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Bustamante on hot seat in recall race But that hasn't kept Bustamante's opponents from targeting him for attack. Arianna Huffington, a political commentator running as an independent, this week labeled Bustamante a "bought and sold career politician" because of his support from tribal gaming interests and "his career-long appetite for special-interest cash." "He's a business-as-usual politician who has absolutely zero chance of going to Sacramento and cleaning up the mess because he's part of the mess," Huffington said. In fact, Bustamante's support from gaming interests was a main focus of questioning when he announced Aug. 8 that he had decided to run for governor. Bustamante was asked repeatedly then about his support from Indian tribes, which gave him roughly $100,000, or about 14 percent of his total campaign receipts, in the past year. Bustamante defended the industry, saying: "It's one of the strongest parts of California's economy. It's creating tens of thousands of jobs." He has made it clear that if he is elected, the tribes will have a friend in the governor's office, and that is almost certain to be a topic of criticism as the campaign unfolds. Bustamante already has been questioned about one of the most embarrassing and controversial moments of his career. Speaking in February 2001 at an awards dinner for the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Bustamante was reading the names of African American labor groups when he substituted a racial slur for the word "Negro" in one of the group titles. Bustamante, known for his efforts to promote racial harmony, later apologized and said the incident was "a mispronunciation, a slip." Nevertheless, when he announced his candidacy, the topic came up again. "People who know me and have supported me, I think they have clearly come up and said that was nothing, it was not indicative of either myself or perhaps maybe a speech impediment at that time," he said then. "But nothing in my record shows anything to warrant any kind of concern." Bustamante's camp also acknowledges it is facing new questions over whether he intervened in a 5-year-old fraud and perjury case involving his aunt and uncle. That case has come to light before, garnering extensive coverage in the Fresno Bee as it unfolded. But Richie Ross, Bustamante's campaign consultant, concedes that the campaign is facing fresh questions from the news media and others about claims that Bustamante's then-Assembly office sought to intervene in the investigation. "We've lived with this," Ross said. "Each new opponent we have discovers it and thinks they've discovered gold and (attempts) to embarrass him with it." That case stems from the June 26, 1998, indictment of Avel and Edna Bustamante, the politician's uncle and aunt, on charges that they used their Visalia day care center to siphon off federal funds earmarked to feed poor children. The pair accepted a plea agreement in February 2000 on the charges, and Ross said Thursday that Bustamante never interfered in the case. That stance originally was brought into question in December 1997, when then-Fresno Bee reporter Michael Lewis obtained a memo from the California Department of Education reporting that Bustamante's office had called to ask why the day care center, Angela's Angels Preschool Inc., was being investigated. "You need to know that when we followed up on complaints about this agency in the past, we were contacted by Assembly member Bustamante's office and questioned about what we were doing and why," Duwayne Brooks, then the Education Department's director of nutrition and food distribution, wrote to schools Superintendent Delaine Eastin in the confidential March 1, 1996, memo.
Brooks said at the time that he did not believe the calls from Bustamante's office indicated the
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