Schwarzenegger, Reeling a Year Ago, Heads Toward Re-Election

By Roger Simon

Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Arnold Schwarzenegger sits on a folding chair next to a low stage set up on Venice Beach in Los Angeles. On the stage, Jerome Ferguson is wearing a purple velour G-string, combat boots and nothing else. His heavily muscled, oiled body glistens in the sun.

After Ferguson strikes a few classic bodybuilding poses, the hit song ``Who Let The Dogs Out?'' comes pounding through the loudspeakers, and he begins dancing around the stage, throwing his fist into the air.

The Republican governor of California rises, pumps his own fist in the air, and leaps onto the stage. Ferguson turns toward him. ``I love you, Arnold,'' he says. Schwarzenegger strides to the nearly naked bodybuilder and clasps Ferguson's hand in his own. The crowd roars its approval.

Welcome to politics in California.

Schwarzenegger, 59, is more than a governor. He is a cultural phenomenon. He came to California from Austria at age 20 with only ``dreams and a gym bag,'' as he likes to say. He became a world-famous bodybuilder, a movie star, a real-estate mogul and chief executive of the most-populous state in the U.S.

Now he's in the process of another re-invention: moving toward Democratic policies even as he runs for re-election as a Republican.

Less than a year ago, Schwarzenegger's political prospects were grim. His popularity plunged after he veered to the right, proposing a package of four ballot initiatives that were all rejected by the voters in a special election.

Stumbled

``I stumbled along the way, no two ways about it,'' Schwarzenegger said in an interview.

Since then, he has shifted to the left, bringing in a new set of advisers, some of them Democrats, and embracing a number of popular measures passed by California's Democratic legislature. Polls now show him leading his Democratic opponent, Phil Angelides, the state treasurer.

Schwarzenegger became governor in 2003 when the incumbent, Democrat Gray Davis, was recalled by voters. Schwarzenegger was elected out of a field of 135 candidates with 48.6 percent of the vote. There was no primary, which was key to his victory. In a primary, a Republican candidate more conservative than Schwarzenegger -- who favors abortion rights, stem-cell research, gay rights and gun control -- might have defeated him.

``The key thing for California is that you have to be in the center,'' the governor says, seated at a desk in Carlsbad, in one of the 48 Schwarzenegger volunteer offices that dot the state. ``People want to see someone who has a commonsense approach and that doesn't look at every decision as a party decision. This is what my intention is -- not that I always was successful.''

Rejected

His efforts in last year's special election were spectacularly unsuccessful. The initiatives he proposed -- and wrote a $7 million personal check to support -- would have limited the political power of labor unions, changed the way legislative districts were drawn, extended the probationary period for teachers from two years to five and given the governor new spending controls.

They were seen as too partisan and too conservative for the state, says Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior scholar at the University of Southern California's School of Policy, Planning and Development; Schwarzenegger's wife, former television newscaster and Kennedy-family member Maria Shriver, was the first to warn him of that.

`Being a Fool'

``The partisans on his staff won out over the pragmatists that included Maria,'' says Jeffe. ``Arnold bought the argument that he had to be more identified with his Republican base. Maria told him he was being a fool, and that it would not work.''

Two days after the vote, which cost Californians $50 million to conduct, Schwarzenegger held a news conference to take responsibility for the defeat and admit his wife had been right. ``If I would do another `Terminator' movie, I would have Terminator travel back in time to tell Arnold not to have a special election,'' he said.

His approval rating, which had stood at 62 percent in January 2005, plunged to 35 percent by December. So Schwarzenegger and his wife recruited a new top tier of advisers. They include Susan Kennedy, a Democrat who had been an aide to Davis, as chief of staff; Steve Schmidt, a Republican who worked in President George W. Bush's White House, as campaign manager; Matthew Dowd, a Democrat turned Republican who was Bush's chief campaign strategist in 2004, as top strategist; and Daniel Zingale, a Democrat and longtime gay-rights advocate, as Shriver's chief of staff.

Schwarzenegger says his experience as a bodybuilder and actor, which he brings up often in conversation, showed him that working with ``every race and religion and women, man, everyone together in one pot'' was more important than partisan politics.

`The Smart One'

``I never got into that whole thing about `the Republican way is the only way to go,''' he says. ``As a matter of fact, I always said both parties have something to offer and the person that really can combine the two is really the smart one.''

Besides assembling his bipartisan team, Schwarzenegger has endorsed measures passed by the state legislature, anathema to many Republicans, to raise the minimum wage, provide prescription-drug assistance and cap greenhouse-gas emissions.

``I will always have Republican principles like low taxes or get government off the people's back'' and ``a strong belief that the government is really responsible for the safety of the people,'' he says. ``But from then on, you know, it can go all over the place as far as what is best for the people is really ultimately what is for me the question always.''

`Fake' Democrat

Angelides, for one, doesn't buy his shift. ``Arnold Schwarzenegger has tried to fake being a Democrat, but in a year when the public will reject the George Bush agenda, the people will elect a real Democrat to run this state,'' Angelides, 53, says in an interview.

At the same time, he admits he is waging an uphill battle against a man whose charisma has made him an international superstar. The latest Public Policy Institute of California poll, conducted in late August, showed Schwarzenegger with 45 percent of the vote, Angelides with 32 percent and 23 percent undecided.

``Some days it is like climbing Mount Everest,'' Angelides says. ``The lungs hurt, the legs hurt, it's hard. But the people know in their gut Schwarzenegger doesn't stand with them; he stands with George Bush.''

Bill Carrick, a veteran Democratic strategist working for Angelides, says the campaign's focus groups show that ``Arnold's likeability cuts two ways: He is an action hero who is larger than life, but people are suspicious he is not up to the job, that he is not quite genuine, not authentic.''

`Policy Wonk'

Schmidt, Schwarzenegger's campaign manager, says the governor is ``serious and substantive,'' even ``a policy wonk'' who works seven days a week studying issues. What some dismiss as stunts are, in fact, examples of the governor's ``unbridled enthusiasm,'' he says.

``We were in Bakersfield in a field of corn one day, and the governor commented on the beauty of the corn,'' Schmidt says. ``There were no cameras around. This is typical of him. He is a man of great joy.''

With California governors limited to two terms, ``some think Schwarzenegger's true conservatism will come forth if he is elected to a second term,'' Jeffe says. ``But I think he will be free to drop the pretense that he is a Republican.''

Eli Attie, who was a speechwriter for former Vice President Al Gore and who is now advising Angelides, says the public will eventually turn to a man of action and not a man of acting. ``Angelides is the perfect anti-Arnold,'' Attie says. ``Angelides radiates `I know how to govern; I will not try to blind you with showmanship.'''

No Dirty Word

Showmanship isn't a dirty word to Schwarzenegger, who says it has nothing to do with being a fake. Asked if he uses anything in politics that he learned from his movie career, Schwarzenegger says: ``The sincerity. To penetrate with your honesty is really what it is all about in acting, because in the close-up on the screen, people can read your eyes and your honesty, and the same is in politics.

``People look at you, many times they forget the words, but they look at you and they walk away and they say, `I believe this guy.'''

To contact the reporter on this story: Roger Simon in Washington at rogersimon@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: September 15, 2006 00:08 EDT

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