ATTACKS WILL ONLY GET UGLIER.

Byline: CHRIS WEINKOPF

THINK recall was ugly? The worst is yet to come.

In the final weeks of the campaign, Californians got a glimpse of what happens to a political machine that's nearing breakdown. A veritable vast, left-wing conspiracy of jurists, establishment media organs and special- interest groups lashed out in a desperate effort to hang on to power.

There were the activist judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who attempted to block the recall before it ever occurred.

There were the journalistic hit men at the New York and Los Angeles Times, printing scurrilous hearsay as fact without a full context in the final days before the vote.

There were the public employee unions and Indian casinos that provided the money, while the ideological ambulance chasers at the American Civil Liberties Union did the legal dirty work.

Then there were the politicians themselves.

Outgoing Gov. Gray Davis happily and hypocritically hyped up allegations of Arnold Schwarzenegger's indiscretions. ``The accusations, if true, are very disturbing and raise serious questions about whether Mr. Schwarzenegger should be California's governor,'' Davis piously intoned - in between campaign appearances with Bill Clinton, who's faced an accusation or two himself.

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante engaged in the most noxious form of race- baiting and demagoguery, insinuating that anyone who questioned his ties to Indian casinos was a bigot. In a Spanish-language television interview, he hysterically told viewers that Schwarzenegger and Republicans ``are against access to colleges and access to schools,'' even ``against food.''

Davis, Bustamante, their loyalists and their financial backers fought with the ferocity of cornered dogs. The system that served them so well was in peril.

And so it remains. The political machine that went into high gear to protect Davis isn't going to stop, nor are its terminator tactics. It's merely altering its mission, from saving Gray to destroying Arnold.

Imagine the ugliness of the past eight weeks. Multiply it by three years. That's California's political future.

``I think it's a sad day for California,'' state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Los Angeles, snarled after the returns came in on Tuesday. ``Just as with (former Minnesota Gov.) Jesse Ventura, voters are going to realize slowly that they elected a guy who knows nothing about running a state. (Schwarzenegger) is either going to be totally manipulated by his handlers, or he's going to have to be taught by the Legislature.''

In other words, the governor-elect can expect to work with at least some legislators more interested in ``teaching'' him than in cooperating with him.

He can also expect more of what Clinton aides once termed ``bimbo eruptions'' - old allegations of sexual misconduct dug up not in the interest of justice, but for political attack. He can expect lawsuits from the likes of Gloria Allred and the litigious lynch mob.

And, in due time, someone in Sacramento will no doubt call for public hearings on Arnold's boorish past. Bustamante has already suggested that criminal charges could be filed.

Let's just hope the Schwarzenegger sex hearings don't conflict with the next recall election, which the extreme elements of the Democratic Party are already plotting.

Davis loyalists kept interrupting their hero's concession speech with chants of ``Recall!'' And on election night, state Democratic Party spokesman Bob Mulholland told viewers on Fox News that he and his gang would charitably give Schwarzenegger a whole 100 days before launching the effort.

Ugly though it may be, none of this should faze Schwarzenegger.

It was the politics of ugliness, after all, that led to Davis' demise and Arnold's victory. Democrats believed that they could win over the mainstream with a nasty appeal to their most hard-core base. They mistook their electoral dominance for ideological hegemony, and their arrogance alienated a once-supportive electorate.

It was a catastrophic miscalculation, but the machine doesn't seem to have learned from it. Its members underestimate both public disgust for their actions as well as Californians' desire to see the new governor succeed. They also underestimate Schwarzenegger, writing him off as an accented know-nothing. That's why they'll continue with potshots that ultimately prove self-destructive.

Schwarzenegger has nothing to fear from the inevitable attacks. As another widely underestimated Republican would say, ``Bring 'em on.''