Celebrity Campaign Sticks to the Script

It is Sunday morning, nine days before the recall election, and Arnold Schwarzenegger has a crowd problem. The problem isn’t how to draw one, it’s how to accommodate nearly 2,000 people streaming like picnic ants to the tiny airfield here where his white private jet has just set down.

Schwarzenegger isn’t troubled by any of this -- as one of the world’s highest-paid actors, he is practiced at soaking up massive amounts of attention. The challenge goes to anyone who tries to get close enough to ask a question of the Republican front-runner for governor, who has mostly managed to avoid unscripted, in-the-trenches contact with voters, journalists and rivals in the first political campaign of his multifaceted life.

Bodyguards surround him. His town hall sessions are by invitation only.

He has passed on every debate but one, and that one came with prepared questions. Campaign stops average about 20 minutes, and he doesn’t like to stick around to talk afterward. Media interviews last about as long, more akin to those red-carpet chats on Oscar night.

None of which seems to matter the least to his fans. A single news conference can draw 1,500 people, the throngs so intense that at times his aides have sustained cuts and bruises. A CNN reporter got caught in one and lost her shoe.

“Every time we reposition him, even just 30 feet, you have to deal with sometimes thousands of people literally trying to cling onto him,” said campaign spokesman Todd Harris. “It does create some logistical nightmares.”

And so we find ourselves squeezed onto the media risers at the back of the yawning, balloon-festooned airplane hangar, desperately seeking Arnold.

This day, he will hop across the state warning voters to prepare for “Desperate Davis” and his tricks, a swipe at the unpopular governor’s notoriously slashing campaign ads.

Schwarzenegger’s campaign swing will cross California’s sprawling middle -- three remote airports in Santa Maria, Monterey and Redding. He will be taking his private jet, the leased one, not the one he owns. No press invited.

So we charter our own jet -- four reporters and two photographers from three news agencies. Schwarzenegger’s is a sleek Gulfstream 4, nearly top of the line, with 13 seats and little winglets on the side to cut down on the drag. Ours is a 35-year-old, six-seat “flying brothel,” so named because of the red velvet upholstery.

On the ground in Santa Maria, the traffic backs up along Foster Road and fans walk as far as a mile from the parking lot for a glimpse of the candidate, which is about all they are going to get.

“Arnold! Arnold!” the crowd chants, since that is how he is known these days, having risen, Elvis-like, to the rare status of first-name recognition.

A royal blue curtain billows and out he steps. His white short-sleeved dress shirt exposes forearms that bulge like two loaves of challah, his rectangular smile is no-nonsense, his hair is perfect. Photographs of a leather-clad Arnold straddling a motorcycle circulate through the crowd.

Little boys stand on their toes for a peek at the former Mr. Universe and silver-screen Terminator who wiped out threats to mankind with lots of firepower and few words.

“This is hand-to-hand combat!” he booms. “We are in the trenches. This is war.... “ The fans go wild. He has harnessed the anger of people in this once-golden state, beleaguered by deficits and recession, joblessness and tripled car taxes, unchecked immigration and runaway workers’ compensation costs.

To the faithful, he is the un-politician, the strongman who will take no guff from Sacramento or Washington, political establishments that have been busy sucking up California’s tax dollars and giving precious little back.

“They will try to push me around, but I will push back!” the candidate roars. And he looks like he means it, chest bulging beneath his shirt, jaw muscles taut. They roar right back: “Ar-nold!”

Every Sunday morning before church, he gets on his motorcycle to cruise the streets of Los Angeles with his buddies. Now, he is offering California a ride -- a short, fast one back to the good life, the one he lives. They know so, because he tells them.

“People ask me why, why do you want to be governor of Cal-ee-forn-ya” he begins virtually every appearance, pronouncing the word the way the Spanish settlers intended. Then he ticks off the riches he found here. “A fantastic wife ... a beautiful family ... millions of dollars ... a movie career that will make millions of more dollars.... I go skiing all the time.”

Why be governor? Because he wants to give something back, to “bring California back” to those days before busted budgets and blackouts and soaring energy costs and multibillion-dollar deficits.

“All they know how to do is spend, spend, spend.... Then they realize they are spending too much and so they tax, tax, tax,” he declares, likening state lawmakers to “schoolyard bullies telling local people what to do.” And he is the paladin who intends to stop them. “I will not raise your taxes. I will not cut education.... On Oct. 8, I will be sitting in that chair.”

Supporters say they aren’t worrying how he plans to balance next year’s budget gap, already $8 billion and growing. So what if there is no record of his having voted in 13 of the last 21 elections? If his longest interview was a friendly hourlong chat on “Larry King Live,” who cares?

What if he did grope and sexually harass women in his younger days? He apologized for bad behavior, didn’t he?

