<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : When Arm-Twisting for Votes, He’d Win for Sure

This one is a real whisper campaign: no campaign yet, just hopeful whispers that Arnold Schwarzenegger may run in next year’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate--big-name actor versus big-bucks Rep. Michael Huffington, one round, to take on Dianne Feinstein in the November title match.

So, is it coincidence or long-range planning that the movie “Demolition Man”--starring Schwarzenegger’s brother in brawn, Sylvester Stallone, as a copsicle thawed out in 21st-Century Los Angeles to fight crime--makes reference to the Arnold Schwarzenegger Presidential Library?

Former bodybuilding champ Schwarzenegger would not only be the first President to have his in-the-buff photo published--in Spy magazine, whose 1992 story referred to “the future junior senator from California”--but the first non-native-born commander in chief. It would need constitutional heavy lifting to allow the Austrian-born actor to occupy the Oval Office.

The ex-Terminator was in Washington this week. But only for a movie. For now.

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Animal track record: A mixed week in California’s animal kingdom.

It’s not much solace to the geese, but the Fish and Game people say their booklet is wrong--hunting season for Canada geese in one designated San Joaquin Valley area begins the fifth Saturday in October, not the fourth.

Up in Big Bear, the honeybee is getting creamed, says the Bear Valley Voice. First the bees were hit by a mite infestation, and when they abandoned their hives to go to war against the mites, yellow jacket squatters moved into the vacated honeybee premises.

Oysters will fare no better in Pacifica than they did in “The Walrus and the Carpenter.” In the Lewis Carroll poem, “they’d eaten every one.” At the Moonraker restaurant, a diner tried to eat virtually every one on “all you can eat” night, but only got to 75 or 40, depending on who was counting, before the manager stopped him. He sued for $400 and won $100.

In the plus column, Gov. Pete Wilson signed a great white shark protection bill banning their commercial and sportfishing. Now if he could extend the ban to sharkskin suits. . . .

And Stanford’s pre-UC Berkeley game bonfire, an on-and-off tradition since 1898, has been canceled because it was to be held on the breeding ground of the rare California tiger salamander. Yet according to mythology, the salamander lives in fire.

Births to Teen-Agers

California ranked 11th in the nation in rate of births to mothers ages 15 to 19 in 1990, the last year for which national figures are available. California’s rate has jumped 32.4% since 1980. Here is the ranking of live births per 1,000 girls in that age group for the top 10 states and California.

BIRTHS PER 1,000, STATE AGES 15-19 1. Mississippi 81.0 2. Arkansas 80.1 3. New Mexico 78.2 4. Arizona 75.5 5. Georgia 75.5 6. Texas 75.3 7. Louisiana 74.2 8. Nevada 73.3 9. Tennessee 72.3 10. South Carolina 71.3 11. California 70.6

Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report” Compiled by Times researcher TRACY THOMAS

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Chevy Chase, watch out: After marathon legislation-signing sessions that would give writer’s cramp even to a man with as brief a name as “Pete Wilson,” the governor called in one bill-signing by satellite.

In a video moment akin to “This Is Your Life,” surprise guest Wilson announced on the “John & Leeza” show that he signed a bill protecting children from abusive baby-sitters. Cheri Robertson and Mary Beth Phillips, who had lobbied assiduously after their children were hurt by sitters, were guests on the show when Wilson came on the airwaves.

“Cheri and Mary Beth, I have good news for you,” he intoned from Sacramento. “I have just signed the ‘Trustline’ bill. I have listened to this conversation and I feel even better about signing it.” Afterward, the Gov signed off.

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Integer Theater: The summer show was a 5,000-seat sellout, so UC Berkeley did what Hollywood would do with a hit: make a sequel.

This week’s encore explication of the solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem was no cliffhanger, but mathematicians have waited more than 300 years to hear it. It has been mathematics’ Gordian Knot ever since that prankster Fermat scribbled it in a book margin, and noted that there wasn’t enough room left to write down the answer. Then he died.

Though one-quarter of the proof takes more than 200 pages, the presentation is “geared for general audiences,” says the math department’s Rondi Philips. “One professor took his kid to the first one, a fifth-grader; he really enjoyed the performance, except it gets progressively more complicated. Then he got lost, but for that matter, the professor said so did he.”

EXIT LINE

“We knew we were in trouble when the umpire called timeout and went into (the Wilson dugout) to have a beer.”

--Anonymous reporter quoted in CJ Weekly about a softball match between the Sacramento press corps and the governor’s staff, plus some suspected ringers. Score-keeping stopped when the Wilson forces were ahead 18-0 after the second inning.