along.

When Chairwoman Debra Bowen asked the large crowd of supporters of the bill to stand and remarked on the size of the group and how it represented "the face of California," Sen. Gloria Romero seemed to take offense. "It does reflect the face of California," she huffed, "but it does not reflect the diversity of California."

The next witness to testify after that comment was Paul Turner of the Greenlining Institute. He cited the bill's support by a host of civil rights organizations, including the NAACP and MALDEF. He called the bill "not so much a reform bill as it is a civil rights bill."

Turner called the current system "a wealth primary" that rewards only those candidates with personal wealth or those who are able to leverage the support of monied special interests. The current system, he said, amounts to "a modern-day poll tax" that systematically excludes minorities from participating in the political system.

Turner noted that his group has done polling and focus groups and found that "Latino voters are the most enthusiastic supporters."

OK, so maybe the support does reflect a little of California's diversity.

If you're a candidate in a five-way primary campaign, what do you do to try to distinguish yourself from the others?

Two answers have emerged this week in the wide-open 41st Assembly District primary in which five Democrats are jostling for the right to replace termed-out incumbent Fran Pavley.

Attorney Jonathan Levey has taken what might be called the scholarly approach. This week he released a 161-page, pocket-sized book titled "Ideas in Action." The book details his thoughts and positions on such issues as traffic, the environment and healthcare. It's a thoughtful publication and includes references to various web sites at which readers can get additional information on various subjects. But it is not exactly passionate...

Passion, it seems, is more the province of activist Kelly Hayes-Raitt, who sent an e-mail to supporters today asking them to join her at hearings tonight and Wednesday on BHP Billiton's proposed Cabrillo Port liquefied natural gas terminal off the coast of Oxnard and Malibu. Hayes-Raitt says it's time to "send the mega-multinationals packing... When I fought offshore drilling as Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy's statewide environmental representative, we beat the oil industry in our state's longest public hearing in history. We won then; we'll win now." In her e-mail, she compares the LNG industry to Enron before that energy company was "exposed for manipulating the market, creating false shortages and gouging customers."

I just leafed through the 22-page chapter on the environment in Levey's book. Twice. It could be I'm missing something, but I don't see a word about liquefied natural gas.

The first votes of the June primary have been cast -- votes by independents who have decided whether they want to participate in the partisan primaries and, if so, for which party.

The first voters required to make a decision are those who are registered as "decline to state" a party affiliation and who are also signed up as permanent absentee voters. Since both major parties allow decline-to-state voters to participate in their primaries, elections officials must ask those permanent absentees what kind of ballots they would like to receive in the mail: nonpartisan, Democratic or Republican.

Almost all decide to remain nonpartisan, said Ventura County Assistant Registrar of Voters Gene Browning. Notices have been sent to 17,000 such voters in Ventura County, and only 2,200 have requested partisan ballots — a response rate, Browning said, that roughly mirrors that of two years ago.

This activity is a reminder of just how soon actual voting will commence. Sample ballots, which include requests for absentee ballots, will be put in the mail beginning a week from Thursday. Absentee ballots will begin going out on May 8 -- which means voting begins three weeks from today.

The folks at Steve Westly's campaign for governor appear to be absolutely giddy over today's Field Poll, which shows Westly with an 11-point edge over Phil Angelides for the Democratic nomination.

In an e-mail sent to his online supporters today, Westly called it "a happy day for our campaign." He also suggested it was time to start thinking about the general election (more on that later).

The results must match both campaigns' internal polling. Westly obviously suspected such a result was forthcoming; not only did he have the e-mail written and ready to go, but when I talked to him briefly in Los Angeles on Wednesday, he anxiously asked, "Any word on whether the Field Poll will be out today?" Clearly, both candidates suspected what was coming. Later that day, Angelides described himself to me as "the underdog" and dismissed polls at this point in the campaign as being "way early... We're just in the first few minutes of an NBA game."

(This, by the way, on the morning after the Sacramento Kings had led Phoenix by 17 points at half time, only to be blown out by the Suns in the second half.)

In his e-mail, Westly told supporters there were "three things you can do to help." No. 1 was to recruit five friends to join in the campaign because, "We want our campaign to grow so that we'll be able to take on Arnold in November."

Hmmm. What happened to that election in June?

Ever since the latest PPIC poll came out last month, political advisers to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and some newspaper pundits have made much of the results of the poll's "likeability" question.

When you add the percentage of people who say they either like Schwarzenegger and his policies, or like Schwarzenegger but not his policies, the total comes to 71 percent — or 24 points higher than the same poll found his approval rating.

The Schwarzenegger spin is that number shows that the governor has a reservoir of good will among voters that can still be tapped. Schwarzenegger campaign manager Steve Schmidt called the number "a leading indicator" and said that if he were a Democrat it would "send a shiver down my spine."

Perhaps. But take a look at today's LA Times/Bloomberg poll, mainly about immigration issues, reported on the front page of today's Times. It asks a similar likeability question about President Bush (with one significant difference that we'll get to later). It found that the percentage of respondents who either like Bush and his policies or like Bush but not his policies was 62 percent — or 21 points higher than the poll found his approval rating.

Not much difference from the Schwarzenegger differential.

But the key difference is in the wording of the options given respondents. Schwarzenegger impressively outscored Bush in the double-negative category — 34 percent for Bush, just 20 percent for Schwarzenegger.

But the Times/Bloomberg question asked respondents about the president whether they "don't like him or his policies."

The PPIC poll offered a harsher choice. It asked respondends whether they "dislike Arnold Schwarzenegger and dislike his policies." (Emphasis added)

To "not like" a person is one thing. To "dislike" a person is quite another. According to Webster, to "dislike" requires an element of distaste. That's a pretty high standard to reach in a polite society that is more than a little apathetic about politics.

