Schwarzenegger Changing Positions As Election Nears
DOBBS: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California tonight appears to have a new re-election strategy. He's pandering to illegal aliens and their supporters in California. Governor Schwarzenegger once supported tough border security and the enforcement of our immigration laws, but the governor is changing his positions as he fights for a second term. Casey Wian is live in Los Angeles with the report -- Casey.</s>CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Lou, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is about to arrive here at Olvera Street (ph), an historic Mexican marketplace. He's clearly trying to win Latino voters, but at the same time he's also angering Californians who favor border security.</s>WIAN (voice over): The governor, who last year made headlines by praising the minutemen, is now calling border security activists prejudiced. Arnold Schwarzenegger ran through his latest script during a bus tour of southern California. At this San Diego stop, he expected a friendly, most Republican audience. Instead, he got an earful about the state's failure to take action to stop illegal immigration.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The illegals hop over our fence and they go right on to medical. They get everything free. I've worked all my life, and this is baloney. There's something wrong with this picture. The federal government won't do anything about the illegals, and it should be up to you to see that our borders are closed and something is done here, because this is absolutely ridiculous.</s>GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (R), CALIFORNIA: What you should be mad about and what I'm mad about is for the federal government not to be able to secure the borders so we got into that mess in the first place. That is the biggest problem that we have.</s>WIAN: Later, referring to a woman who said "stop the invasion" and "we want our country back," Schwarzenegger told reporters, "It was pretty much the first time I saw the intensity of prejudice." Equating border security with prejudice is apparently part of a new campaign strategy. We tried to ask him about that at an Orange County campaign stop. (on camera): Governor Schwarzenegger, why did you call border security activists prejudiced yesterday? (voice over): But he ignored our repeated questions. He did announce support for an immigration reform plan critics say is amnesty for illegal aliens. And he again made a thinly veiled criticism of border security advocates.</s>SCHWARZENEGGER: I hope that they reform the immigration system so that we have a really comprehensive reform there so we can move forward rather than having this whole kind of atmosphere of hatred that is being created right now in California, and as far as that goes, all over the country.</s>WIAN: The governor this week told the Spanish language newspaper "La Opinion" his previous support of California's Proposition 187, a 1994 effort to deny public services to illegal aliens, was a mistake. Schwarzenegger leads Democratic challenger Phil Angelides by eight percentage points. In a statement, Angelides accused the governor of "... doing more flip-flops on immigration than the Wallenda Brothers and Olga Korbut combined."</s>WIAN: Schwarzenegger is trying to promote his record on the California economy, but questions about illegal immigration and border security are coming up at every campaign stop and clouding his message -- Lou.</s>DOBBS: All right, Casey. Thank you very much. Casey Wian reporting from Los Angeles. In Mexico, leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador continues to challenge Mexico's presidential election results. He said, "I won the election. I'm the president of Mexico." Lopez Obrador claims election officials manipulated computers and gave his conservative opponent a slim victory. A winner must be certified by the 6th of September. Venezuela's left wing strongman, Hugo Chavez, today blasted the United States for trying to stop Russia from selling weapons to Venezuela. Chavez today visited a small arms factory in Russia where he was shown rifles and other military weaponry and equipment. Tomorrow Chavez signs a billion-dollar contract with Russia to buy 30 Russian fighter aircraft and 30 Russian helicopters. All this with the full support of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is a strong critic of U.S. policies around the world. Sill ahead here, guess who wants to raise your taxes? None other than the United Nations. We'll have that special report on the U.N.'s attempt to tax Americans. And the Iraqi prime minister today addressed Congress. As sectarian violence in Iraq continues to escalate, we'll examine the Bush administration's efforts to fight perceptions that Iraq is already in a civil war. And I'll talk with the author of a provocative important new book on Iraq called "Fiasco: The American Military Venture in Iraq," who says the general's staff must claim one of the worst strategies in American military history. Stay with us.