Bill signing season is normally pretty routine stuff for
California governors. They often gripe about tight deadlines
forcing them to plow quickly through the thousand or so proposed
laws plopped on their desk as the Legislature winds up its session
each fall.
Bill signing season is normally pretty routine stuff for California governors. They often gripe about tight deadlines forcing them to plow quickly through the thousand or so proposed laws plopped on their desk as the Legislature winds up its session each fall.
But no one has ever heard Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger complain. In fact, if he rebounds from his dismal summer and early autumn of conflict of interest revelations and rock-bottom poll ratings, the just-ended bill signing season may have proven the turning point.
That’s because no governor ever stage managed the seemingly humdrum process so skillfully. What Schwarzenegger did appears so stunningly simple that it’s surprising previous governors never took a similar approach.
All he did was categorize the bills presented to him. Unlike Pete Wilson or Gray Davis or even fellow actor Ronald Reagan, Schwarzenegger did not sign or veto bills willy-nilly in the same basic order they arrived on his desk. Instead, he or his staff sorted them by topic; then he signed or vetoed those in each topic en masse.
As a result, every political reporter in California received one press release titled “Gov. Schwarzenegger Signs Legislation to Protect California’s Environment.” This let him take credit for cutting smog, encouraging recycling, protecting wilderness and cleaning up messes left by illegal methamphetamine labs. Altogether, the handout listed 30 bills signed by the governor, thus precluding most reporters from focusing on individual measures or even on vetoes.
The next morning’s headline in the influential San Jose Mercury-News: “Governor Signs Green Laws.” Never mind that he vetoed four of the 10 proposals listed as important by environmentalists; the headline told all who read it that Schwarzenegger is a conservationist. And never mind that 90 percent of the bills he signed were written by the very Democratic lawmakers Republican Schwarzenegger labeled “girlie men” and “losers;” he still took credit for any potential good their work might do.
It was the same for a group of bills covering a range of topics from regulating video games to allowing foster parents to hire babysitters of their own choice. “Gov. Schwarzenegger Takes Steps to Protect Children,” said the press release title.
This time, Schwarzenegger lumped together 20 bills with little in common except that they somehow could affect children. Only one was sponsored by a Republican, but the Republican governor made hay with all of them when the San Francisco Chronicle topped its street editions the next day with a huge headline crediting Schwarzenegger alone with acting to protect youngsters.
So it went through the entire bill signing period. While it’s always true that the Legislature proposes and the governor disposes, no governor ever managed to monopolize the credit like Schwarzenegger.
This was brilliant politics, like it or not, like watching a theatrical genius at work.
For awhile, all his summertime woes were submerged by the combination of bill signing photo opportunities and a series of stage managed “town halls” Schwarzenegger conducted for hand-picked audiences of his admirers in many corners of the state.
“This was an effective counterattack against all the labor union commercials that have portrayed him as just another conservative Republican,” said Allan Hoffenblum, a longtime Republican political analyst and co-publisher of a widely-used guidebook on California politics.
“This established, for instance, that while Arnold may not be 100 percent on the Sierra Club list, you at least can’t credibly call him a zero on the environment, either,” Hoffenblum adds. “After the summer he had, it was about time he and his staff did something right.”
One big question that’s still unanswered: Will the message of the bill-signings – that Schwarzenegger is a centrist – stick?
It won’t if Garry South has his way. South, once the chief adviser to Democrat Davis and now running state Controller Steve Westly’s campaign for the Democratic nomination to oppose Schwarzenegger next year, vows to resurrect Schwarzenegger’s conflicts of interests and his broken promise not to raise campaign money from special interests.
“This guy has never had a real campaign run against him,” South says. “You can bet we will bring back all the broken promises and conflicts of interest. It will take big money to drive that, but we will have it.” Westly’s campaign had $19 million on hand in late October.
But even if South and Westly get their chance to conduct a rough-and-tumble drive to oust Schwarzenegger next year, the governor’s performance this fall has surely made their task more difficult than it seemed only two months ago.
Elias is author of “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It.” E-mail him at [email protected].
