Is the Terminator in Free-Fall?

Anaheim, California

As Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was readying himself to address the featured luncheon at the GOP state convention held in mid-September in a Disneyland-area hotel, the assembled Republican troops were atwitter. Last-minute sales of conservative paraphernalia outside the doors of the ballroom where the governor would speak were brisk. T-shirts of George W. Bush in his now infamous flight suit sold alongside bumper stickers reading LIBERALISM IS A MENTAL DISORDER and GUN CONTROL IS A STEADY HAND.

When the tanned and beaming Governator finally appeared onstage, he was received like, well, a world-famous movie star--the nearly 500 guests rose to their feet and cheered loudly and repeatedly. There wasn't much suspense in Schwarzenegger's brief address. The day before, he'd announced he was running for re-election, a full fourteen months before next year's vote. And he'd been making headlines for months by calling for a special election on November 8 and supporting three measures that would enhance his budget authority, extend probation for new teachers and impose a new way to redraw electoral districts.

But the governor did throw out one big newsmaker to the crowd and the attendant media. Vowing to confront the "union bosses that run the state," he officially endorsed a fourth measure, Proposition 75, a so-called "paycheck protection" initiative that would severely curtail the ability of state public-employee unions to make large political donations. "Big government unions should not use members' funds as a personal kitty," he said to roaring approval. "Union bosses have too much power over members' paychecks and too much power over our state."

As the delegates chanted "Four more years! Four more years!" USC political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe whispered to me: "We have just moved from all-out war to Armageddon."

Indeed, by coming out for the antilabor measure, Schwarzenegger has guaranteed that the special election will be a nationalized free-for-all. With union contributions the veritable lifeblood of the California Democratic Party, the election promises to be an astronomically expensive political food-fight, a do-or-die referendum on the governor himself. Schwarzenegger is scrambling to add another $20 million, including as much as $5 million of his own money, to the $30 million he has already collected and spent. An alliance of California labor unions has raised more than $60 million. Big Pharma is expected to spend $80 million defending one of its own favored initiatives--countering a competing initiative that would provide low-cost prescription drugs--in the special election. The cost of the voting itself has been estimated to be between $45 million and $80 million.

The blinding golden glare off these stacks of cash illuminates the fix that California's once wildly popular governor now finds himself in. His 2003 recall-election campaign triumphantly culminated on the steps of the Sacramento Capitol with 10,000 supporters, many waving brooms in the air. This new outsider governor would sweep away politics-as-usual, send the special interests packing and inaugurate an era of populist bipartisan reform.

Two years later Schwarzenegger has raised more corporate cash than any previous California governor. He finds himself persistently dogged by union-led demonstrators as he campaigns full-time for a special election that 60 percent of voters say is unnecessary, and for a highly partisan agenda that, like him, is failing in the polls. No wonder Schwarzenegger's favorability rating now slumps at a miserable 35 percent, an anemic half of its high point two years ago.

Earlier this year, in a scenario that's become routine, Schwarzenegger's commencement address at his alma mater, Santa Monica College, was drowned out by a half-hour of jeering. The hero's reception at the state Republican convention was an exception to what's become the rule. Increasingly, the only friendly crowds he's finding are partisan and handpicked.

"Arnold is burning his ships with no way back," attorney Shawn Steel, a former chair of the state GOP, told me jubilantly after Schwarzenegger completed his Anaheim speech endorsing Prop 75. "He's put everything on the table. And it's wonderful!"

It's also the problem for Schwarzenegger. The worst place a statewide California Republican can find himself in is hostage to the party base--a constituency that amounts to about a third of the state's voters. Schwarzenegger claims he remains "bloody but unbowed" from this past season of political warfare, and he vows he's now battling to "reform the entire system." But at best he is now fighting, uphill, for his mere political survival.

"His whole operation failed to learn the lessons of the recall election," says veteran Democratic strategist Bill Carrick. "As long as voters thought he was some sort of different, progressive Republican, different from the Beltway Republicans, as long as he was pro-environment, pro-gay and so on, he was riding high. But now that he's veered into inheriting the old worn-out Republican agenda, he's in deep trouble."

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