Gov. may be selling an illusion of unity

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has plunged into the debate over the nation’s future with his call for a new, “post-partisan” governing style aimed at ending political gridlock.

But the Republican governor, who intends to take his message to Iowa, New Hampshire and other critical states as the presidential campaign proceeds, is selling something that may be illusory.

Schwarzenegger used raw political muscle to forge the big legislative victories of his first term, allying with the Democrats, who dominate California’s Capitol. Along the way, Republicans felt quashed.

Post-partisanship, said a rueful state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) “is the process by which Arnold sits down with Democratic leaders and gets them to do exactly what they wanted to do all along.”

Schwarzenegger repeatedly cites three achievements on his watch: a multibillion-dollar public works project, a plan for cutting prescription drug prices and a program to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

“We did this working together,” he said in a speech last month to the National Press Club in Washington.

What he doesn’t say is that Republican opposition was nearly unanimous on the prescription drug and environmental bills. Democrats didn’t need GOP votes for either and passed both without them.

On the public works plan, lawmakers reached a deal only when Schwarzenegger withdrew from negotiations that had collapsed. And the final borrowing package was about half the size the governor had wanted.

“A lot of the large goals accomplished last year didn’t feel bipartisan to us,” said Michael Villines (R-Clovis), leader of the Assembly’s Republicans. “It just felt like we got steamrolled.”

None of that troubles Schwarzenegger, who first employed the “post-partisan” slogan in his inaugural speech in January and road-tested it on his recent trip east.

“I will travel around the country with our message: working together and being inclusive; serving the people and not party or ideology,” Schwarzenegger told reporters in Washington.

He may well find a receptive audience, said Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank.

“The issue of post-partisanship has provided the governor a national political platform,” Baldassare said. “He has credibility, and that’s why people have to listen to him. His own political career was reborn, and he achieved success at a difficult time,” in a decisive 2006 reelection victory while Republicans nationally fared poorly.

But national political analysts said Schwarzenegger’s style could be tough to export. Few Republicans elected in classic “red” states see the need to accommodate Democrats in ways that Schwarzenegger has felt necessary in his “blue” state.

“If you’re in a solid red state, I don’t think you have to do that,” said G. Terry Madonna, a political science professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania.

Little has changed in Sacramento since Schwarzenegger took office in 2003. Democrats control 48 seats in the Assembly, Republicans 32. In the Senate, Democrats enjoy a 25-15 margin.

Because the Legislature has carved voting districts that tend to protect incumbents, the partisan complexion remains largely the same year to year.

Even as Schwarzenegger makes his case that Sacramento is an oasis of political collaboration, there are fresh outbreaks of partisanship.

Not one of Schwarzenegger’s fellow Republicans in the Assembly on Tuesday voted for a bill to advance the state’s presidential primary from June to February. Republicans said they couldn’t support it because there were no assurances that counties would be reimbursed for election costs. Unmoved, Schwarzenegger plans to sign the bill into law.

Moreover, no bipartisan consensus exists on the centerpiece of Schwarzenegger’s 2007 agenda, which has garnered national headlines: an overhaul of California’s healthcare system.

The leaders of both houses, anticipating a sweeping proposal from the governor, announced separate plans before Schwarzenegger unveiled his. At least one other Democrat, casting Schwarzenegger’s program as a bonanza for insurers, has proposed a government-run approach instead. Schwarzenegger dislikes that concept.

Republicans in the Senate have offered yet another proposal, a limited one that spurns the governor’s main goal of insuring every Californian. Republicans recoiled from Schwarzenegger’s plan to pay for the program partly through new doctor and hospital fees. In describing the governor’s plan, Republicans use the dreaded T word: taxes.

Even the alliance that Schwarzenegger formed with leading Democrats to pass his much-publicized greenhouse-gas bill last year is beginning to fray.

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland), who voted for the environmental bill last year, now says the market-based carbon-trading system the state adopted won’t do enough to curb global warming.

Perata last month announced a package of bills by the Senate Democratic caucus that would ban methane releases from garbage dumps and reduce emissions from trucks, buses and construction equipment, among other things.

Though he credited the governor with calling attention to global warming, Perata said in an interview, “Just being aware of it will not satisfy the problem.”

Schwarzenegger opposes the Democrats’ measures. He doesn’t want anything adopted that might interfere with the new carbon-trading system, his aides said.

So conditions are ripe for the kind of partisan clash that Schwarzenegger says is vanishing.

On his recent trip to Washington, the governor met with the state’s congressional delegation to discuss ways to get more federal money for California and to urge members of both parties to work together. Some members left disappointed.

Schwarzenegger had promised to stay for an hour. He left after 45 minutes, saying he needed to make his flight home.

U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) said the meeting yielded little in the way of concrete accomplishment; she described it as more cosmetic than substantive.

And she noted that Schwarzenegger’s last visit with the delegation in Washington was more than two years earlier.

“It’s not new news that the partisanship in Washington is toxic,” Harman said. “But to fix the problem requires more than a 45-minute meeting every two years.”

She contrasted Schwarzenegger’s treatment of the Washington delegation with that of former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who, in the 1990s, set up bipartisan congressional working groups devoted to securing more federal aid for California.

Harman told the governor’s chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, that Schwarzenegger needs to spend more time in Washington if he is intent on changing the political climate and getting better results for California.

“I’ve suggested that he come in for two or three days and be part of the solution -- not just tell us to fix it,” Harman said.

peter.nicholas@latimes.com