One of the most familiar categories on the TV game show Jeopardy! is simply called ‘Potpourri.’ Under that heading, contestants find a hodepodge of questions on everything under the sun.

With that in mind, it was hard to resist the urge to yell out, “potpourri for $1000, Alex,” while watching this morning’s online Q&A session featuring Governor Schwarzenegger.

The 20 minute event, where questions sent in to the governor’s official state website were fielded by Schwarzenegger in a live video feed, broke no news. There were eight questions taken, chosen by TV political reporter Marcey Brightwell who served as moderator.

Schwarzenegger was asked about the high number of sex offenders living in Redding, and the low number of game wardens on the beat throughout the state. Both questions elicited only general responses. He was also asked about why he had taken such a turn to the right-hand side of the political spectrum in 2005, a suggestion he refuted. While saying he knew he had rushed last year’s ballot initiatives, he didn’t disown them. “The ideas of the reform,” he said, “was really good.”

The governor also fielded a question about bringing down high gas prices. He reiterated his interest in a full investigation. But more interesting was Brightwell’s follow-up question, which asked if he still drives his Hummer. The governor answered by saying the CHP now drives him around, though he did admit to taking the occasional spin in his Excalibur (a pricey sports car) and his Mercedes Benz G-Wagon.

And it wrapped up with the touchy feely questions: memorable moments as governor, and the “if you were a color, what would you be?” question (I’m not kidding, that was the final question). Schwarzenegger reminiscenced about the 2003 recall campaign as memorable. And the color?

“Probably red,” he said. Red, as in GOP red state? Nope. “I see myself as always being on fire” and “charged up,” he said.

And that rounds out the questions under ‘Potpourri’ on this edition of Jeopardy!

The debate over expansion for children’s health care coverage in the new budget may now have what many consider to be an official ‘escape clause.’

Word late today is that the initiative to raise the price of a pack of cigarettes in California by $2.60– and use the money on a variety of health and hospital needs– has qualified for the November ballot.

The initiative was a compromise deal struck between different health and medical advocacy groups, and would direct the resulting $2 billion in tobacco tax revenues to a host of programs, including: disease prevention, medical research, and emergency room care. And as mentioned earlier, it will also provide money for full health coverage for all children in the state.

And that, say many Capitol watchers, could be a way around the current stymied political debate over children’s health programs, given the debate’s focus on how illegal immigrant children would also be eligible.

When Senate President Don Perata (D-Oakland) began his lunchtime remarks at the Sacramento Press Club, he indicated he wouldn’t be breaking any news about the status of state budget negotiations.

But in the Q&A after the speech, it sure sounded like he did: Senate Democrats are apparently willing to take their plans for expansion of state financed health care for children out of the budget for the new fiscal year. It’s that expansion of the program, which covers children regardless of their immigration status, that has drawn strong objections from legislative Republicans. As such, the first budget deadline was missed last week.

“We’ve taken that off the table,” said Perata of the health care proposal, “because we did not want the budget to get hung up on that particular point.”

In the budget approved by a joint conference committee, Democrats used their majority status to expand health care programs available for children of low-income families. The Democratic expansion would cost about $1.8 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1. But Governor Schwarzenegger is opposed to that proposal, and his fiscal advisors say the cost of the expansion would be close to $300 million in just two years time.

Their penchant for fiscal prudence aside, the proposal also irked many legislative Republicans on a philosophical level– because a portion of the health care money would be spent on children who are here without legal status. However, Schwarzenegger’s budget also has money earmarked for children’s health care programs; it, too, could cover kids that are illegal immigrants. His budget just includes less money for such needs.

And just last week, Schwarzenegger said that “every child should have the right to some health care.”

Perata told the luncheon crowd that taking the Democratic plan for Healthy Families expansion out of the budget does not mean Senate Democrats are giving up on the proposal. “We will run a bill [this year], we will get it on the governor’s desk,” he said.

