Both Sides Emphasize Election's Magnitude

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his political foes blitzed across California on Sunday, from big cities to small towns, battling over ballot measures that -- all agreed -- could significantly change Sacramento.

The consensus ended there.

Schwarzenegger, campaigning through the Central Valley and into Los Angeles, characterized Tuesday's vote as a chance to right a political system that has gone seriously off kilter.

"The other side, they hate the idea of making changes in California," the governor told supporters at a raucous Bakersfield rally.

The governor's opponents, gathered en masse at a union hall in South Los Angeles, depicted Schwarzenegger's agenda as a power grab by a chief executive run amok.

"As California goes, so goes the nation," said Edgar Romney, a New York labor leader, adding the governor had to be defeated Tuesday or similar proposals would "spread across this country like wildfire."

As volunteer armies hit the streets to summon voters to the polls, the two sides also faced off in another televised question-and-answer session. This one originated from KTTV in West Los Angeles.

At the governor's insistence, the 60-minute program was split into segments, with two representatives of the opposition -- Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, a Los Angeles Democrat, and Barbara Kerr, president of the California Teachers Assn. -- appearing in the first half-hour but not staying to share the stage with Schwarzenegger.

"He has been a very polarizing figure in this state, and very divisive," Nunez said of Schwarzenegger, calling him "not the person we elected when we voted for him."

Nunez called the special election a waste of tens of millions of dollars and nothing more than "a way for the governor to attack nurses and teachers and firefighters and police officers in California. It was totally unnecessary to do this."

When his turn came, in the program's second half-hour, Schwarzenegger described the election as the only way to overhaul a political system deeply resistant to reform.

"I was sent to Sacramento not to keep the status quo, not to go on with business as usual," he said. "I was sent to Sacramento to fix the system, as an outsider to come in and get in there, and bring Democrats and Republicans together."

While the governor faced several pointed questions, the tone was far less confrontational than a similar forum in Los Angeles on Thursday night, which was dominated by several Democratic Party activists. Much of the discussion Sunday night focused on education, a perennial concern of California voters.