As a transplant from liberal Massachusetts turned conserva tive talk show host, Californian Mark Williams is never short of material.

On the left, the Sacramento talkmaster has gone toe-to-toe with the liberals over immigration and infuriated Muslims with his comments about the late Palestin ian leader, Yasser Arafat.

On the right, he's grilled Cali fornia Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneg ger on his sexual past and eviscer ated conservative ideologue and former U.S. Education Secretary Bill Bennett over remarks equat ing blacks and crime.

Now, the Attleboro native and top-rated radio station KFBK talker thinks he may be infuriating some people anew with his newly won credentials as an award-winning journalist.

To the surprise of some traditional scribes, Williams was presented with The Associated Press Television and Radio Association of California's Mark Twain award recently in the special programs category for a series of broadcasts he made from Iraq. He shares the award with his wife and producer on the trip, Holly, and KSFO San Francisco talk host Melanie Morgan.

`` I think some of the other guys were thinking, `What, a talk show host?' `` Williams said. `` What's that all about?''

Williams traveled with talk show hosts from across the country to Iraq to interview troops after becoming frustrated with what he calls `` the mainstream media distortion of the truth.''

Williams and his wife spent $18,000 of their own money on the trip and broadcast a three-hour show each day.

`` We came into the airport in a C-130 under fire,'' said Williams, 49, who began talking years ago on WSAR, a Fall River radio station. `` Here I am, a guy who sweatted out the draft during Vietnam, and I'm doing this voluntarily.''

Williams, along with many conservatives, insist that the media has gotten Iraq all wrong -- that insurgent violence and military casualties are only a part of the story and that all anyone needs to do is ask the soldiers on the ground how they feel.

In four days, Williams and other talk hosts visited several locations around Baghdad and did just that.

`` The troops' attitude was basically, tell the people back home that I don't want or need to be here, but there's a need for me to be here and there's something here that needs to be done,'' Williams said.

He said soldiers are afraid that Americans back home will get the wrong impression from media coverage, which he says magnifies violence in Baghdad and a few other hot spots.

`` Vietnam looms very largely in their minds,'' he said. `` They're afraid that what we see on TV does not really reflect what's going on.'' Williams' views didn't always reflect a red state cast.

Raised in Attleboro, where he began listening to talk radio as a teenager, Williams says originally he was further to the left of the spectrum. Then he learned better.

`` I found that I couldn't support some of my ideas,'' he said of the conversion. `` I think that everybody can change their opinions.''

Williams, known nearly as much for promoting conservative rallies in support of Iraq policy or assailing illegal immigration as for his nightly talk show, certainly leaves little doubt about where he stands.

The greeting on his cell phone voice mail announces: `` Want Spanish? Go to Mexico!'' His Web site, www.marktalk.com, declares his unbridled contempt for anything liberal.

`` For Mark, it's not a question of right or left,'' the headline reads. `` It's a question of right or wrong.''

The Web site leads the visitor to the unmistakable conclusion that the right is, well, almost always right. The left need not even show up for the exam.

While his politics may have changed, Williams seems never to have wavered from his ambition to become an influential radio personality.

As a youngster, the son of factory worker Lawrence Williams and his wife, Roberta, Williams listened to pioneer WBZ talkers Jerry Williams and Larry Glick and heard his life's ambition play out before him.

`` My dad worked in a paper mill and I got to go on a tour with him,'' Williams said. `` It didn't take me very long to say, `No, not for me.' ''

Williams says he cobbled his first studio out of `` borrowed'' audio equipment at Attleboro High School, where he delivered his first live `` broadcasts'' over the school intercom during the mid-1970s.

He later attended broadcasting school and began working at stations in Taunton and Fall River before hooking on with his first major market station, Boston's WRKO, as a producer.

During the 1980s, Williams went through a divorce and found there wasn't a lot to keep him in the Northeast.

`` I got a call from Phoenix, and that's where I went,'' he said.

He ended up at 50,000-watt radio station KFBK in 2000. It didn't take long for Sacramento to take notice.

Williams got an early leg up, thanks to George W. Bush's coattails in the disputed 2000 presidential election.

According to a report in the Sacramento News and Review, Williams discovered a conservative Web site fanning GOP outrage over Democratic ballot challenges in Florida. Williams began promoting a Sacramento protest on the air.

About 5,000 motivated Republicans, mostly white and many carrying signs, showed up according to the Sacramento publication.

The protest turned out to be just the overture to an evolving Williams script that marries on-air conservatism with guerrilla theater.

Since then his ratings on KFBK have stayed high. He's also a familiar face around the state capital, where he's led rallies for right-wing causes and proven a thorn in the side of a governor some conservatives now dismiss as `` Arnold Schwarzenegger Kennedy.''

