A Reality Check

State Sen. Martha Escutia was in her first meeting with the new governor, talking about the dry details of workers’ compensation policy, when she shared a story about working out at the gym. Which gym? the governor wanted to know. Reaching across the table in the Ronald Reagan Cabinet Room, the governor -- at one time judged the best proportioned man on the planet -- gave the Democrat’s biceps an appraising squeeze.

Escutia, 46, left her meeting last week with Arnold Schwarzenegger impressed and, she said, charmed. She described his mind as “agile” and said she appreciated that he had left no doubt where he stood -- a stark contrast to former Gov. Gray Davis, she said, whose style was more guarded, his intentions tougher to guess.

But Schwarzenegger had hardly won a reliable new ally. Escutia later said she was not prepared to embrace the complex package of ballot measures and bills pushed by Schwarzenegger after he was sworn in Monday during a buoyant ceremony on the west steps of the Capitol.

“Frankly, I think he’s biting off too much, too soon,” she said.

For the new governor, it was that sort of week, his first on the job.

Chatting with small groups of lawmakers in his suite of offices and outdoor courtyard, he sought to make headway in building bipartisan relationships and elevating the political tone in the Capitol. Lawmakers left his office carrying fat cigars with “Arnold Schwarzenegger” imprinted on the cellophane wrappers.

“I asked him if he was sure the cigars didn’t cross the $75 gift limit,” said Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sun Valley). “He said he was quite sure.”

But the hard realities of governing were quickly driven home. Even some Republicans balked at approving a bond issue of as much as $15 billion, which is the centerpiece of Schwarzenegger’s budget plans.

An appearance Wednesday by the governor’s finance director, Donna Arduin, before the Assembly Budget Committee took an awkward turn. Late for an appointment with the governor, she got up and left the meeting midway through a question.

“You have the inauguration, you have the hoopla, you have the momentum, but I think his financial director’s appearance was a little bit short of disastrous,” said Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco).

It may take more to ease the partisan rancor than Schwarzenegger’s meetings Wednesday with about 20 lawmakers. Distrust between the two parties is strong. And Schwarzenegger seems realistic about his prospects in the Capitol. His political operation is girding for a full-scale effort to push his agenda with ballot initiatives, capitalizing on his celebrity.

On Tuesday, Schwarzenegger held his first official meeting of the “Big Five” -- the governor and four leaders of the Assembly and Senate. One person familiar with what happened said that Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson (D-Culver City) told the governor that, for all Schwarzenegger’s talk of bipartisanship, he seemed to be directing the Legislature as to what he wanted done. When the governor asked Wesson for guidance, the person said, there was no reply.

Told of that exchange, Wesson said: “If anyone implied I didn’t have anything to say, that’s not the way you want to start out a relationship. I thought I gave them some suggestions and would be happy to give them more.”

Setting up a new government is seldom a simple undertaking. But it is far more complex, Schwarzenegger’s aides conceded, when a governor who promised “action, action, action, action” after winning the recall election immediately calls the Legislature into session and asks them to revamp workers’ compensation and to send to the ballot both a constitutional spending cap and the bond measure.

“There’s no question that coming into power and going into session the next day has been extremely challenging, to be blunt,” said Communications Director Rob Stutzman, talking to reporters in his sparsely furnished office. “You can see there’s no phone on my desk....”

Indeed, as of midweek, calls to Stutzman’s office were being picked up by voicemail welcoming people to Davis’ communications division.

Still, the governor fulfilled a major promise of the campaign. Within an hour of taking the oath, he repealed the unpopular vehicle license fee increase adopted in the closing months of the Davis administration.

“I don’t think the first week gets any better than this,” said state Sen. Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga), a Schwarzenegger friend and advisor. “I don’t think you could have done it any better than they’ve done it.”

It seemed the governor was enjoying himself. Staying in a suite on the 15th floor of the Hyatt Regency hotel across from the Capitol, Schwarzenegger brought in an exercise bike to feel more at home. The Hyatt is a temporary residence while Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, scout homes in Sacramento.

On Tuesday, his first full day in office, he and some visiting friends walked from the Capitol to the nearby Esquire Grill, an upscale restaurant favored by lawmakers, aides and staff members. (There was no definitive report on what the governor ate, though he favors salmon.)

Schwarzenegger’s news conference that day was held in a local auditorium, offering professional-quality lighting and a theatrical ambience that the austere Room 1190 in the Capitol -- scene for many a Davis news conference -- could never match.

During the session, the governor teased a reporter, complimenting his glasses and beard in the unabashed hope, he said, of winning a friend.

One political aide said that Schwarzenegger wanted to make governance more fun. A favorite phrase of the governor’s is “Lighten up,” and he used it all week, the aide said.

That playful spirit may be hard to sustain with the state’s finances so grim. Schwarzenegger packed up and checked out of the Hyatt on Wednesday.

From his home in Brentwood that night, he consulted aides on his remarks for a car tax rally the next day at Galpin Ford in the San Fernando Valley.

Schwarzenegger awoke Thursday morning just before 6 a.m., said two close associates, took his wife breakfast in bed and spent about an hour on his exercise bike. He reviewed briefing papers as he rode.

He took at least one child to school in the morning, then headed to his office building on Main Street in Santa Monica before celebrating the car tax repeal. The governor’s aides had wanted the rally to get maximum coverage, and were disappointed when Michael Jackson’s arrest upstaged the event a bit.

After the rally, Schwarzenegger called in to conservative talk radio stations with a tough message -- directed at the same lawmakers he had been courting the day before.

There were limits to the budget cuts he would tolerate, he said. He wouldn’t cut food for dogs owned by blind people -- a reduction that Assembly Republicans offered over the summer. If the Republicans do not go along with his bond measure, he said, the only alternative will be something neither he nor they want: a tax hike.

“He’s not going to be shy about using his political capital that resides with the people,” Stutzman said. “And obviously, he won’t be shy about directly reminding the Legislature that they should be cognizant of it. This is what’s different about this governor. He’s very sincere about wanting to end politics as usual and work with them. But he’ll use the hammer that exists too.

“It’s just business.”

At the end of the workweek, Schwarzenegger was still in L.A., busy with yet another campaign promise: repeal of a new law allowing illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses. He met with the author of the measure, Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), in hopes of cobbling together a coalition to scrap the law.

Rocky though the transition can be from campaigning to governing, Schwarzenegger does not seem discouraged.

Escutia said that, in her meeting with the governor, she told him at one point that some of his proposals amounted to “a tough sell.”

How did he reply?

“He just looked at me and flashed me that Pepsodent smile,” she said.