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Bush in Calif to boost GOP gov candidate

By HIL ANDERSON

SANTA ANA, Calif., Aug. 23 (UPI) -- President Bush tossed California a surprise political bone Friday when he prefaced a series of critical fund-raising appearances with the announcement of a sizable federal grant to finance research-based reading programs in the state's schools.

Prior to an appearance in upscale Dana Point with Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon at a $1,000 a plate dinner soiree, Bush spoke to about 200 community leaders and supporters in Santa Ana, where public school enrollment is more than 90-percent Hispanic and teaching children to speak and read English is a high priority among voters.

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"No child should be left behind," Bush urged, using the motto of his education policy and receiving a round of applause from the well-dressed crowd at the Bowers Museum. "So today, the Department of Education awarded California a $133 million reading grant."

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"It is to make sure that every child can read by the third grade," he said. "I don't mean just a few, or just the kids from the nice school districts. I mean every single child," said Bush who had his game face on and was dressed up for Friday's appearance in a navy blue suit in contrast to his casual shirtsleeves in Oregon Thursday.

"If you can't read by the fourth grade, you can't read by the eighth grade; if you can't read by the eighth grade, you can't read by high school and that's a problem," averred Bush to the receptive crowd.

When Bush spoke, he was shielded from the sultry dog days of August sun by a shade tree surrounded by local officials who sat there politely wilting in their charcoal-gray business suits. Simon did not appear in Santa Ana nor was he mentioned in the president's remarks even though he is running in a tough battle against incumbent Gray Davis in a state where the Latino vote is critical.

With education considered a high priority among many Latinos, the president made a point to tell the audience that his administration was working to increase grants for low-income college students and to ensure that Mexican and Canadian students attending classes at U.S. colleges should be able to easily obtain necessary visas and to cross borders into the U.S.

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"I don't care for the fact that a lot of Latino youngsters don't go to college," he said. "It is not a good statistic when we have less than 10 percent of Latino youngsters going on to higher education. We must work to encourage participation at all levels of education by youngsters from all walks of life."

Bush's message on educating children from predominantly Democratic communities is important to Simon, whose conservative Republican ideals have not seemed to catch on with minority voters and have left him trailing in the polls.

With Simon's campaign stuck in second gear and Davis making hay over an embarrassing court verdict against the Simon family investment firm, there had been speculation among political analysts that Bush would distance himself from the political rookie and his family's legal rhubarb. Bush has been caught in a bit of a conundrum. On one hand, he has been publicly speaking of zero tolerance against corporate shenanigans and on the other hand, the host candidate in California is sitting on the proverbial corporate wrongdoing hot seat.

Simon will, however, have potentially more important face time with the commander in chief when he hobnobs at a pair of private fund-raisers with some friendly faces where he is expected to raise about $3 million that will help to finance Simon's media campaigns in the final weeks before the Nov. 5 election.

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Bush came to California from the fire-stricken Pacific Northwest where he announced a controversial plan to speed up the thinning of overgrown forests as a means of reducing the danger of devastating wildfires in the drought-stricken West.

While he called the plan "common sense" Thursday, the proposal angered some environmentalists who saw the Healthy Forest Initiative as a vehicle for increased logging in federal forests with fire protection being a secondary goal.

The fire plan, as well as U.S. saber rattling over Iraq, drew about 1,000 noisy protestors to downtown Portland late Thursday for a demonstration outside a Bush fundraiser for Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore. The protest ended with police blasting some of the crowd with pepper spray and rubber bullets; three people were arrested.

There was no anticipation of havoc being raised in California, but there are issues of interest to the state that Bush may have to confront.

The president's speech in Santa Ana was aimed at an audience of Latino community leaders and GOP volunteers. It came as Simon sided with California's powerful agribusiness lobby on a state bill that would require growers to submit to binding arbitration in negotiations with the United Farm Workers, the high-profile union founded by Cesar Chavez in the 1960s with a membership that is virtually all Hispanic.

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Gov. Gray Davis has his own decision to make about signing the bill, but Simon's support of the well-heeled growers against a venerable labor institution like the UFW may damage his standing with Latinos.

Of greater interest to analysts and pundits outside California is the recent court ruling, which reportedly irritated the White House because it was unexpected and came when the president was grappling with the issue of businessmen playing fast-and-loose with the corporate books.

Stumping for a conservative GOP candidate in the midst of a high-profile campaign would generally be a routine task for an incumbent president but Simon has run into a bumpy stretch of road. A jury in a Los Angeles fraud case ordered the Simon family investment firm to pay $78 million in damages to a former partner over an investment deal that went bad.

Although the two were not seen together Friday, the White House and the Simon campaign say all is well and the White House is behind Simon.

"The Bush White House had a huge dilemma on their hands after this fraud verdict hit, in that to cancel the trip after invitations had gone out ... would have been a death knell for the Bill Simon candidacy," Davis political strategist Gary South told The San Diego Union-Tribune. "It would have been the president of the United States, in a very public way, writing you off."

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The Times said Friday the Bush camp decided it would be better in the long run to make the trip and have the president stand up for a conservative rather than cancel and alienate donors who are less interested in Simon's legal travails than in getting rid of Davis.

But Davis has once again shown that his slight build and well-coifed hair betray an aggressive campaign style. Earlier this week, Davis unveiled an advertising campaign for California farm products that should please the farmers in the San Joaquin Valley. He also signed a trio of bills aimed at tightening corporate accounting standards, saying at the ceremony in Culver City that, "Corporate misdeeds will not be tolerated in California."

After a breakfast fundraiser on Saturday morning, Bush will head over to Las Cruces, N.M. for another cause, that of 2nd Congressional District candidate Steve Pearce.

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