Two days before Labor Day — the traditional kickoff of campaign season — the gloves started to come off in California’s untraditional recall election as actor Arnold Schwarzenegger accused Gov. Gray Davis of pandering to Indian gaming interests.

Without detailing his own positions on some Indian gaming issues, Schwarzenegger issued a statement Saturday criticizing Davis for inviting gaming tribes to recommend potential candidates for two openings on the panel that is supposed to help regulate tribal casinos.

Davis’ camp insisted that the governor never promised seats on the commission to the Native American casino interests, but — as he always does — invited interested parties to offer their recommendations on filling board vacancies, and will make the final decisions himself. Davis, who has received $1.4 million in contributions from Indian tribes, said the practice was “perfectly appropriate.”

The interchange, and the increasingly aggressive tone of the campaign, comes just days before voters begin casting absentee ballots — and just five weeks to go before the Oct. 7 election.

The exchange over regulation of tribal gaming also occurs at a time when Indian casino operators, who have become the biggest spenders in Sacramento, are trying to renegotiate compacts so that they can expand gambling.

Schwarzenegger said that Davis, who met with various tribal leaders Thursday in Sacramento, is “putting his own political interest ahead of the public interest.”

“The California Gambling Control Commission should be completely independent of any perceived control of the very interests it is supposed to regulate,” the statement said.

The commission, along with the attorney general’s office and the tribes themselves, is supposed to regulate the industry. The commission handles licensing, collects money that is shared with nongaming tribes and advises the Legislature on Indian gaming.

‘ROUTINE PRACTICE’

Davis spokeswoman Hilary McLean said the governor’s request for potential candidates is the practice that has long been followed in state government. “If he was speaking to lawyers, he’d ask for recommendation for a good judge. If he was speaking to doctors, he would ask for a recommendation on the medical board,” she said. “It’s a very routine process.”

“It’s sad that (Schwarzenegger) promised not to run a negative campaign, and now he’s attacking,” said Peter Ragone, a spokesman for Davis’ anti-recall campaign. “He’s trying to change the subject from a couple of bad days of press.”

Davis himself told reporters at an impromptu news conference: “That’s how you find good quality people. . . . Since we haven’t had gaming in this state, we need to look hard with people who have law enforcement and regulatory experience.

“(The tribes) are sovereign nations and they are entitled to make recommendations,” he said. “I make the final judgment.”

Two other figures in the recall election, Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock, also met with Indian leaders last week.

With most major candidates preparing to hit the campaign trail Monday, their campaigns are also preparing another milestone in the historic recall: the first major televised debate.

Davis and all major gubernatorial candidates — with the exception of Schwarzenegger — have agreed to appear at the Wednesday debate in Walnut Creek, sponsored by KTVU Channel 2 and the Contra Costa Times. Already, 200 reporters from around the world have requested credentials for the 90-minute event, which will be nationally televised live by C-Span and statewide by at least four television stations.

OUI INTERVIEW

On Saturday, Davis, for the first time, commented on the controversy surrounding an interview given by Schwarzenegger to Oui magazine in 1977. In the interview — one the actor said this week he didn’t recall — the then-29- year-old bodybuilder spoke of drug use and group sex.

“Everyone has to be accountable for what they did and what they said over their lifetime,” said Davis, in response to a reporter’s question. “That will be a matter that the voters take into account.” But, he added, “my focus is the future, not the past.”

Meanwhile, Bustamante — in Delano (Kern County), the heart of Cesar Chavez’s farmworker movement — announced the endorsement of the United Farm Workers union. Near the speaker’s podium at the event was a prominent photograph of Schwarzenegger hugging former Gov. Pete Wilson, who angered Latinos with his backing of the 1994 anti-illegal-immigration Proposition 187.

Bustamante also faced more grilling about his involvement with the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan, or MEChA, which he joined as a student at Fresno State University in the 1970s — a group that supporters say was aimed at aiding minority students, but which conservatives have called racist.

In an interview on FOX News, Bustamante refused to renounce the organization, saying, “I think that I’ve demonstrated, not by words, but by deeds, who I am — and defined myself and my politics.”

Bustamante also took questions about his acceptance of a $500,000 donation from the Pechanga Band of Mission Indians, one of the state’s major gaming tribes. Critics say he has taken advantage of a campaign finance loophole that allows him to skirt campaign finance laws limiting donations to $21,200 per donor. Bustamante’s attorneys say that his campaign committee existed before the rules changed and that the practice is permitted under current law.

Schwarzenegger’s camp yesterday, however, aimed to tie both Davis’ and Bustamante’s relations with Native American casino interests together — and sought to portray them and McClintock, who has also accepted their campaign checks, as beholden to a powerful special interest.

Campaign spokesman Rob Stutzman said that “what Arnold’s been clear about is . . . anyone he’s going to negotiate with, he’s not going to take funds from. Davis, Bustamante and McClintock have all put themselves in a position to be compromised.”

NO DETAILS ON POSITION

But the Schwarzenegger camp — even as it criticized the Democrats — did not appear prepared to detail the GOP candidate’s own positions on a range of Indian gaming issues.

Schwarzenegger “doesn’t think gaming should be expanded off of reservations, ” Stutzman said. But asked about two other key matters — expansion of the number of slot machines, and whether Indian casinos should be required to give a bigger slice of their profits back to state coffers — Stutzman said the candidate could not outline those issues until he was elected.