It’s probably debatable whether the dustup over health care for undocumented immigrant children is good politics when it comes to getting the GOP votes needed for a new budget this month. But the campaign team of Governor Schwarzenegger apparently thinks it’s good campaign politics for November when it comes to Latino voters.

This afternoon, the campaign invited supporters to join in on a conference call with Arnoldo Torres. Torres, a former executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, recently signed on to the Schwarzenegger campaign as a senior advisor. Word of the call arrived via an e-mail invitation, which leaked out this afternoon.

According to the e-mail, the focus of the discussion was to be the governor’s stance on expanding state funded health care for children, regardless of their legal status. The e-mail includes a snippet of a report from the Spanish language newspaper La Opinion, which quotes the governor on the subject from yesterday’s news conference (mentioned on this site here). The newspaper story focuses on how Schwarzenegger’s statement differed from the position staked out by legislative Republicans.

The campaign won’t comment on the conference call, so we don’t know for sure what items were discussed. And while it would seem likely the intended audience of the call was Latino supporters, we don’t know that for sure, either.

But it is safe to say that Latino voters are a key demographic in California politics these days. A study last year by the Public Policy Institute of California concluded that while Latinos still only make up about 15% of likely voters, they often split their allegiances between conservative and liberal issues. “California Latino voters defy simple political labels,” the report said.

And defying political labels seems to be precisely what helped get Arnold Schwarzenegger elected in 2003.