Just about the time radio disk jockeys in Los Angeles and San
Francisco began joking about the suddenly softer midsection Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger displayed on a Maui beach in March, his
popularity ratings started showing signs of even more extreme
softening.
Just about the time radio disk jockeys in Los Angeles and San Francisco began joking about the suddenly softer midsection Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger displayed on a Maui beach in March, his popularity ratings started showing signs of even more extreme softening.
A poll for one San Francisco television station late last month found only 46 percent of Californians viewing Schwarzenegger favorably. A private survey conducted for the state’s labor federation reportedly put the figure at 42 percent.
Those numbers represent an acceleration of a slide reported earlier this year by both the widely-disseminated Field Poll and regular surveys conducted by the Los Angeles Times, both of which at one time found the Republican governor viewed favorably by about 70 percent of voters.
Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger continues drawing huge, adoring, cheering throngs everywhere he goes. If his campaign wants 1,000 persons at an event, that’s what he gets. If the goal is 5,000, that’s how many appear.
But Democrats now believe the wild applause of those crowds conceals a very thin level of support.
Says Bob Mulholland, chief political operative of the state’s Democratic Party, “His crowds are shallow, always looking for an autograph. Last fall, when he campaigned for Republicans against a dozen Democratic legislators, the Democrats all won. He told audiences to go home and telephone their legislators to complain about their votes. The most anyone actually got was six calls from any single Arnold appearance.”
What has cost Schwarzenegger so much of his support? Probably not most of the ideas he’s now pushing.
It’s hard to argue with the plan he supports to take reapportionment away from politicians whose futures depend on the design of their own remap. It’s not easy to dispute the need for a cap to keep expenditures stable when officials can’t agree on a state budget before the deadline.
It’s even difficult to debate the notion of giving new public employees pension plans similar to those in private enterprise, rather than the large stipends guaranteed to today’s state workers.
Schwarzenegger will push these ideas via ballot initiatives if he can gather enough signatures to qualify from for a vote before the deadline later this month for calling a special election in November.
Since Schwarzenegger’s popularity decline likely isn’t mostly about policies he’s pursuing, then it has to be about his fund-raising and his mouth.
As he caters to big corporations whose donations he seeks for a putative $50 million war chest, he looks like a conventional politician and not like a Terminator come to end corrupt government. But terminating corruption was what he said he’d do, back when he was a candidate. And whenever voters begin to see a public figure as a hypocrite, support slides.
Then there are the Schwarzenegger verbal outbursts, which lately seem to come every few weeks. He started by calling legislators who didn’t kowtow to his every whim “girlie men.” That offended some women, who saw it as indicating Schwarzenegger thinks women are weak. In the public eye, it also began to turn him into just another name-calling politico. His numbers dropped a little. It didn’t help when every single “girlie man” he targeted won reelection.
Then came his threat to “kick the butts” of the mostly-female state nurses union because it dared contest his unilateral attempt to thwart a law setting minimum ratios of patients to nurses in hospitals. The nurses soon turned the tables and kicked his butt in their first court encounter, and Schwarzenegger’s numbers dropped a bit more.
After that, he admitted on national TV to having pumped up his muscles with steroids during his body-building career. The contrast between the rewards he reaped from steroid use and his tepid suggestion that today’s young athletes abstain from them was painfully clear. This was shortly before the most recent polls.
“Schwarzenegger is losing the part of the union rank and file that voted for him in the recall election in spite of what their leadership told them,” said Mulholland. “He’s losing the reform-minded voters because of his fund-raising extremes. He’s lost crime victims groups with his proposals to change the prison system and emphasize rehabilitation over punishment.”
All of which still doesn’t render Schwarzenegger an easy mark for anyone. With his jaunty outlook and his immense campaign bank accounts, Schwarzenegger can commandeer free air time on television news programs almost anytime and also air as many campaign commercials as he likes.
In a state where voters are always volatile, and the ratings of politicians can swing quickly from highly favorable to deeply negative and back again, the combination of celebrity, personality and money may yet produce victories for every ballot measure Schwarzenegger now pushes and for himself next year.
And maybe not. “If he loses on some of his initiatives, I think he might be a little shellshocked,” said Mulholland. “Democrats were afraid of him for awhile, but I don’t think we are any more.”