Williams has taken to the streets many times since 2000 on issues ranging from illegal immigration to animal shelters.

He's also led a caravan of counter-demonstrators in opposition to anti-war mom Cindy Sheehan outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Williams buttonholed then-gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003 concerning a magazine interview that suggested the one-time Mr. Universe had once been an enthusiastic observer at a group sex escapade. The former body builder and actor confessed that he had often in the past said some `` outrageous'' things -- although he did not directly admit his participation.

Schwarzenegger is married to Maria Shriver, famously a former network broadcaster and member of the Kennedy clan.

Similarly, Williams also showed disgust with conservative icon Bill Bennett when the former education secretary and current talk show host remarked publicly that one strategy for reducing crime would be to abort black babies.

Williams remarked on CNN's Showbiz Tonight that if Bennett's own mother had had an abortion, there would be `` a lot fewer stupid things'' said on the nation's airwaves.

Although his resume is heavy on conservative credentials, Williams says there's no shortage of targets on either the left or right.

`` The way I look at it,'' Williams said, `` stupid is an equal opportunity disease.''

Williams has been particularly active on the subject of immigration -- a hot issue in California -- even accompanying 500 listeners to Washington, D.C., to lobby for reform.

He's also gone after politicians for permitting illegal aliens to apply for driver's licenses.

The Attleboro High grad says he doesn't oppose immigrants, themselves, but abhors a complicated system that encourages newcomers to cross thinly-guarded borders under cover of night rather than apply legally.

`` I think we make it so hard for people to come in through the front door, that they sneak in through the back door,'' said Williams, who contends uncontrolled immigration threatens American jobs and wages and exposes undocumented workers to exploitation by unscrupulous employers and speculators.

Williams has had a rocky relationship with Muslim activists, once writing in a column that a `` functioning urinal'' would make a fitting headstone for the late Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

The talk master, along with the mayor of Lodi, Calif., also tried to promote a `` Million Muslim March'' in response to terrorism after two people were arrested on terrorism charges and others were held on immigration violations in that city.

No march was ever held, although local Muslim leaders countered that members of their faith had long since spoken out against violence. Many apparently thought the `` march'' was a stunt.

But the talk show host isn't apologizing, nor is he tempering his words in the direction of political correctness.

At least one Muslim group has mounted an online campaign to get Williams fired. Williams has also raised the hackles of liberal media critics Media Matters for America for what the group calls his distortions concerning Iraq.

Following the controversial government response to Hurricane Katrina, Williams called rapper Kanye West a `` Ku Klux Klansman in blackface'' on CNN after West remarked that President Bush `` doesn't care about black people.''

He also blamed the Democratic Party, according to a published transcript on CNN, for rendering people in predominantly black New Orleans `` passive'' and `` expecting the government to do absolutely everything for them, that they didn't have the necessary brains and common sense to get out of the way of a Cat 5 hurricane.''

The outburst led James Shelby, head of the Sacramento Urban League, to call for Williams' dismissal.

`` It's people like (Williams) who keep our country divided,'' Shelby told Sam McManis of the Sacramento Bee.

Williams says what he meant was that West and others were playing the race card with respect to Hurricane Katrina, although he admitted his remarks `` probably didn't come out as clearly as they could have.''

For critics like Shelby, Williams's words speak for themselves. But whatever his intentions, Williams draws frequent support from conservative bloggers and Web sites where the talk show host is seen as speaking the truth in the face of political correctness.

Currently, Williams is riding high on his newly-won recognition.

The talk host admits his trip to Iraq, while illuminating, didn't afford him anything like a comprehensive picture of conditions there.

`` It was like watching the first quarter of an NBA game through a keyhole,'' said Williams, who nonetheless said he experienced the joys of 120-degree weather and periodic sandstorms.

He also said he listened to pleas from U.S. soldiers for toys and school supplies to give to Iraqi children left impoverished by war.

Williams's wife later founded a charity, `` Casey's Kids to Kids,'' to collect donations toward gifts for Iraqi youngsters. The charity has a Web site, www.caseyskids.org.

Williams says the message he got from Iraqi officials and U.S. soldiers in Iraq is much like that being delivered by the Bush administration: stay the course, progress is being made.

The talk show host was asked if he had ever heard a soldier criticize the war or express doubts about the U.S. mission while in Iraq.

He said he did encounter one soldier on his second tour to Iraq who had previously been tapped for dangerous missions, but who had been reassigned in a training capacity.

The soldier, he said, talked animatedly about his frustration -- not about food or the purpose of U.S. involvement -- but of being no longer able to go after insurgents, himself.

`` Basically, he wanted to be out there getting the bad guys,'' Williams said.