Two questions now arise: is that concession enough for Republicans to support the budget, even though many of them also oppose the governor’s plan on the subject? And where does this leave Assembly Democrats, given the passionate defense of the Democratic plan late last week by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-LA)?

UPDATE: Senate GOP Leader Dick Ackerman (R-Irvine) says the Democratic movement on the health care issue is “good news,” but that it only solves part of the problem. He says his caucus still has concerns over the governor’s plan that allows access to state-funded care for illegal immigrant children. “This is an important policy issue,” Ackerman said in a brief phone interview this afternoon.

Faced with the possibility of a strike, a deal has been struck between the union representing thousands of state workers and the Schwarzenegger admininstration.

The new three year contract announced this afternoon, among other things, gives workers a 3.5% salary increase this year, an raise as high as 4% next year, and a one-time bonus of $1000. It will also, if approved, adjust salaries for state employees who are paid less than private sector workers in similar jobs.

In addition, the contract addresses the thorny issue of pensions, a major sticking point when the last contract expired in July 2005. Union officials say they have now agreed to a lower formula for pension benefits, using the average salary earned in an employee’s final three years of work– rather than highest single year’s salary.

The union involved in the talks, Service Employees International Local 1000, represents 87,000 state employees. A large majority of the membership voted to strike in the absence of a deal, even though administration officials questioned whether such a move was legal. Marathon talks have been underway the last few days, with both sides agreeing to a news blackout on the status of the negotiations.

Meantime, it’s hard to miss the fact that the Capitol’s other big negotiations are pretty non-existent this weekend. Democrats and Republicans say they will resume discussions on Monday on a new state budget, with the new fiscal year now two weeks away.

Maybe the weather will help; the old saying around the Capitol is that the mercury has to hit triple digits before a budget deal develops. It was hot today in downtown Sacramento, but it looks like it was only about 96.

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.

One of the more interesting comments made by Governor Schwarzenegger over the past two weeks has been his interest in, and support for, “health care for every citizen.”

That’s how he described it some two weeks ago when talking to students at Sacramento State. Since then, he’s brought it up a few other times, too. He’s talked about why the issue is important, and why he was opposed to the law-turned-referendum on employers providing more health care coverage, Proposition 72.

This morning on The California Report, I reported on the new discussion and what some of the players in health care policy think it all means. You can hear the audio of that story here.

The bottom line: Schwarzenegger says he hopes to have a proposal by the time the State of the State speech rolls around in January (assuming he’s re-elected)… multiple sources confirm they’ve met with either him or his staff in recent weeks to talk about health care needs… and so far, no one idea seems to have crystallized.

Budget talks continue this afternoon at the Capitol, as Governor Schwarzenegger attempts to stake out what sounds like a middle ground over the issue of government funded health care for children who are illegal immigrants.

Yesterday, there was a lot of discussion about a Democratic proposal to expand the number of kids eligible for the state’s Healthy Families program– and more specifically, how some of those kids would be ones who are in California without legal status.

Republican legislators have been balking at medical coverage for those children, while Democrats criticized the standoff as having to do more with the politics of immigration than the state budget.

At a news conference this morning, I asked the governor where he came down on the issue. His initial answer was all about the cost of the proposal.

“We cannot afford that yet,” said Schwarzenegger. “I will not go in the direction of expanding the Healthy Family [sic] program, because we cannot afford it.” He said the state could only afford to offer coverage to the children who are already eligible, based on their family’s income.

But I followed up by asking him to address the broader philosophical issue being raised by his fellow Republicans. And here, Schwarzenegger sounded a little critical of some of this week’s rhetoric.

“For me, we should not politicize the children,” he said. But then, he went further. “Every child, if they are here legally or illegally, every child should have the right to some health care and to schooling. That’s where I’m coming from.”

Chances are that’s a middle ground that will leave some on both sides grumbling. Democrats say the amount of money in dispute is small potatoes compared in a $100+ billion budget. Republicans, however, have been quoted as saying illegal immigration health care is a deal breaker on the budget.

