Governor’s Busy Routine Blends Business, Pleasure
He holds some of his most important meetings in a canvas smoking tent on an outside patio. He encourages visitors to his office to swing a 3-foot sword he used to kill a prehistoric dictator in the film “Conan the Barbarian.”
He has been known to phone the mothers of legislators to wish them happy birthday and treats lawmakers to rides on his private jet.
His day typically starts at 6 a.m. with newspapers and a 45-minute ride on his LifeCycle and ends only after half an hour of lifting weights, whether at home in Los Angeles or at a public gym in the capital. In between come three or four trips to the medicine chest to take nutritional supplements, including Ester-C in 500 milligram tablets; flax seed oil; B complex and B-12 vitamins; and the calcium supplement Citracal.
In the nearly five months since he took office, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s days have begun to take on a familiar, if not entirely predictable, shape. And Schwarzenegger, in interviews and public statements, has given enough glimpses of his habits and schedule to provide a picture of what it is like to be a world-famous bodybuilder turned movie star turned businessman turned governor.
“I never run out of energy,” the 56-year-old Schwarzenegger recently told a crowd of fitness enthusiasts. He gets by on as little as five hours sleep a night, and “I always find time to do what I need to do,” he said. “I always say that the day is 24 hours. ... If you work hard for 15 hours, there’s still nine hours left.”
Monday through Wednesday, he often stays here, where the 15th floor of the Hyatt Regency hotel, across the street from the Capitol, has been transformed into his living quarters. Thursday through Sunday, he generally stays in Los Angeles.
When at home in L.A., Schwarzenegger devotes the early morning to his four children, ages 6 to 14, often taking them to school before going to his office for meetings. He typically works from “The Oak,” the building on Main Street in Santa Monica that he owns and uses to house his company, Oak Productions. The name refers to his bodybuilding nickname, the Austrian Oak. Inside the elevator landing is a mural of the Terminator blasting through a wall.
In Sacramento, when the Republican governor arrives at his office every morning around 9, his senior staff -- 13 people, six of them women, with a median age of 44 -- have conducted their daily meeting. Eleven of the 13 are Republicans, and five previously worked for the Wilson administration.
Once at the office, Schwarzenegger says he is booked solid in meetings, typically scheduled every half hour, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Even friends sometimes need appointments to see him. On days he is interviewing job candidates, his schedule is planned to the minute.
Every Wednesday morning at 8:30, Schwarzenegger meets with Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga) and Assembly Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), sometimes at the Hyatt.
Meetings with Schwarzenegger are generally described as informal but businesslike, yet with a distinctive style. There is that sword, to begin with, and if you boast about your workout, it’s a good bet that the governor of California will give your arms an appraising squeeze.
With former governors Pete Wilson and Gray Davis, “it was always clear that [meetings] were business meetings,” Brulte said. “I’ve yet to be in a meeting with Gov. Schwarzenegger where he didn’t make everyone in the meeting feel like they’re the most important person in the world. His interpersonal skills are just about better than anyone I’ve ever met.”
Gubernatorial friends sit in; a European friend of Schwarzenegger’s recently sat through a meeting of the Big 5 -- the governor and the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Assembly and Senate. The governor often doesn’t wear a tie, though office policy is for male aides to wear ties when the governor is in the Capitol.
Internal meetings often involve discussion and arguments from different ideological viewpoints; Schwarzenegger likes to see the various sides of a point argued in front of him, aides say.
During the transition, Schwarzenegger made some decisions after listening to arguments between Wilson and former Democratic Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg; both men are now among his advisors. Schwarzenegger rarely writes memos and sometimes tells long-winded aides that he doesn’t want the doctoral thesis version in a presentation. But he will read dozens of pages of material on an issue -- workers’ compensation is one that he has studied closely -- if there are plenty of facts.
The governor likes to leave the office for lunch.
“That is for me always the break,” he said in a recent interview. “I don’t like eating in. Never did on the job. Even in movies, many times I get away from the set. Feel this is a break.”
One of his favorite Sacramento haunts is the Esquire Grill; his staffers, following their boss’ lead, have turned the restaurant into the Schwarzenegger administration cafeteria. On many weekdays, it’s possible to find a half-dozen or more of the governor’s top aides there.
Other days bring lunchtime events. Before a speech or town hall meeting, Schwarzenegger typically likes to be left alone so he can “learn my lines,” he tells aides. He sometimes refers to his prepared speeches as “scripts.”
