LONG BEACH -- Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger may have avoided tough policy questions by skipping Wednesday's debate among other major candidates in the gubernatorial recall election, but he endured jeers and was even egged when he made a brief speech to students at California State University here.

Schwarzenegger was heckled throughout his speech by Latino students objecting to his support of Proposition 187, the 1994 initiative that sought to cut off state health care and social services to undocumented immigrants. After he finished talking, he was pelted with an egg as he made his way through a fenced-off chute that cut through the crowd of several hundred onlookers.

Campaign spokesman Todd Harris said the egg hit Schwarzenegger's jacket. Campus police had not located the egg-thrower by Wednesday evening.

"This guy owes me bacon now, there's no two ways about it," Schwarzenegger said to reporters later when asked about the incident. "This is all just part of free speech. I think it's great."

While Schwarzenegger's campaign had promoted Wednesday's speech as a major policy address, the Republican candidate broke virtually no new ground. He addressed the mostly supportive crowd of students in generalities and offered few specifics of how he would achieve his goals of making the state more business-friendly, ridding Sacramento of special interest influence and cleaning up the state's budget mess.

He drew loud laughter with a quip about Gov. Gray Davis, whom he is trying to unseat in the Oct. 7 recall election, and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the only major Democratic candidate on the ballot.

"They come from the same mold; they are the twin terminators of Sacramento," he said.

When pressed by reporters after the speech, Schwarzenegger would not say why he did not see a problem with taking money from corporate donors while blasting Davis and Bustamante for receiving contributions from labor unions and Indian tribes with casinos.

"I'm against taking any money from unions or Indian tribes," he said.

But Schwarzenegger reported receiving a $2,500 contribution from a public employees labor union. The money came from the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs Political Action Committee, according to reports filed Wednesday with the secretary of state.

Schwarzenegger deflected questions about why he chose not to participate in Wednesday's debate in Walnut Creek. As a bodybuilder, he said, he didn't bother participating in regional contests but focused on the Mr. World and Mr. Universe championships instead. Similarly, he suggested, he would focus on a single debate among recall candidates, a forum scheduled by the California Broadcasters Association on Sept. 24.

Schwarzenegger has been criticized for choosing a debate where he would receive the questions in advance rather than one in which he would be forced to answer spontaneously. Harris said Wednesday that the campaign's co-chairman, Rep. David Dreier, R-San Dimas, sent a letter to the broadcasters asking that the format be changed so the questions were not provided in advance.

"It is our strong belief that spontaneous questions will better serve the people of California," Harris said.

In his speech at CSU, Schwarzenegger once again pledged to fix the state's budget mess. But he told the students he wouldn't do it by hurting education.

"It is outrageous that Sacramento increased the tuition by 40 percent in one year," he said to wild cheering. "We must never let that happen again."

Two new television ads unveiled statewide by the Schwarzenegger campaign Wednesday also hit the themes of budget restraint and support for education. In one 30-second ad, Schwarzenegger asserts: "California is spending $29 million more per day than it takes in. Now, here is my plan: audit everything, open the books, and then we end the crazy deficit spending."

Steve Peace, Davis' finance director, took issue with Schwarzenegger's portrayal of the situation. In fact, he said, the state is currently taking in $6 million more per day than it is spending. Even if one-time measures that artificially boosted revenue this fiscal year were subtracted, the shortfall would be more like $7 million a day, he said.

After his speech, Schwarzenegger faced additional questions from the press about a 1977 magazine interview in which the bodybuilder described taking drugs and engaging in casual sex, including an incident in which multiple men at his gym had sex with a single woman.

On Tuesday, Schwarzenegger told a television station that some of the statements he made to Oui magazine were untrue. On Wednesday, he didn't assert that he said anything untruthful but said of the group sex incident: "I don't remember it ever happening. I just remember that the '70s were outrageous."

While there were numerous "Young voters for Arnold" signs waving in the crowd Wednesday, many students and staff members said they had come to hear the speech mainly because of Schwarzenegger's star appeal, not his politics.

Tyler Brock, 20, said his Greek mythology class was dismissed so students could attend the speech. Brock's friend, Aaron Rosenberg, 20, said he grew up idolizing Schwarzenegger but hasn't made up his mind whom to vote for in the recall election.

"He was the Terminator," Rosenberg said. "He blew stuff up. It was cool."

The protesters disrupting the speech weren't unsure of their opinions, however. "We don't want him to be our governor," said Luz Vazquez Ramos, 28.

Schwarzenegger has attracted criticism from Latinos for his support of Proposition 187. He has also said he opposes a bill that passed the Legislature Wednesday that would allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver's licenses in California.

In an effort to reach Latinos, the Schwarzenegger campaign this week hired Juan Botero, a Denver political consultant who will be his spokesman for Latino media. Botero said Wednesday that voters "have been misled to think Arnold is anti-immigrant, when nothing could be further from the truth. Arnold believes in following the law."