And all sides may wish they could just wait until this November– when voters will weigh a ballot initiative that would fully pay for the health care program (and other health needs) through a new tobacco tax.

That’s the assessment today of Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-LA) on the chances of a budget vote tomorrow. Nunez now says, barring a late breaking deal with Republicans, he will not bring the new state budget up on the Assembly floor. That would result in the 20th straight year of no new budget by the state constitutional deadline of June 15.

In a briefing with reporters, Speaker Nunez essentially accused Republicans of trying to find something they don’t like in the conference committee’s $101 billion dollar spending plan for 2006-07. “No one can say this is not a responsible budget,” he said.

Republicans, meantime, say they still think the proposal doesn’t use enough of the state’s unexpected revenues to pay down debt. But while they maintain that’s the key sticking point, they are also balking at Democratic plans to expand health care coverage for children… coverage that would also include children who are in California without legal status.

Nunez said that 88% of the kids covered by the program would be citizens or legally residing foreign nationals, and that GOP lawmakers are trying to use the hot topic of illegal immigration to their advantage.

Of course, a very prominent Republican seems to feel differently about the issue: Arnold Schwarzenegger. On last week’s campaign bus tour, the governor said every child should have health care. “Kids are vulnerable bystanders,” he told reporters. “They’re not really in control if they come here legally.”

All that being said, negotiations continue. And as former Senate Pro Tem John Burton used to point out in colorful language to reporters who asked about the June 15 deadline… the real deadline is the end of the fiscal year, June 30.

Democrat Phil Angelides has released his first ad of the general election campaign against Arnold Schwarzenegger… and in some ways, it seems to bring to mind the old saying that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Where the Team Arnold ad last week (seen here) suggested that Angelides’ proposals would take the state backwards, the Angelides ad says it’s actually Schwarzenegger who would take state backwards.

And while the Schwarzenegger ad used footage of Angelides played in reverse, the Angelides ad uses footage of the celebrity governor on his motorcycle, played in reverse. It also features Angelides making a direct on-camera appeal to voters, something that a number of political observers found lacking in his primary campaign TV ads.

[NOTE: An astute observer just remarked to me– and the Angelides camp confirms– that the man on the chopper in the ad is not Schwarzenegger, but rather a close facsimile.]

You can see the new ad here. The governor’s campaign team questioned the seriousness of the ad earlier today, claiming that Team Angelides hadn’t put any money behind an actual ad buy. But Angelides campaign manager Cathy Calfo told reporters this afternoon the campaign will spend $1 million in the next 7 or 8 days for the ad to run statewide. For those of you not in the know, estimates are a statewide TV ad campaign in California now costs between $1 million and $2 million per week.

The ad also continues the theme of linking the governor to the man in the White House. “Just like George Bush,” the announcer says, “Schwarzenegger has saddled us with billions in debt.”

Angelides’ new media strategist, Bill Carrick, says there is an “eerie parallel” between Bush and Schwarzenegger on fiscal issues, and that the criticism “resonates” with voters.

The union that represents tens of thousands of state workers says its members have authorized a strike if a new labor contract isn’t reached with the administration of Governor Schwarzenegger.

In a news release this afternoon, Local 1000 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) announced that almost 85% of its 87,000 state employee members voted to approve a possible strike. It would be the first work stoppage of its kind in state history.

“It’s clear that Local 1000 members are fed up and will do what it takes to get a decent raise and a fair contract,” said SEIU Local 1000 president Jim Hard in a written statement.

The most recent contract with the various bargaining units expired almost a year ago. Union members say they’ve received too little of a raise in recent years to keep up with increases in the cost of living.

The union has not said exactly what would trigger a strike, only that the membership has given the OK to take that action should negotiations fail. State officials, however, say they don’t think state employees can legally participate in a strike. That issue would probably have to be settled in court.