Despite months of completely positive news coverage, Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger still has not been able to move his overall job
approval ratings in major polls anywhere near the 50 percent mark,
let alone achieving the sky-high approval levels he enjoyed before
pushing last year’s futile special election.
Despite months of completely positive news coverage, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger still has not been able to move his overall job approval ratings in major polls anywhere near the 50 percent mark, let alone achieving the sky-high approval levels he enjoyed before pushing last year’s futile special election.
His relative popularity can be seen – or not seen – on car bumpers all around California. Where “Join Arnold” stickers abounded during the recall election campaign of 2003, when Republican Schwarzenegger won with 48 percent of the vote, now they are few and far between.
This leaves him with one vital need as he gets set to begin his fall re-election campaign in earnest: Schwarzenegger probably cannot win this fall without near-unanimous support from his party’s conservative base. In fact, he can’t win if any significant number of those voters stay home. He probably can’t win if those same voters don’t volunteer in significant numbers to help him.
But he also can’t win unless he attracts a majority of the moderate, independent voters who in ever-increasing numbers lately have been registering to vote without declaring a party preference. Play to one of these audiences and you may lose the other.
Most of the governor’s moves this year have been aimed squarely at the independent voters, who made up 18 percent of the electorate in the June primary, up from 14 percent four years ago.
When Schwarzenegger switches positions on issues like border fences and use of National Guard troops to stop illegal immigration, it is at least in part to appease the decline-to-staters. When he restores funding he had previously denied to public schools, it is partly intended to defang opposition from the California Teachers Assn., but also aims at pleasing the independents. When the governor backs almost $40 billion in state construction and repair bonds, he aims to appease labor unions, moderate Democrats and independents who resisted his ballot initiatives of last year.
But all these things aggravate the Republican base. When Schwarzenegger first opposes a border fence as useless and also opposes the National Guard aiding the Border Patrol, then does an about-face and supports both tactics, he makes Republican voters wonder what he really believes.
Conservative Steve Frank, a former leader of the activist California Republican Assembly, lists on his weblog several ways Schwarzenegger could convince Republicans he is serious about controlling illegal immigration. Among other measures, he said the governor should force employers of illegals to deduct income taxes from their pay, make those same employers pay into the state’s workers compensation fund, enforce worker safety rules on employers of illegals, order the Highway Patrol to impound cars driven by unlicensed drivers including the undocumented, and enforce state laws that prohibit banks from issuing loans to customers who plan to use the money to break or defy other laws.
“Schwarzenegger needs a Republican agenda to get GOP’ers to vote for him,” Frank said. “Doing these things would go a long way toward getting the vote.”
But so far, Schwarzenegger shows no signs of becoming an anti-illegal immigrant activist. For one thing, to do so would displease many big businesses which employ droves of illegals and also appear on the list of the governor’s major campaign contributors.
At the same time, some active Republicans are offended by Schwarzenegger’s unquestioning support of the multi-billion-dollar bond measures designed by legislative Democrats and placed on the November ballot after the governor signed off on them.
Frank claims that illegal immigrants will enjoy most of the benefits from added school construction, affordable housing, farmworker housing and school rehabilitation. He also dislikes provisions that almost guarantee union labor on projects funded by the bonds.
“Republicans were rolled,” Frank complained, noting that Democratic leaders gleefully traveled the state with Schwarzenegger after passing the bonds.
Frank is correct that there is no Republican agenda in any of this. By contrast, there was a strong GOP agenda in the initiatives Schwarzenegger backed last year, and they failed badly. At the time, Schwarzenegger intoned, “The people have spoken.” Who knew that meant he would virtually abandon his party’s usual positions as a result?
But he won’t win re-election unless he convinces core Republicans that he’s preferable to Democratic challenger Phil Angelides, and that a vote for Arnold won’t produce a Democratic agenda.
On the other hand, if he does another U-turn and switches to heavily Republican rhetoric, he figures to alienate the moderate Democrats and independent voters who went strongly against his measures last year.
All of which explains why, international celebrity or not, weak opponent or not, gains in the polls notwithstanding, Schwarzenegger’s re-election hopes remain somewhat uncertain.
Tom Elias is author of the book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His e-mail address is [email protected]
