Another bite at the enchilada

ARNOLD Schwarzenegger’s landslide reelection victory is being widely described as the culmination of a political comeback from last year’s special election defeat.

But the humble, subdued governor who addressed supporters Tuesday night sounded like a man who understands he’s in the middle of a struggle, not at the end of one. In his own mind, he has won not only a second term but a second chance.

Or to be more precise, a second bite.

Schwarzenegger first won office in 2003 by promising changes in the structure of California’s government. Those goals have not changed, say longtime aides and friends, but his methods have. He wants what his sometime opponent and sometime collaborator, Democratic Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, once dubbed “the whole enchilada” -- compromise deals on major issues facing California.

What kind of enchilada could Schwarzenegger cook up? His recent history suggests that large, complicated compromises are likely. In the summer of 2005, with the governor sliding in the polls, Schwarzenegger and Nunez engaged in secret negotiations that were privately referred to as the Enchilada Talks The goal was to reach agreement on compromise measures to replace the Schwarzenegger ballot initiatives on education, the budget and reapportionment that seemed likely to lose in November.

Notes from those discussions, charted on grids with labels such as “Enchilada Chronicles” and “Road Map to Peace in Our Time,” suggest that the two men were willing to negotiate on almost any topic and to try to end the partisan stalemate in Sacramento. The thorniest pension, education, healthcare and political reform issues were on the table.

Although no commitments were made, the two men even discussed changes in the state’s education funding formula (the highly popular Proposition 98) and the requirement for a two-thirds vote to pass a budget (a provision with near holy status among Republicans). Those negotiations didn’t produce agreements in time to add new measures to the special election ballot.

Privately, it was the failure of the Enchilada Talks -- and not the defeat of his initiatives three months later -- that Schwarzenegger considers the real nadir of his governorship.

Even before the special election, he had decided on the now-celebrated internal staff shake-up that improved his political fortunes. At the same time, he renewed his efforts to find common ground with the Democrats. His 2006 record of compromise legislation -- most notably the four infrastructure bond measures approved by voters Tuesday -- was first built in late 2005.

In a similar vein, Schwarzenegger’s second term had been underway for weeks before Tuesday’s election. (A top Schwarzenegger aide complained to me on election night that the campaign had been a distraction from the progress the administration has been making.) His senior staffers held a retreat last month in Sonoma County to refine the second-term agenda. The meeting made clear that Schwarzenegger has never given up on the big goals of the Enchilada Talks.

This time, however, rather than throw his proposals into one big, sloppy meal a la the 2005 initiatives, Schwarzenegger intends to negotiate ingredient by ingredient, detail by detail. Momentum is the imperative, with the governor hoping to turn the good feeling from each deal into more deals.

A top priority is more money for even more infrastructure, above and beyond the more than $40 billion passed by voters Tuesday. (Schwarzenegger has privately pegged the state’s true needs at more than three times that figure.)

Another priority: healthcare. The governor’s office currently resembles a healthcare seminar. He has been hiring aides, some of whom worked for Gov. Gray Davis, to put together a plan to cover all uninsured Californians. Schwarzenegger’s theory is that the bipartisan love will spread to prison reform and water policy. And if he can broker progress in those areas, he could revisit controversial issues such as reapportionment, education policy and pension costs -- the agenda at the heart of his effort last year.

The governor is determined to include the unions and Democrats who beat him last year.

“I also want to say a few words to the people that did not have the faith in me, that did not support me, that did not vote for me,” he said in one of the more specific pledges of his election night speech. “I’m going to work hard to win your support in the next four years. Your hopes and dreams will be my hopes and dreams.”

This governor is so hungry for the whole enchilada that he is willing to let others help make the meal.

The big question for California in the next four years is whether other power brokers in the state will be willing to pull their chairs up to the table.