Some Clarification on Governor’s Tank References

There was some head-scratching among academics and scholars of military minutia and even some Internet chatter about something Arnold Schwarzenegger said in his inaugural address: “ ... to an immigrant like me, who, as a boy, saw Soviet tanks rolling through the streets of Austria ... “

At the state Republican convention in September, Schwarzenegger had put it this way: “Growing up, I saw Communism with my own eyes. When I was a boy, the Soviets occupied Austria, I saw their tanks in the streets.”

This was perplexing because Schwarzenegger’s home province of Styria was in the British zone of Austrian occupation, from 1945, before Schwarzenegger was born, until the Allied occupation ended in 1955, when Schwarzenegger was about 8 years old.

Schwarzenegger’s hometown of Thal, as a suburb of Graz, was at the heart of the British zone.

“It is very, very unlikely he saw Soviet tanks rolling in the British zone where he lived,” said historian James Jay Carafano, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., and author of the recent book “Waltzing into the Cold War: The Struggle for Occupied Austria.”

“In all likelihood, he saw British or American tanks.”

A governor’s spokesman tried to ask Schwarzenegger to clarify last week, but found him too busy in the first days of his administration.

USC professor Cornelius Schnauber, who said he knew Schwarzenegger some years ago, said the tank reference “puzzled me as well.” It would have been possible to see Soviet tanks, the scholars agreed, if the Schwarzeneggers had gone into the Soviet-occupied zone up in northern Austria, or around Vienna.

But that trip might have been difficult, given British and Soviet antipathy during the occupation, according to a book on the occupation by William Bader, who has held posts with the U.S. Information Agency, the foreign service, the Defense Department, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the U.S. Navy.

Schnauber speculated that when the Soviets left Austria in 1955, some of their tanks might have taken a longer route or detour and passed through Graz, but Schnauber said he doesn’t think it likely.

Carafano pointed out that Soviet tanks were indeed on Austrian streets -- but being driven by Austrian soldiers. The Soviets, like the Americans, left some of their tanks behind for the use of the new Austrian army when the occupation ended in 1955. Austrian soldiers operated the Soviet T34 and American M4 Sherman tanks for years, Carafano said; Schwarzenegger himself drove an American M47 during his brief service in the Austrian army in the 1960s -- a tank he has since acquired and donated to Motts Military Museum in Ohio.

Orange County GOP Scrambles to the Middle

Please scooch to the middle -- Arnold Schwarzenegger’s here. In Orange County, where Republicans usually trample one another in the primaries in the run to the right, the cozying up to the moderate governor has begun.

In announcing that he’ll run for state Senate next year, Irvine Assemblyman John Campbell emphasized in the second paragraph that he was an “early and strong supporter of the recall and of Schwarzenegger,” and noted a bit farther down that he’s the “only major candidate in the 35th District race who endorsed Schwarzenegger.”

Schwarzenegger’s coattails are expected to be as broad as his shoulders -- so says political consultant Dave Gilliard, who’s running campaigns for three legislative candidates in Orange County, all of whom endorsed Schwarzenegger.

Ordinarily, what Orange County GOP primary voters want to hear is how conservative candidates are -- which means that voting for Tom McClintock in the recall would have been a plus.

Not this time, says Gilliard. Schwarzenegger pulled 63% of the votes in the Not-So-Big Orange, chiefly because of the economy.

The people who’ll be heading to work under that big white Sacramento dome are “the ones who say, ‘I’m with Schwarzenegger.’ ”

Recall Staffers Move On to Other Campaigns

With the recall over and the presidential stakes just revving up, the musical chairs campaign staffing music has started up again.

The Senate primary campaign of former U.S. treasurer and Huntington Park Mayor Rosario Marin will be headed by GOP sage Ken Khachigian, once advisor to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and to Govs. George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson.

Marin’s finance director is Anne LeGassick Dunsmore, who shook the bushes for dough for the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood secession effort, for Wilson’s short-lived presidential bid and for the Bush-Cheney team.

Her campaign director is Janice Ploeger Glaab, another Wilson and state Assembly staff veteran, and her spokesman is Kevin Spillane, late of Richard Riordan’s gubernatorial campaign, who saw service under Republicans Sonny Bono, Tom Campbell, Buck McKeon and Tom McClintock and who has worked for other Latino Republicans.

Karen Hanretty, one of the voices for the Schwarzenegger campaign, now returns to the top spokes-job at the state Republican Party.

And the who’s-where among former Davis administration honchos, all gone to Democratic presidential candidates: Garry South is back at work with Connecticut’s Sen. Joe Lieberman, Roger Salazar joins up with North Carolina’s Sen. John Edwards, and Larry Grisolano is in the camp of Massachusetts’ Sen. John Kerry.

Luiz Vizcaino, who’s put in time with Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, is off to labor for Wesley Clark’s presidential campaign. His former boss is state chairman for “Joe 2004” -- Lieberman.

Points Taken

* Star billing in City Hall -- L.A. Mayor Jim Hahn and his council member sister, Janice, appeared together to announce flood-related relief, but her press release was headlined, “Mayor Hahn to join Councilwoman Hahn for big announcement.” His was headlined only, “Mayor Hahn to make significant announcement regarding new relief fund available to Watts flood victims.”

* San Splitsville? Secessionists eager to carve a new Mission County out of Santa Barbara County have submitted petitions for a study of the feasibility of forming a new county.

* Orange County consultant and “Arnold’s the One” T-shirt entrepreneur Denny Friedenrich persuaded even Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg -- daughter of President Kennedy and cousin to California’s new first lady, Maria Shriver -- to put on one of his shirts during inaugural weekend in Sacramento. Friedenrich says 10% of the net from his shirt sales will go to science and art education, where three years of budget-cutting has put California dead last among the states in arts funding, from 33 cents per capita to 3 cents -- not even the price of a crayon.

You Can Quote Me

“I have no idea what he is or isn’t doing.... I don’t care in the least. I don’t care at all. Doesn’t matter to me. That’s not an issue.”

-- Presidential candidate John F. Kerry, asked about a Los Angeles Times report that one of his top strategists, Bob Shrum, is writing speeches for Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Kerry says he’s known Schwarzenegger for a long time and considers him a friend.)

Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. This week’s contributors include Times staff writers Mark Z. Barabak, Patrick McGreevy, Rone Tempest and Jean O. Pasco.