Not much longer than a year ago, California newspapers carried
headlines like this:
”
Can Arnold Unring the Credibility Bell?
”
and
”
Schwarzenegger’s Apparent Conflicts of Interest.
”
Not much longer than a year ago, California newspapers carried headlines like this: “Can Arnold Unring the Credibility Bell?” and “Schwarzenegger’s Apparent Conflicts of Interest.”
Despite that, despite poll ratings that bottomed out at about a 31 percent favorable rating after voters rejected all his initiatives in last fall’s special election, Arnold Schwarzenegger stands today as a solid favorite for re-election as governor.
The scene calls to mind a 1977 observation by Tom Quinn, campaign manager and a top adviser for then-Gov. Jerry Brown: “We can do pretty much anything we want before January of an election year and no one will remember it,” Quinn said.
That cynical view still seems valid today. No one talks anymore about how after his election in 2003, Schwarzenegger signed a $5 million contract to promote muscle magazines that depend heavily on advertisements for dietary supplements, then vetoed a 2004 bill cracking down on high school athletes’ use of anabolic steroids and other supplements.
No one remembers that Navigators, the political consulting firm of Schwarzenegger’s top political adviser of one year ago, Mike Murphy, has a $1 million-plus contract with the Australian energy company that wants to build a liquefied natural gas port off the coast of Ventura County, a project that needs the governor’s support to become reality.
Both those items smacked of conflict of interest, but neither has been an issue of any kind in this campaign. Apparently, Quinn was right. It looks like a California governor can do just about anything he likes, so long as it’s before the start of an election year.
This is surely true in Schwarzenegger’s political turnaround. For the last 10 months, he’s adopted an agenda so consistent with what Democrats usually push that few voters remember much about what he tried to do in his $43 million special election of less than a year ago.
It’s all consistent with an analysis offered last December by veteran Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, ironically now a chief advisor to the campaign of Schwarzenegger’s re-election challenger, state Treasurer Phil Angelides.
“All that’s happened to (Schwarzenegger) in the last year (2005) was a big mistake, a big self-inflicted wound,” Carrick said before he went to work for Angelides. “He didn’t have to call the special election, he didn’t have to suffer eight months of hammering from paid television advertising. It left him compromised and it happened because in this mostly Democratic state, there’s an echo chamber around him of people with a very conservative agenda. He ought to hire a staff that’s more interested in public policy than politics.”
That’s exactly what Schwarzenegger did. He dumped his communications director Rob Stutzman, a longtime conservative Republican activist, and replaced him with the youthful and not particularly ideological Adam Mendelsohn. He fired his first chief of staff, Pat Clarey, replacing her with Susan Kennedy, once a top aide to Schwarzenegger’s Democratic predecessor, the ousted Gray Davis. Republicans protested loudly at first, but quieted down long ago.
Carrick also predicted Schwarzenegger would be tough to beat. “The jury is still out,” he said. “But he needs to accomplish something. He needs to make progress on health care, renewing the state’s infrastructure, some tangible things that people can see and feel.”
Schwarzenegger did just that. Compromising with legislative Democrats, he pushed through the package of construction and repair bond propositions that’s now before the voters. Conservative Republicans like Schwarzenegger running-mate Tom McClintock, the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor, endorse the governor for re-election, but can’t stand the bond plan. McClintock, for one, opposes all five infrastructure bond propositions.
But Schwarzenegger doesn’t care about their opposition, and from all signs doesn’t much care if he carries even one other Republican into statewide office with him this fall.
Moderate Republican state Sen. Abel Maldonado, who carried Schwarzenegger’s version of a minimum wage increase in the Legislature and thus alienated conservative voters from his candidacy for state controller in the June primary election, observed after receiving no primary season help from the governor that Schwarzenegger is interested only in himself. Maldonado quickly recanted what he said in a moment of anger, but he can’t unring his bell.
Yet, Schwarzenegger apparently has unrung his own bell. Few voters remember or worry about his broken promise never to take campaign donations from special interests. They don’t appear to care about his pre-gubernatorial history as a groper of women. They don’t worry about his many changes of position on issues like illegal immigration and the environment.
Because he faced no primary election opposition, Schwarzenegger essentially could use the first six months of this year as an electoral respite in which to remake himself and win back the trust of Californians. The polls show both that he knew how to take advantage of that time and that Quinn’s long-ago observation about short voter memories remains as valid as ever.
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]
