Schwarzenegger Shops at Walmart

I guess Arnold really is a Republican... But, of course there's no quid pro quo involved in Cristy Walton's $250,000 'gift' on the same day as Arnold's veto... Nah. Wal-Mart (WMT) and its founding Walton family have emerged as big backers of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, giving about $1 million in the past year to his favored causes as he vetoed legislation aimed at the company. One union-backed bill, which Schwarzenegger vetoed early in October, would have forced the state to disclose names of companies whose workers get government health services meant for poor residents. A second bill, vetoed last year, would have stopped employers from locking workers inside workplaces - a policy Wal-Mart has when employees stock shelves and clean floors after closing hours. The bills reflect issues creating a public relations nightmare for the USA's biggest private employer, with 1.3 million workers, as it expands in California, the USA's biggest market. Critics including Wake-Up Wal-Mart accuse it of endangering workers by locking them in stores, and of reducing its health care costs at taxpayer expense. "Tens of thousands of Wal-Mart employees are on taxpayer-funded health care," says Chris Kofinis of union-led Wake-Up Wal-Mart. The Wal-Mart and Walton political gifts appear in new public campaign finance documents. They show that the same day Schwarzenegger vetoed the health care disclosure bill - Oct. 7 - his California Recovery Team logged a $250,000 gift from Christy Walton. She is the widow of John Walton, a Wal-Mart director who died four months ago. In the next three weeks, the Schwarzenegger-backed Proposition 77 campaign got $250,000 from Wal-Mart Chairman Rob Walton and $100,000 from Wal-Mart. Those gifts and others followed $200,000 to the Recovery Team last year from John Walton about two weeks after Schwarzenegger vetoed the lock-in bill. California Clean Money Campaign