ARNOLD GAINING WHILE DEMOCRATS SELF-DESTRUCTING.

Byline: JILL STEWART

HERE'S irony for you: The June 6 primary to decide which Democrat will face Arnold Schwarzenegger next November could involve such a vicious slugfest between state Controller Steve Westly and state Treasurer Phil Angelides that the two Dems accidentally send voters back into Arnold's arms.

A fresh poll from the Public Policy Institute of California shows Schwarzenegger's approval ratings up 8 percentage points over his abysmal bottoming-out last fall - in line with other polls.

Somebody finally figured out that Arnold needs to govern without a smirk, and he needs to govern as the centrist he actually is. Every week that Schwarzenegger pursues responsible stuff like fixing infrastructure means another upward tick in his approval ratings.

Mark Baldassare, director of research at the PPIC, tells me that the governor is being helped by rosier attitudes about the economy picking up in California. Moreover, he said, ``All the millions of dollars spent dragging his name through the mud during the special election stopped - and stopped having an effect. The governor began to get his message out.''

Nasty campaigning works, a fact not lost on Westly and Angelides - only one of whom can remain standing after June 6.

They will go negative against one another, big-time. The likable and politically moderate eBay multimillionaire Westly has hired as a senior adviser Garry South, ``South the Mouth,'' the outrageous former adviser to Gray Davis. The dour and far-further-left Angelides has hired Bob Mulholland, the bizarre flamethrower who normally works as a foot-in-mouth spokesman for the California Democratic Party.

South and Mulholland are practitioners of the unfettered slugfest. The ultimate goal of these two bards of bombast is to bring down Arnold. But it's entirely possible that both of their candidates could emerge from the June 6 primary so bloodied that voters end up preferring Schwarzenegger. Recently, South told one Los Angeles newspaper that Angelides is essentially an ``insufferable know-it-all.'' And he told a Sacramento newspaper that ``the (Republicans} will slice him and dice him like a Veg-O-Matic.''

For Mulholland's part, in the heat of campaigns he often reels out of control and is almost creepily negative. For example, last November, Mulholland got so apoplectic during an interview with KNTV/NBC in San Jose that he sputtered that Schwarzenegger is ``not a man.'' It was such an icky and weird comment that Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, the most powerful Democrat in Sacramento, suggested that perhaps Mulholland ``ought to shut up.''

I expect Angelides to win the lion's share of endorsements and cash from Democratic institutions, just as we saw with that other loyal party hack Cruz Bustamante in the 2003 recall. Already, the fabulously wealthy California Teachers Association has endorsed Angelides.Normally, that cash would matter in a primary. This time, not so much. This time, the self-made Westly is writing personal checks to finance his race. Former developer Angelides, to keep up, must wheedle money from every special interest between here and the border.

Who will Democratic voters choose? Westly is upbeat and attractive; Angelides is pinch-faced and whiny. Westly is pragmatic and relaxed; Angelides is histrionic and obsessed with himself.

Angelides' strength is the fact that the June 6 primary will be a very-low-turnout event. This means that armchair Democrats tend to stay home, while hard-core partisans stream to the polls. Hard-core partisans will tend to favor any further-left candidate, and that's Angelides.

However, even blindly loyal partisans may not like Angelides' foolish decision to run as ``Bustamante Lite,'' pushing a dreary version of his disastrous, massive tax-increase plan. For this reason, the primary is Westly's race to lose.

Baldassare, ever the understated pollster, tells me, ``It's not a good situation for the Democrats, to have two candidates finding fault with one another for the next six months while the governor stays out of it and works on infrastructure.''

In this contest to decide who faces Arnold, a lot could turn on which guy sidesteps the slugfest long enough to address real issues that California will still face years after the June 6 struggle is over.