Arnold today acknowledged improperly touching women in the past, said he has reformed and promised to be a champion of women's rights, if elected.

Gubernatorial front-runner Arnold Schwarzenegger acknowledged that he has "behaved badly" to women and offered an apology Thursday...."When I am governor I want to prove to the women that I will be a champion for the women, a champion of the women," Schwarzenegger said at a rally in San Diego. "Now let's go from the dirty politics to the future of California."

The crowd of Schwarzenegger supporters interrupted him with cheers.

Schwarzenegger said: "Yes, it is true that I was on rowdy movie sets and I have done things that were not right which I thought then was playful but now I recognize that I offended people." "Those people that I have offended, I want to say to them I am deeply sorry about that and I apologize because that's not what I'm trying to do," he said.

We don't think the issue will matter one whit in the election. It's more dirty tricks politics and coming so close to the election, we suspect California voters will shrug it off as such. We think his advisors picked the right response. Since they knew it was coming, we wouldn't be surprised if they did focus groups with women and ran several different possible responses by them, so they could determine which would elicit the most favorable reaction.

We'd say: Advantage Arnold on the dirty tricks.

Once again, vote no on recall, no on Proposition 54. The latest poll has Arnold and Gray Davis in a dead heat.