When an event requires a drive, Schwarzenegger typically sits in the front passenger seat of the SUV taking him there. For more distant events, he takes a private jet from aircraft dealer Net Jets -- Oak Productions has purchased a share in a plane that allows him to use various types of jets depending on his needs -- and sometimes brings along legislators for discussions.
On trips, Schwarzenegger likes to play chess with aides and friends. For his events, gubernatorial aides typically ask organizers for bottled water, fresh fruit and flowers, and throw pillows. (Schwarzenegger has several uses for the pillows, including sitting on them during media interviews to look taller.)
During public appearances, Schwarzenegger carefully favors his left side; he struggles with a lingering injury to his left shoulder, on which he says he had surgery early last year. (When Schwarzenegger claps, he keeps his left side still and claps with just his right hand, which he pounds into his left hand.)
After events on the road, Schwarzenegger will often make time for shopping. He hit stores in San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; and New York after speeches there this year. On vacation in Hawaii last week, the governor visited the upscale Shops at Wailea at least twice, ducking into stores as California Highway Patrol officers stood watch outside. The governor has a weakness for shoes -- and a competitive zeal about buying gifts for his new political friends.
For the birthday of state Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco), the governor gave flowers and a collection of Alfred Hitchcock DVDs. Burton later returned the favor: Italian roasted coffee from San Francisco and the movie “Mayerling,” which is about an event in Austrian history.
By the afternoon, Schwarzenegger is usually back in his office, often with a cigar in his mouth. He spends considerable time on the phone and holds more meetings; when in Sacramento, these often take place in the smoking tent, located on a patio by the Horseshoe -- the long, twisting, narrow line of offices where the senior staff works. Aides prefer to call it the “deal-making” tent.
Sometimes he visits legislators -- particularly Burton -- or lawmakers come to him. When Burton recently visited the governor’s office, he found Schwarzenegger sitting alone in his tent smoking a cigar.
The two men started talking “about nothing,” Burton said, “about going someday to the Prague restaurant in Davis and having schnitzel.”
The official work day generally winds up about 7 p.m. Sometimes Schwarzenegger runs behind schedule and can be impatient. When he is made to wait, he has recently developed a habit, said one close advisor, of repeating a bit of public gubernatorial rhetoric in private: “Let’s hurry up,” he will say. “I’m the action governor.”
Wednesday nights, he often flies home on his private jet to be with his wife and children; the governor says time away from them is the toughest part of his job.
On the days in Los Angeles, Schwarzenegger tries to retain certain routines that predate his entrance into politics: the early Sunday morning motorcycle ride followed by late Mass with his family at St. Monica Catholic Church; cigar night at Schatzi on Main, the restaurant in the Main Street complex below the Oak; dinner, a cigar and a few games of chess with friends at his favorite haunt, Caffe Roma in Beverly Hills.
He tries to keep Los Angeles evenings and weekends free for family, he says, proudly noting that there is no television in the Schwarzenegger home between 3 and 8 p.m.
The governor told a reporter that in the weeks before Martin Luther King Day he had been reading a book on King each night with his 10-year-old son, Patrick. He used the book, and his experiences in talking with Patrick about King, to write a speech he delivered on the King holiday in San Francisco.
“Sometimes you don’t want to let a speechwriter do it,” the governor said. “You have to do it yourself to make it organic.”
The Schwarzeneggers also entertain visitors on state business at their home. At the announcement of a design for California’s quarter in late March, First Lady Maria Shriver recalled retired state librarian Kevin Starr’s visit to their home. When Starr gave the family four books, Christopher Schwarzenegger, 6, said he was impressed that Starr had written four books. The historian quickly corrected the youngster: He’s the author of 14.
In Sacramento when Shriver is in town, she and the governor often will go out for dinner. They joined a group of Assembly moderates for dinner at Frank Fat’s earlier this year.
Another time, Burton ran into Schwarzenegger and Shriver dining at Biba’s; Schwarzenegger tried to send Burton a bottle of red wine. “I don’t drink but I’ll take the money,” Burton told the waiter, who promptly returned with a $100 bill from the governor. Burton signed it and sent it back.
But on many nights, the governor takes his dinner in his hotel room, for which he pays $125 a night.
He often uses the night to catch up on work. “I take a lot of stuff with me, reading stuff that I need to know for the next day or week, things that will come up or things that I ask my staff or one of my secretaries.”
Schwarzenegger is famously disciplined about getting to bed early, but he doesn’t like to sleep with an unanswered question in his mind. On some nights, Schwarzenegger says, he’ll be studying a briefing paper and call an aide “and say, ‘I don’t understand it. Come over to my hotel room.’ And we’ll talk till midnight.”