Schwarzenegger Woos Liberal Voters

It seems Arnold Schwarzenegger can’t get enough of the liberals.

From expanded health-care programs at grade school levels to lowering health-care costs and reducing the number of uninsured Californians, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is wooing liberal voters. He has also heaped praise on Al Gore's global warming movie, which should serve the Republican governor well in this otherwise eco-centric, deep blue state.

Facing state Treasurer Phil Angelides, his ultra-liberal opponent in the November election, Schwarzenegger is casting his net in a leftward direction.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Schwarzenegger aides say the governor is seeking to respond to critics who charge him with failing to come up with substantial remedies for his state's health-care problems by such moves as proposing new medical clinics in as many as 500 elementary schools.

The move would add to the 140 campus facilities that are already in place helping uninsured children. His critics are calling his proposal an election-year stunt.

"We have too many uninsured people in California," Schwarzenegger stated at a news conference last Friday. "There are still a lot of children uninsured."

The new clinics would be built on school grounds and offer basic services such as immunizations. Some could also provide mental health or dental services. Bigger clinics could include labs and pharmacies and offer treatment for adults as well as children.

Aides said Schwarzenegger would introduce the idea at a health-care conference that his office organized in Los Angeles.

On Sunday, Angelides told the Times he "welcomed the debate" with Schwarzenegger on health care. But he said the governor has been absent on the issue and "should be charged with political malpractice."

The Times notes that Schwarzenegger's plan could put him at odds with some fellow Republicans, pointing out that religious conservatives, in particular, have opposed school clinics as a potential source of birth control for teenagers.

Lowering health-care costs and reducing the number of uninsured Californians will be top priorities for Schwarzenegger in 2007, if he's re-elected according, to the San Jose Mercury News, which reported that he convened an invitation-only summit today to pick the brains of labor leaders, business executives, and elected officials.

The governor's staff said the gathering at the University of California-Los Angeles won't end with a comprehensive solution for the nearly 7 million Californians who lack health care.

The Mercury News said that critics have dismissed the summit as an election-year stunt from a man they charge has killed a raft of Democrat-sponsored health proposals since taking office in 2003, an allegation his aides dispute, claiming that the governor "cares passionately" about covering more people and lowering health-care costs.

"The intent here is to begin a dialogue," his health secretary, Kim Belshé told the Mercury News. "The summit is not intended to solve a very complicated problem in one day," she added.

On Saturday, Belshé announced that the Schwarzenegger administration now supports a drug-discount plan for 5 million Californians who earn up to three times the federal poverty level, $60,000 for a family of four.

The newspaper said that drug companies that did not volunteer discounts of 40 percent on brand name medicines and 60 percent on generics within five years would risk being shut out of the state's multibillion-dollar Medi-Cal program for the poor.

In the past, the governor has supported only voluntary drug discount plans, as opposed to ones with sanctions. The governor's proposal is similar to a plan liberal legislative Democrats are pushing, except the Democrats would cover more people and slap sanctions on recalcitrant drug companies two years sooner, according to the Mercury News.

In an obvious bow to liberal environmentalists, Schwarzenegger wooed a San Francisco audience last week when he said he "loved" former Vice President Al Gore's controversial movie on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," according to the Sacramento Bee.

He told the Commonwealth Club of California that Gore is right in issuing warnings about global warming, and added that he liked Gore's presentation of facts and figures, adding that he usually falls asleep during movies he watches late at night.

This one apparently kept him awake.