Stockton, Calif. ? It was a most awkward campaign fund-raising tour: President Bush first ignored the would-be Republican governor he came to help, and then embraced Bill Simon corporate fraud verdict and all as a “proven businessman.”

Bush called Simon “the breath of fresh air” that California needs after the Democratic administration of Gov. Gray Davis.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon, right, greets President Bush as he arrives in Los Alamitos, Calif. Simon's connections to a company that has been fined for fraud made for some awkward moments during Bush's Friday campaign stops.

The president’s fund-raising tour of California on Friday, one the White House once considered canceling, played out against a background of Bush’s get-tough message on corporate crime.

Barely one month ago, Bush and his political team were blindsided by the $78 million judgment that a civil jury returned against the investment firm that Simon controls with his brother. The White House hemmed and hawed about skipping this tour but went ahead with the nearly $3 million weekend schedule one lunch, one reception and one breakfast with Simon rather than upset the prominent California Republican donors Bush will need for his own re-election bid in 2004.

The ambivalence showed on Friday.

Arriving in Stockton, Bush gave Simon the most perfunctory of handshakes in a receiving line and then, leaving him at the airport, never uttered the name Simon to the cheering, stomping crowd at a nearby public rally.

Bush did promote congressional candidates Richard Pombo and Doug Ose from the Stockton stage and, to a riser packed with news cameras, delivered his standard stump-speech lines against corporate criminals who cook the books.

It was a different scene about an hour later at the private luncheon benefiting Simon’s campaign against Davis, the Democrat incumbent.

“I’m so proud to be here to embrace his candidacy,” Bush enthused, calling Simon the right man to keep an eye on the state budget.

“It’s your money. And you better have somebody who understands that,” Bush told donors.

“Bill Simon is a proven businessman who can get that done.”

The president said nothing about corporate responsibility, which has been a reliable component of his speeches for almost two months.

Simon called Bush’s visit “the highlight of the week” and pledged to “bring honor and respect back to the governor’s office in California.”

Davis, the Democratic incumbent, did his best to make both Bush and Simon uncomfortable. Not far from the president’s Orange County evening appearance with Simon, Davis staged a signing ceremony to enact three bills stiffening state accounting laws and increasing prison terms for corporate fraud.

Simon was not named in the lawsuit in which his family’s firm was convicted of defrauding a partner and says he thinks the verdict, which is being appealed, will be overturned. Bush says he accepts Simon’s word. Simon is also accused of investing in an offshore tax shelter, which he denies.

White House organizers designed Friday’s schedule so that the president appeared at Simon’s side only in such private fund-raisers, with footage belatedly made available to TV networks as they raced to make evening news deadlines.

In the last presidential election, Bush lost California to Democrat Al Gore by 1.3 million votes.

By the time Bush heads back to Texas today, he will have netted Simon’s campaign another $2.6 million.