Arnold talks ideas for first 100 days in office

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Buoyed by a new poll that has him leading all recall candidates less than a week before the election, Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday outlined what the first 100 days of a Schwarzenegger administration would look like.

"We are ready to take office," he told a crowd of about 400 supporters. "We are ready to take action. We are ready to return California to the people."

The actor repeated a number of pledges made earlier in his campaign. On his first day in office, he said, he would repeal the tripling of the state car tax, then move to have the state budget audited and call a special session of the legislature to deal with spending cuts.

He also intends to seek a percentage of Indian casino revenue and renegotiate state employee union contracts, even though the new state budget signed by Gov. Gray Davis already calls for $1.1 billion in savings from renegotiated labor contracts or layoffs.

Davis campaign spokesman Peter Ragone said it was a mistake for Schwarzenegger to "start measuring the drapes in the offices of the Capitol."

"It's profoundly disrespectful to the people who haven't yet expressed themselves and haven't yet had their voices heard in this election to start naming their transition team or whatever they're up to," he said.

Schwarzenegger's address came as Davis appeared Wednesday with retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a presidential candidate and the latest high-profile Democrat to visit California in support of the governor.

He later appeared with his newest convert, independent Arianna Huffington, who dropped out of the race Tuesday but promised to work with Davis to defeat the recall and keep Schwarzenegger out of office.

At the event with Clark outside a firehouse museum, Davis used his most direct language yet to cast the recall as a choice between himself and Schwarzenegger.

"We have to speak to independents and Democrats in blunt terms," he said. "They have one choice. Unite to defeat this recall and stop Mr. Schwarzenegger or face the prospect that Mr. Schwarzenegger will be governor."

On Tuesday, a new Los Angeles Times poll showed Schwarzenegger had support from 40 percent of likely voters. Democrat Lt. Gov. Bustamante had 32 percent, and Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock 15 percent.

The poll also showed the effort to oust Davis succeeding, 56 percent to 42 percent. That marked a shift from a Sept. 12 Times poll that had support for the recall stalling, with 50 percent of voters supporting it and 47 percent opposed.

The earlier poll also had Bustamante leading with 30 percent to Schwarzenegger's 25 percent. McClintock had 18 percent.

Schwarzenegger's surge came after an aggressive performance at last week's debate and the withdrawal of former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth, another moderate Republican. Schwarzenegger also has aired millions of dollars of ads over the past several weeks.

Davis made no mention of the Times poll. Ragone acknowledged it could complicate the campaign, even though internal polls show a much closer race.

"To a certain extent there is a self-fulfilling prophecy aspect to it," he said. "But as we go through the next couple of days, other polls will show it tightening."

Still, Democrats were planning for the worst: The state party and a national Democratic group called Democrats for America's Future was holding a conference call Wednesday to announce a $100,000 fund-raising campaign to help pay for potential post-election legal challenges.

The Democrats were also turning again to one of the party's most popular figures in their effort to fight off the recall. Davis' campaign released a radio ad featuring former President Clinton criticizing the recall and saying that beating it is "the right thing to do."

Meanwhile, an Orange County Republican fund-raising group called on McClintock to leave the race rather than become a "spoiler." In a letter to the candidate, Lincoln Club President Tracy K. Price said, "Now is the time to do the right thing for the party and withdraw from the race."

The Democrats could receive a slight boost from Tuesday's departure of Huffington. She was one of Davis' harshest critics on the campaign trail but now has set her sights on Schwarzenegger.

She and Davis appeared together Wednesday as the governor announced that the state would preserve a 2,960-acre ranch in Southern California. Huffington used the dusty oak-dotted hills that had been planned for a golf course community of more than 3,000 homes, to attack Schwarzenegger on environmental issues.

"If he had the chance, probably this would be a parking lot full of Hummers," she said.

Huffington's support slipped from 3 percent on Sept. 12 to less than 0.5 percent in the latest Times poll.

The survey of 815 likely voters was taken from Sept. 25-29 with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

David Schecter, a government professor at California State University at Fresno, said the new poll was "bad news" for McClintock and "horrific news" for Bustamante.

For Bustamante, "the fat lady is on the stage and is just about ready to sing," Schecter said.

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Associated Press Writer Erica Werner contributed to this story.