NEW YORK (AP) — California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, hounded by criticism of his fund-raising methods, on Monday added Manhattan to his traveling fund-raising campaign, flexing his political muscle for a crowd of Republicans with big wallets during a dinner and promising protesters they would have no effect on his plans.

"When the special interests push me around, I'll push back," Schwarzenegger said to cheers and applause from more than 500 people at a $1,000-a-plate dinner.

The event, at a midtown hotel, raised more than $500,000.

Schwarzenegger said the protesters who follow him from event to event these days are proof that special interest groups and unions are scrambling because they are upset with his agenda, including plans to privatize the pensions of public employees.

"I love that," he said of the unrest he has unleashed, including setting off a traveling band of nurses who rally outside his fund-raisers with picket signs to signal their opposition to his health care policies and efforts to privatize their pensions.

Schwarzenegger called 2005 "the year of the reforms."

"The people of California deserve it. America deserves it," he said, predicting other states would follow his ideas.

Schwarzenegger, star of the "Terminator" movies, became governor after California voters recalled Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in October 2003 as the state's projected budget deficit grew to $36 billion.

"Last year we stopped the bleeding," Schwarzenegger said of the California economy. "This year we will heal the patient."

Some of his solutions have included proposals to limit the cost of pensions paid to the state's public employees, pay teachers based on merit instead of tenure and change how California's legislative and congressional districts are drawn.

"If we have pension reform in California, pension reform will happen elsewhere, too," Schwarzenegger said.

He added that "politicians don't understand this is the people's money."

The California governor, aiming to raise at least $50 million this year to promote his ideas to change state government and prepare for a possible re-election run in 2006, spoke after speeches by New York Gov. George Pataki and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Pataki noted that New York did not fall into as serious a financial crisis as other states in the last few years.

"Other states just fell apart," he said. "It didn't happen in New York."

Bloomberg said New York City also had been fiscally responsible, cutting $4 billion in expenses without damaging the quality of life.

Schwarzenegger's methods are being challenged by a Sacramento-based group, TheRestofUs.org, which has asked the California Fair Political Practices Commission to probe whether it is proper for him to raise donations of unlimited size.

The California governor is restricted under state law to collecting no more than $22,300 from each donor, but unlimited amounts can be raised by committees with ties to the governor.

Schwarzenegger's current fund-raising trip, which began Friday in Cincinnati, also will take him to Washington, D.C.