Candidates Walk Fine Political Line

At a time when California is deeply split, Arnold Schwarzenegger is a man trying to occupy the middle -- philosophically and symbolically.

The center is where elections are won and lost in California, according to the accepted political wisdom. But in this unusual recall race, fired by the passion of angry Republicans and the bitterness of aggrieved Democrats, the middle ground may be the most precarious.

For all his celebrity candlepower, Schwarzenegger has drawn no more than about a quarter of the vote in a series of recent opinion polls, suggesting at the least a good deal of voter skepticism about his gubernatorial bid.

More perilous still, Schwarzenegger already draws surprisingly high negative ratings, despite mostly positive media coverage, with roughly 4 in 10 of those sampled saying they view the movie star candidate in a poor light.

With six weeks to go, the contest remains unpredictable. So far, however, Schwarzenegger has been unable to expand his base of support, hampered by the fact that he shares the ballot with several other Republicans.

“What it really boils down to is a Republican primary being held within the framework of a general election,” said Stuart Spencer, the granddaddy of California GOP strategists.

In a state with roughly 1.4 million more registered Democrats than Republicans, unless Republicans coalesce behind a single candidate, “the Democrat wins,” said Spencer, who helped launch President Reagan’s political career. “That’s how simple it is.”

The cold mathematics explains why pressure is building on state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) and Peter V. Ueberroth to abandon the Republican field for Schwarzenegger, whose vast fortune and celebrity have made him a favorite of the party establishment, if not the grass-roots. Both McClintock and Ueberroth insist they are in the race to stay.

Strategists for Schwarzenegger say he can win even in a multi-candidate Republican contest.

“I think there’s a very standard thing that happens in all campaigns,” said George Gorton of the actor’s election team. “As it increasingly becomes a two-man race, the others will fade.”

But that assumes a degree of pragmatism on the part of many conservative California Republicans who have made a sport over the years of defying the wishes of GOP leaders.

It is these activists who tarred-and-feathered an effigy of their own party’s governor, Pete Wilson, at a state convention in the early 1990s in protest over the tax hike he signed to close California’s last big budget gap.

And it is the same uncompromising faithful who defied the White House and the rest of the party establishment last year by rejecting former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, another social moderate, in favor of the conservative Bill Simon Jr. in the governor’s race.

Simon ran a disastrous campaign before losing to Gov. Gray Davis in November. After briefly reprising his candidacy in the recall election, Simon quit the contest Saturday, saying there were too many Republicans running.

Now, many conservatives are looking to McClintock, dubious of Schwarzenegger and his studied lack of specifics. McClintock is firmly anti-abortion, anti-gay rights and supportive of gun ownership, a profile that fits a good 15% to 20% of the state Republican electorate.

“Republicans need to know and conservatives demand: What are you going to do in office?” said Steve Frank, a longtime conservative grass-roots activist, who worked for Simon in both his gubernatorial campaigns. “Until he gets specific, he is asking people to take him on faith. He really hasn’t answered that question.”

Schwarzenegger set out to address some of those concerns by making his debut Monday on conservative talk radio, where he embraced Reagan and sharpened his vow to avoid raising taxes -- though, again, without making an iron-clad promise.

“We have the same philosophy and approach to things,” he said of Reagan during an appearance on KRLA in Los Angeles.

“America is the shining city on the hill,” Schwarzenegger said on KOGO in San Diego, summoning one of Reagan’s most famous lines. “I have experienced that thing firsthand.”

So far, however, Schwarzenegger’s campaign debut has been a far cry from Reagan’s experience, despite the frequent comparisons made between the two actors turned politicians. Unlike Reagan, Schwarzenegger -- a fiscal conservative and social moderate -- is struggling to hold on to the Republican Party base at the same time he reaches out to the Democrats he needs to win in this mostly Democratic state. That sort of maneuver is difficult for even the most practiced politician, much less a novice like Schwarzenegger.

His embrace of Warren E. Buffett, and the way it backfired, illustrates the challenge. The announcement of the Omaha investor as Schwarzenegger’s top economic advisor drew raves on Wall Street and sent a powerful signal to many that the candidate would be no slave to party labels. Buffett is not only the second-richest man in the world, but a Democrat who has been among President Bush’s sharpest critics.

The announcement curdled less than a day later when Buffett told the Wall Street Journal that he looked askance at Proposition 13, one of California’s most politically sacred tenets. The statement not only outraged conservatives -- who continue to recycle the remark -- but forced Schwarzenegger into a defensive crouch that turned the second week of his campaign, even by insider accounts, into a serious flop.

It is hard to imagine Reagan stumbling on an issue so fundamental to Republican values. And there are other important differences with the Reagan model. Reagan played mostly nice guys on the screen -- in contrast to Schwarzenegger’s more violent persona -- and had a years-long political apprenticeship before jumping into the hurly-burly of the 1966 governor’s race. When he ran, it was a conventional campaign, in which Reagan’s firmly conservative philosophy motivated the grass-roots activists who comprise the Republican Party base, bringing victory in the GOP primary en route to election in the fall.

Schwarzenegger’s efforts Monday to appeal to those activists with his radio appearances drew grudging praise from skeptics. Schwarzenegger can win over conservatives “if he aggressively goes out to the grass-roots,” as K.B. Forbes, spokesman for the just-ended Simon campaign, put it.

“He says he’s the candidate of the people, but he’s not out talking to the people,” Forbes said. “If a Schwarzenegger candidacy is going to succeed, he has to show substance before the press, he has to show a connection with the Republican base and, thirdly, he has to go to nontraditional Republican areas and capture those voters, tap into the disgruntled Davis Democrats, independents and minorities.”

Aides to the Schwarzenegger team said he will do that, starting with a trip later this week to the Central Valley. But invocations of Reagan can only go so far, and help so much, in a polarized political environment like the one surrounding the recall.

The dilemma illustrates the quandary of a candidate trying to be, if not all things to all people, at least someone who can appeal to voters -- Democrat, Republican and independent -- who right now seem to agree on terribly little.

“The recall has divided California in a very, very partisan way,” said Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist who helped Republican Riordan win his second term as Los Angeles mayor.

Like the baby in the biblical story of King Solomon, Carrick suggested, Schwarzenegger may find there is great risk being the candidate of the middle: “He could end up being cut in half.”