President Bush will appear at the side of California's governor-elect, Arnold Schwarzenegger, during a fund-raising trip to the state next week, a Republican close to the White House said on Wednesday, even as some religious conservative supporters of Mr. Bush said they were troubled by accusations that Mr. Schwarzenegger had engaged in sexual misconduct.
But the conservatives said their concerns would not spill over to Mr. Bush. It was unthinkable, they added, that a Republican president would not stand with a newly elected Republican governor on a trip to the state, particularly one the White House hopes to win in 2004.
"The president is a politician who is running for re-election, and given that California could be the key to 2004 and that the vote was resoundingly for Arnold I don't think the president feels he is embracing Arnold in all of his manifestations," said Robert Knight, the director of the Culture and Family Institute, a Washington conservative group.
White House advisers pronounced themselves elated with the election's outcome, and insisted that the accusations that Mr. Schwarzenegger had groped women were politically motivated. The accusations would not, they said, affect Mr. Bush, who has made conservative family values a part of his political appeal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/09/national/09BUSH.html
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