SAN FRANICSCO — Could Governor Schwarzenegger of California become a political casualty of the war in Iraq?

While to some that possibility may seem remote, or even bizarre, the governor’s struggling Democratic challenger, Phil Angelides, has concluded that public anger about the turmoil and violence in Baghdad could help put him in charge in Sacramento.

“This war is wrong for our country and wrong for the Californians who are fighting and dying there,” Mr. Angelides said during a rally yesterday at San Francisco State University. “As governor, I will do everything in my power to bring our state’s National Guard troops home from Iraq.”

Mr. Angelides, who presently serves as state treasurer, said he would demand that President Bush and Congress allow the troops to return. The candidate also promised to lobby other governors to resist the war effort.

Mr. Angelides vowed that he would lead a legal battle, if necessary, to get the state’s soldiers home. “I will take any action, including going to court, to return our guardsmen and -women to California,” he said.

The anti-war gambit is the latest effort by the former state Democratic Party chairman to upset the dynamic of a campaign that Mr. Schwarzenegger has dominated. A recent Public Policy Institute of California poll had likely voters favoring the governor by 45% to 32%. Mr. Schwarzenegger has also maintained a 2-to-1 advantage in fund-raising over Mr. Angelides. By stressing his anti-war stance, Mr. Angelides may also be looking to bring out liberal activists and to head off such debacles as a poorly attended rally with Senator Kerry in Hollywood last week that reportedly drew between 50 and 75 people.

“It may be a Hail Mary play, but what else is the Angelides campaign to do?” a political analyst at the University of Southern California, Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, said. “Arnold has co-opted him on almost every single issue.”

After suffering an embarrassing shutout at the polls last year on several ballot measures he championed, Mr. Schwarzenegger revived his political fortunes this year by taking a conciliatory approach with the Democrat-led state Legislature. Today, he is to sign a historic bill that sets targets for reducing greenhouse gases in California.

Mr. Angelides’s anti-war talk dovetails with his strategy of trying to tie Mr. Schwarzenegger to Mr. Bush, who is unpopular in California. The Democrat’s backers reminded voters yesterday not only of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s occasional statements in support of the war, but of his speeches in New York and Ohio in 2004 promoting Mr. Bush’s bid for re-election.

A spokeswoman for the governor, Catherine Levinson, issued a statement saying she detected “political desperation” in Mr. Angelides’s anti-war activism. “Forty-two days from the election, while attending his first-ever anti-war rally, Phil Angelides is spewing political rhetoric calling for action he knows is both illegal and unconstitutional, in another shameless effort to try to get traction in the polls,” Ms. Levinson said.

Aides to Mr. Schwarzenegger have also suggested that the war is a national issue irrelevant to the governor’s race. However, that argument is complicated by Mr. Schwarzenegger’s willingness to legislate on international issues. On Monday, for instance, he signed bills authorizing the state’s pension funds to divest from Sudan because of the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

The effort to pull the Iraq war into the gubernatorial race is the brainchild of a California-based political operative who served as a spokesman for Vice President Gore and Mr. Kerry, Christopher Lehane. He privately suggested the idea of pulling the guard out last year and again in a public blog posting in August.

“There’s no question that the governor has the authority to do it if they’re not able to perform their fundamental duties,” Mr. Lehane said. He pointed to a 1990 Supreme Court decision that suggests governors have the power to prevent assignment of their National Guard troops abroad when the assignments interfere with guard training and duties in their home states.

The unanimous ruling, stemming from Minnesota’s refusal to allow training of guard troops in Central America, generally upheld a 1986 law that barred governors from withdrawing troops based on disagreement with a specific mission.

However, the federal government conceded in that case that the guard could be kept home for a “legitimate state purpose.”

A spokesman for the California guard, Major Daniel Markert, said about 860 soldiers are currently deployed in Iraq, along with a small number of Air National Guard personnel. About 250 military personnel from California, most of them active duty, have been killed in Iraq, the greatest number of any state.

Mr. Angelides has said he will not seek to recall the roughly 300 California guard troops from Afghanistan. That could make his stance harder to defend in court. About 200 students turned out for yesterday’s rally. Some of them may have been enticed by the free pizza. One young man sounded both supportive and skeptical of Mr. Angelides’s vow to bring the guard home.

“I think it could get some people to vote for him,” Nathan Maddox, 20, said. “But I don’t think it would be that practical. Does the governor even have the power to do that?”