THE LATEST from the Left Coast: Bill Simon has taken out radio ads attacking Arnold Schwarzenegger, who reportedly will start running TV ads as early as Wednesday. On the Democratic side, Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, also a candidate to replace Gray Davis, claims that the governor's henchmen are trying to squelch donations to his campaign.

Davis, meanwhile, has received an unexpected boost--more like a testosterone shot--from an unlikely source: the actress Cybill Shepherd, who bared her soul to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The report, verbatim:

Shepherd told The Chronicle that the governor is "a good kisser." At least he was 36 years ago, when they first met in Hawaii. Shepherd, the star of TV's "Moonlighting" and "Cybill," was a 16-year-old on a trip with her parents, and Davis was working a summer job at a travel company.

Shepherd said she was smitten almost immediately, as she saw the young Gray--eight years her senior--dressed in a decidedly nontropical blue blazer over a gray T-shirt. Not only was the future governor striking, she said, "but he was so smart. He always treated me like an intellectual equal."

Shepherd's father wasn't so happy when they "made out passionately on the beach. We were covered with sand, but we were never lovers," she said.

But wait, there's more . . .

They fell out of touch until the mid-1980s, when Shepherd received a pot holder in the mail--a knickknack from Davis' Assembly campaign. And now, she feels so upset about the recall election that--unsolicited by Davis operatives--she said, "I feel

"He is a wonderful man, and he's served this state well," Shepherd said. "Just because he doesn't speak with the charisma of John Kennedy, people want to recall him."

Let's set aside the visual of a 24-year-old future governor in a remake of "From Here to Eternity" with a 16-year minor (no Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr they). The real story here: Davis left the poor girl with a broken heart and a crummy pot holder, yet she's still a fan. If Gray can placate Cybill, maybe he can charm his way out of being recalled.

Speaking of charm, Arnold's handlers have a challenge ahead of them. In the last Field Poll, the Terminator received a 44 percent positive rating, and a 40 percent negative rating (the same negative as his co-frontrunner, Bustamante). Why so high a negative? That's a good question--one that Arnold hopes can be answered by his chief strategist George Gorton, who specializes in figuring out the mind of the California voter.

Arnold for Governor will be fought on land, in the air(waves), and by sea. But the real heavy lifting--figuring where the man is vulnerable--will occur in out-of-the way hamlets in the San Fernando Valley, Sacramento, and Contra Costa County, which is east of San Francisco. There, small focus groups of "average" Californians will be asked for their impressions of Arnold. This includes word association. It involves watching videotape of the candidate. And it entails listening to different messages. It's from such meetings that campaign themes and TV ads emerge.