EDITORIAL BOOMERANG EFFECT.

PHIL Angelides' gubernatorial campaign learned a painful lesson this week: Doing something wrong to expose your rival's weaknesses will likely come back to haunt you.

It's the boomerang effect of dirty politics, and it seems to have hit Angelides hard. The initiator was a mini-flap over the release of privately taped remarks by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in which he makes inappropriate comments about a ``hot'' Latina legislator.

Last week, when the taped conversation surfaced, the Angelides' campaign jumped all over it. The candidate's strident attempt to exploit the issue didn't help him, and later revelations actually harmed him.

According to the official story, Angelides aides had downloaded the audio file from a state Web site (illegally, the governor's people insist) and leaked it to a newspaper without telling their supervisors.

That explanation doesn't pass the smell test.

As it is, Angelides will likely suffer more political damage from his staff of hacking hacks than Schwarzenegger will suffer from his somewhat disquieting remarks.