“I don’t really care about his personal life. We’re getting buried with taxes,” complains a 59-year-old small farmer named Rex Klein, waiting at the Redding airport for Schwarzenegger’s arrival.

The wind is blowing hot and dry when the jet touches down, sending tumbling some of the 500 “Join Arnold” lawn signs awaiting pickup. Wild fires burning out of control have left a ribbon of smoke along the horizon. Unemployment here is among the highest in the state, with jobs in forestry and farming drying up. This community needs something.

But rhetoric is all voters like Gary Reynolds ever hear from politicians, and he says they’re sick of it. What they want is action, and Schwarzenegger -- who, after all, accomplished an awful lot in “The Terminator” with only 17 spoken lines -- has never been short on that.

“All he said was. ‘I’ll be back,’ and that was enough,” says the 50-year-old Reynolds, who owns a local construction company and day-care business. He came with binoculars for a good look at the hero he’s seen only on screen. “He has the ability to change the atmosphere. Sometimes it’s not how much you say, but how you say it.”

At last, the jet door unfolds and Schwarzenegger bursts off, waving. A gantlet of voters stretches to touch him. “He’s better looking in person!” silver-haired Margie Dominici squeals.

This is the candidate’s third and final appearance of the day but it is clearly his most energized. His handshake is powerful and his voice electric as he pounds the podium, vowing an end to the Gray Davis era.

“He has terminated hope. He has terminated opportunity. He has terminated education. He has terminated jobs . Now it’s time to terminate him!” The cheers explode.

Ten minutes later, he’s gone. Total speaking time for the day: about 40 minutes. Longest wait time in line: four hours. Number of questions asked by journalists or voters: 0.

Indeed, when one of the other 134 candidates shows up at a midday rally in Monterey to see what the actor has to say, he is recognized by an Arnold supporter, who attempts a citizen’s arrest.

Not many candidates could escape the scrutiny or spontaneity that comes with the average political campaign. In this case, though, neither the campaign nor the candidate is average.

While most political neophytes struggle for publicity, Schwarzenegger came to this short race with 100% name recognition, personal wealth, epic fund-raising ability and a persona built on a string of action-hero movies.

The result is a sort of celebrity campaign not unlike the relationship actors have with fans -- the appearance of contact and familiarity on the screen, but never the real thing.

The Schwarzenegger campaign disagrees, noting the candidate conducted close to 70 interviews in the last two weeks, including some with fawning reporters who posed for pictures afterward. A four-day bus tour is currently underway with about 200 media members in tow (on four buses dubbed by aides Predator 1 through 3 and True Lies).

“We sat down and counted,” Harris said. “I would happily compare our level of accessibility with Cruz Bustamante, who is never anywhere to be found and is seen running away from the cameras every night on TV.”

Schwarzenegger’s operation mirrors those used by presidents and national campaigns -- little accessibility until the final hours before the vote. It’s a low-risk strategy for the mega-star.

“The public thinks of the media the way they do used-car salesmen,” says Marty Kaplan, director of USC’s Norman Lear Center, which studies the intersection of politics and entertainment. “There is no price to be paid for avoiding the press.”

And so Monday the chase resumes. Unable to afford the flying brothel for two days running, three of us pile into a rented SUV and head for the little town of Clovis near Fresno, a 3 1/2-hour drive from Los Angeles.

Scheduled there at 5 p.m. is an “Ask Arnold” event, billed as a town hall, except the audience is invitation only -- in this case, local GOP loyalists and ranking executives at Pelco, a security systems plant where the meeting is being held.

Inside a warehouse is a small assembly of white folding chairs. Camera lights are set just so. Outside are some of the people who can’t get in, including Judy Hensley, 35, of Fresno, who works in accounting. She isn’t high enough in the corporate food chain to rate a ticket.

She would have liked to see Arnold and maybe ask a question, but when he walks through the plant on his way to the forum to shake hands with workers, Hensley is busy donating blood next door.

The phlebotomists from the Central California Blood Center, who have been drawing donations all day, don’t care all that much about Arnold. They just want to use the bathroom, but security won’t let them through.

“I don’t like it,” says Frank Gibney, 49, of Fresno, still in his scrubs, a Republican who thinks the recall unwise. “Everything he does is selected. He gets his debate questions in advance. Nobody’s going to ask the hard questions. They’ve got the people they want in there.”

The people to whom he refers are busy inside, cheering and whistling for Schwarzenegger. The event turns out to be less candidate forum and more candidate love fest.

“Thank you, thank you so much for having the courage to run,” says one woman. She extends her gratitude to Schwarzenegger’s wife, Maria Shriver. “And please tell Maria thank you from the bottom of our hearts for letting you do this.” She never does ask a question.

What was expected to be an hourlong forum exploring the candidate’s plan to lead California shrinks to 29 minutes. Fewer than 10 questions later, Schwarzenegger leaves. The availability reporters had been told to expect is canceled.

No questions asked.