Arnold mania fades

The Sacramento Bee
Bill Bradley
April 10, 2005

After more than a year of flying high with near record job approval ratings, Arnold Schwarzenegger's governorship is on the edge. It's all gone suddenly sour.

His seemingly far-reaching "reform" agenda of potential ballot measures deeply worries some of his own people and leaves Democrats unimpressed and, in some ways, jubilant. Although Democrats have actually developed alternatives to his proposals, they simply aren't bothering to present them. Indeed, Schwarzenegger has already backed off his dreadfully conceived pension initiative.

"Let him stew in his own juices," says Democratic strategist Steve Maviglio.

What a change from the beginning of this year, when Schwarzenegger seemingly bestrode California's politics like a colossus. Then, his job approval rating was upward of 60 percent. Now, Democratic polls have him down below 50 percent, which Schwarzenegger's people privately do not dispute.

Meanwhile, his coolness factor, something very important to the action superstar, who is above all in the image business, is in a serious slump. A London newspaper published a photograph of the governator vacationing on a Maui beach two weekends ago in which he looked, shall we say, distinctly unlike Mr. Universe. The Drudge Report picked it up, as did other Internet gossip sites, and gleeful Democrats deluged my e-mail box with it. And the code of silence among the "supies" - Steve McQueen's term for the Hollywood club of superstars - is ending, with Warren Beatty delivering an amused yet biting speech about the Schwarzenegger governorship last month in Beverly Hills.

Schwarzenegger has cited Beatty to me as a role model in how to take control of his own Hollywood career. For his part, Beatty, who had dinner with the governor not long before his critical speech, helped stamp out a nascent "get Arnold" movement in Hollywood during the tumultuous 2003 recall campaign.

Then there is the ever-present California Nurses Association. I learned as consulting producer of "See Arnold Run" that CNA's vow to buy anti-Arnold ads during airings of the biopic dissuaded the cable network from repeated showings of the picture.

Schwarzenegger expected protesters at his events. Indeed, he hoped for them - to spur the drama of his proclaimed "Year of Reform." But not like this. The ragtag band he wanted as his theatrical foils has turned into a legion of nurses, teachers, firefighters, some parents and police officers. Even the state's sheriffs have come out against the Schwarzenegger public pension reform proposal. The sheriffs! When I was running around with him in 2002 as he campaigned for the Proposition 49 after-school programs initiative, Schwarzenegger engaged in friendly sessions with sheriffs everywhere he went.

He did not expect any of this. Nor did he expect his polls to go down.

"These poor little guys," he declared in February, referring to his Democratic opponents, "they want to tear me down. But they can't."

Whoops. In a way, he should be glad that he is drawing so many protesters. Much of the press, tired of months of prefab, highly choreographed events, is beginning to ignore his press events.

Democrats, as it happens, have devised alternatives to the Schwarzenegger reform agenda. And Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, Schwarzenegger's most persistent and, increasingly, effective opponent - the unlikely welterweight to his super heavyweight - did switch gears. He had planned to hold up the governor's appointment of Secretary of State Bruce McPherson with extensive hearings, but whisked the liberal Republican through the confirmation process. In so doing, Núñez donned the bipartisan mantle that had previously belonged to the governor.

But Democrats are in no hurry to engage with the governor on his agenda while he continues his slide.

There are potential deals to be made on reapportionment, education, even public pensions, where Democrats say they can find savings. Only on Schwarzenegger's spending controls measure - where Democrats say they dislike the ability of the minority to block a budget solution - do they seem less likely to deal. But there is no dealing for now.

On the Republican side, there is deep concern about the governor's agenda within Schwarzenegger's own camp. It is a hastily developed, hazily defined, sometimes harshly partisan smorgasbord that came together late, despite months of lead time.

The most obvious problem was a fatal political flaw in the drafting of the pension reform initiative, which had Republican consultants very worried about how the entire Arnold agenda would play out in a media campaign. The debate at the Capitol was whether death and disability benefits for the surviving spouses and orphans of police and firefighters killed in the line of duty would be cut off by the initiative. Although the governor and his allies denied any such intent, they also agreed to seek separate legislation to shore up the benefits. But top consultants knew the initiative was a loser, a reality which the governator, who did not want to hear it, finally embraced.

With all of these difficulties and no resolution to the ongoing budget crisis, those halcyon days of Arnold mania suddenly seem long ago.