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Governor Gets ‘Tonight’ Slot, So Rival Seeks Equal Time

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, left, with Jay Leno Wednesday night on “The Tonight Show.” The governor’s Democratic opponent is crying foul.Credit...Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Correction Appended

BURBANK, Calif., Oct. 11 — The Democrat who hopes to replace Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California says he faxed a letter to Jay Leno. He also says he sent Mr. Leno an overnight letter.

And still, the Democrat, Phil Angelides, has not been invited to appear on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” on NBC, and this has made the candidate angry.

Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has had no such problem. The governor chatted up Mr. Leno on the air Wednesday night, just as he did some three years ago when he first ran for governor in California’s recall election.

With this Election Day just weeks away, and Mr. Angelides trailing rather substantially in the polls, his campaign has decided to make an issue of the unequal treatment. At the campaign’s behest, Representative Xavier Becerra, a Democrat from Los Angeles, wrote a letter of complaint to Kevin J. Martin, the president of the Federal Communications Commission.

The Angelides campaign wrote a letter to NBC affiliates appealing to them to not broadcast Mr. Leno’s show with the governor.

Mr. Angelides’s communications director, Amanda Crumley, accused Mr. Leno of giving Mr. Schwarzenegger a leg up among late-night television viewers in violation of F.C.C. rules.

“As absentee ballots are currently hitting homes in California,” Ms. Crumley said in a prepared statement, “the governor is getting what amounts to millions in free airtime from the network.”

A spokesman for the commission, David Fiske, declined to comment, as did Mr. Schwarzenegger’s re-election campaign.

During his “Tonight Show” interview on Wednesday — before which Mr. Leno made a few Marshmallow Fluff-like jokes at the governor’s expense — Mr. Schwarzenegger never mentioned his campaign rival.

But the governor did note, in this order, that Heidi Klum looked “gorgeous,” that his current job was the best he has ever had, that he spent his 20th anniversary stashing his children at the neighbors’ while he plied his wife with diamonds, and that linking him to President Bush was “like linking me to an Oscar.” He also strongly suggested that the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, ought to resign as a result of the scandal engulfing the Republican Congress.

It is Ms. Crumley’s view that Mr. Leno’s invitation to Mr. Schwarzenegger — who, it so happens, announced his candidacy for governor (along with unrelated details of a bikini wax) on “The Tonight Show” in 2003 — violates the equal time provision written into the nation’s Communications Act in 1959. The provision prohibits media programs, with the exception of news interviews, documentaries or newscasts, from giving an unfair share of broadcast time to a candidate without making available equal time to the other candidates running for that office.

“We’ve always thought the Schwarzenegger administration is a joke,” Ms. Crumley said. “And apparently so does Jay Leno. Perhaps that’s why Leno invited Schwarzenegger to appear for a few laughs on his program alongside supermodel Heidi Klum and a Las Vegas circus act.”

A spokeswoman for NBC, Tracy St. Pierre, said “The Tonight Show” had never received a request from Mr. Angelides. Ms. St. Pierre, in a prepared statement, said the network was “following the news guidelines for interviewing a political candidate.”

It is not the first time that Mr. Leno has come under fire for his friendship with Mr. Schwarzenegger.

In 2003, to counter claims that he was essentially giving prime air time to his pal, Mr. Leno invited on his show more than 80 people who claimed to be running for governor in the recall election, including a porn star and a candidate who showed up dressed as Rocky Balboa. Mr. Leno began that show with, “Welcome to California, now a division of Ringling Brothers.”

Mr. Schwarzenegger appeared that year on many other television and radio shows as well, and an F.C.C. ruling regarding one of them might presage the end to Mr. Angelides’s battle.

In a ruling about Mr. Schwarzenegger’s appearance on “The Howard Stern Show,” the agency declared the show was exempt from the equal time provision, calling it a “bona fide news program.”

If a show that regularly features women in various stages of undress, sometimes engaged in lewd acts with fruit, was declared a news program, some legal analysts suggested Mr. Leno’s show might likely pass the same test.

Correction: Oct. 13, 2006

An article yesterday about an appearance by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” referred incorrectly to Amanda Crumley, who said the appearance violated Federal Communications Commission rules. She is the communications director, not the campaign manager, for Phil Angelides, the Democrat running against Mr. Schwarzenegger.

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