AUSTIN – In his quest for re-election, Gov. Rick Perry has launched a two-coast offensive.

Everyone knows his riff on Washington: bad, wasteful, arrogant. For Perry, contempt of Congress isn't a crime; it's common sense.

But punctuating the speeches and interviews is another bad boy: California. The governor dishes disdain and drips derision on the debt-saddled, job-leaking, tax-hiking not-so-Golden State.

It's a state that needs strong, conservative leadership to bring it back from the brink, he told The Wall Street Journal in August, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger – a fellow Republican – can't deliver it.

"I think Arnold squandered that chance," Perry said.

In stops around Texas, the governor brags on how he is wooing firms from California and selling the advantages of lawsuit caps, a balanced budget, low regulation and limited taxes.

He recently told a crowd celebrating the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce that he is "proud that El Paso is the first impression that people who are packing up and leaving California have when they come into the state of Texas."

And on Thursday, his office touted an article from a business-oriented Web site that lauded Texas and drop-kicked California, criticizing it not just for a tough business climate but for harboring the Sierra and Cascades. "California has mountains that limit growth," Trends Magazine wrote. "Texas is largely flat.

"California is big. Texas is bigger."

Perry exudes, to use an Austrian native's word, schadenfreude. Not that Schwarzenegger is worried or willing to return the favor.

"The governor understands that Governor Perry is going through a rough time right now and doesn't want to pile on," said Schwarzenegger press secretary Aaron McLear, referring to the tough primary challenge Perry faces in March from Kay Bailey Hutchison.

"Like Governor Perry, ... [Schwarzenegger] is focused on California, not Texas," McLear said.

Perry spokesman Mark Miner said it is all a good, clean rivalry between big states.

"It's healthy for states to compete against each other for jobs, companies and to attract people to their state. It's competition among the states, and that will attract innovation and jobs to the states that are succeeding," Miner said.

Yet no state is singled out like California. Not even those governed by Democrats, like New York or Illinois, or a Sun Belt competitor like Florida.

Perry likes to contrast a Texas job market, albeit weakened, against the recession-racked and housing-busted motif of a liberal, hybrid-hugging California.

And he seems to like bragging about presiding over a more muscular economy than the one overseen by the term-limited Terminator.

Schwarzenegger is the kind of big-tent Republican who plays down social conservatism and entertains an occasional tax hike that Perry has in his crosshairs.

Jack Citrin, head of governmental studies at the University of California-Berkeley, said that while both governors might be Republican, "Schwarzenegger and Perry do occupy different points on the political spectrum."

Schwarzenegger is a GOP governor in a Democratic state with a Democratic legislature.

"For a Republican to win at the statewide level, you can be a fiscal conservative, but if you take a fairly hard line on social issues, you'd have a hard time winning," Citrin said.

Over the past few years, when legislators had a surplus, they spent it. And once the bubble burst, there were no reserves and few options left for California, Citrin said.

But this summer, Schwarzenegger won the fiscal fight by insisting "on significant cuts in services and a budget that didn't raise taxes," Citrin said. "He was really pretty close to what your governor would call the Republican mantra."

Perry likes to note that while states such as California were slashing, Texas lawmakers wrote the state's current budget without raising taxes or dipping into the Rainy Day Fund. He doesn't mention the state's heavy reliance on federal economic stimulus funds.

And Perry supports one of the very provisions that has hamstrung California lawmakers. California's constitution requires two-thirds approval by lawmakers to adopt state budgets or raise taxes. Perry has recently recommended a similar super-majority rule in Texas for tax increases.

But the facts and vagaries of the states are like comparing Texas oranges to California apples, said Austin political consultant Bill Miller.

"Perry doesn't care if California's got a Republican governor. Politicians don't pass up easy targets," Miller said.

California is low-hanging avocados, he said.

"Texas has been the butt of jokes around the country for a long time for a lot of people. We take great relief when we can make fun of someone else," Miller said. "And California – this is the right time and right place."