It remains to be seen how much untapped good will for Schwarzenegger remains at large among the voting public in California. The governor's handlers assured us last fall that an alleged reservoir of good will for the governor would eventually bail out his special election initiatives. Back then, it was wishful thinking. It may still be.

Steve Schmidt, the man brought in from the White House to manage Gov. Arnold Schwarznegger's re-election campaign, hasn't let his inside-the-Beltway exposure cloud his judgment about the California political environment.

He knows exactly how popular the Bush administration is in California.

In briefing reporters last week about the upcoming campaign, Schmidt insisted that the issues that plague Republicans in Washington — Iraq, congressional corruption, a bloated federal deficit — will have no role in the coming California gubernatorial campaign.

He noted that there is "no competitive federal election in California at the Senate level," which means Sen. Dianne Feinstein, unlike Democratic Senate candidates across the land, will not be running television commercials alleging a Republican "culture of corruption" in Washington.

"What's going to drive this election are California issues," he said.

Schmidt was asked whether the Schwarzenegger campaign would welcome a visit by President Bush in the fall.

His response: "We'll put the most effective people into the state."

Give 'em credit: Those Washington guys know how to diplomatically answer a question.

For months, the campaign of Controller Steve Westly has been warning that, eventually, Treasurer Phil Angelides would turn into a sort of Democratic bogeyman. There was good cause for the warning; Angelides' track record as a slash-and-burn campaigner is well documented. And, in fact, the campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor may yet turn nasty.

But it hasn't happened yet, despite Westly's protestations.

This was the week Angelides -- abandoning his pipedream that all those endorsements might allow him to cruise home as the front-runner -- decided to engage his opponent. At a speech he billed as a major turning point in the campaign, Angelides decided on Wednesday to start to lay out differences between the two.

The central theme: Westly was too chummy with Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger back in 2004 and, in deference to the governor's sky-high popularity, did not stand up for issues of importance to Democrats.

Indeed, Westly was mostly supportive of the governor in 2004, even when his budget proposal called for increasing college tuition, rolling back benefits for the blind and disabled and reducing the number of children eligible for state-subsidized healthcare. Surely, now that he's seeking the Democratic nomination, Westly must have suspected these things would become an issue.

"My primary opponent talks of his commitment to education," Angelides said. "But at the very time I was fighting Governor Schwarzenegger's plan to eliminate college preparation programs for disadvantaged kids, Steve Westly said of him, and I quote, 'My job is to make this guy successful.'

"Hey, everyone's got a job to do," Angelides sneered. "My job was to stand up for Democratic values and fight for what was right."

Westly's response to this was to complain that the campaign had turned negative. "Desperate candidates," he said, "do desperate things."

Westly protests too much. He's going to have to address this issue. Indeed, it is the essence of a campaign: Where did the candidate stand on the issues yesterday, where is he today and where will he be tomorrow?

Ventura County supporters of Thousand Oaks Sen. Tom McClintock are daring to hope that this could be the year that McClintock, a three-time loser in previous bids for statewide office, finally makes it over the top.

There is good reason for their optimism. McClintock, unchallenged in the Republican primary, can horde his money while the three Democrats battling for the nomination spend theirs. McClintock, a notoriously weak fund-raiser, has been getting help from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has a large stable of significant donors. Also, McClintock's direct-mail operations have built a huge base of small contributors. Finally, his name-recognition and public image received a tremendous boost during the 2003 recall campaign when McClintock received loads of press coverage.

The most difficult obstacle, most McClintock supporters agree, would be if Sen. Jackie Speier were to secure the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor. Why? Because Speier has such a compelling life story that she would likely receive an extraordinary amount of press coverage in a general election campaign — something unheard of for a down-ticket race in California.

How compelling is her story? Her campaign has released an Internet video that tells the story: Jackie Speier in her own words. Defintely not your usual campaign-rhetoric fare.

That PPIC poll on the environment in February which showed voters rate Arnold Schwarzenegger no better than George Bush on environmental issues must have registered with the administration.

This afternoon Schwarzenegger held a news conference on short notice to personally weigh in on his Climate Action Team's report that recommends mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other large emitters. Schwarzenegger used the moment not only to reaffirm his commitment to doing something in response to global warming, but also to distance himself from Bush.

"The federal government has so far fallen short," he said. "I don't want to wait on the federal government."

He suggested that perhaps Bush and Republicans in Congress might take a look at what California's Republican governor is doing. "The federal government is hopefully going to look at this and say, 'They took the leadership, let us follow.'"

Expect much more of this in the months ahead: Schwarzenegger is very visibly going to try to distance himself from Bush on environmental issues.

There may be no political candidate in California better poised to exploit public concern over illegal immigration than Tony Dolz, one of two Republicans seeking his party's nomination in the 41st Assembly District. Dolz is one of the original Minutemen who voluntarily patrolled the border in the Arizona desert a year ago.

His web site is devoted exclusively to the topic. It includes an article he penned on the threat of Mexican army incursions across the U.S. border, a "must see" video on drug and human trafficking and a link to a "hall of heroes" that includes controversial Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo and Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrest.

One more noteworthy feature on Dolz' site: an offer of a free luxury down comforter valued at $800 for any contributor who donates $1,000 to his campaign. Dolz and his wife run an online business that sells, among other items, Scandavian bedding items.

Dolz is one of two Republicans in the primary contest. The other is Adriana Van Hemert. She attended a recent candidates' forum in Thousand Oaks and opened her remarks by explaining the problem that either she or Dolz will face in the general election: "I want a sympathy vote because I live in the People's Republic of Santa Monica."

The 41st District, which includes Santa Monica and Malibu, is among the most liberal districts in the state. Democrats have an 18-point edge in voter registration.