Talk Radio Host Basks in Governor’s Limelight

Six years ago, Scott Cox sold tennis rackets. Now Arnold’s people call Scott’s people whenever the governor walks the streets of Bakersfield.

Cox calls the governor “buddy,” and when they’re on the phone, it’s one buckaroo to another.

“Now, I know you sat down and had strudel with Gil Cedillo,” Cox teased the governor in early December, referring to the state senator, an L.A. Democrat. “How do I get in on that? When do I get to come down to Santa Monica and have some strudel?”

“Well, anytime,” Schwarzenegger replied. “You just have to come down.”

Cox is no well-heeled donor. No lawmaker. He’s a talk radio host. And with Schwarzenegger’s rise to the statehouse, he’s become a big man in a small city.

The morning host on KERN-AM (1410), Cox began plugging the actor’s candidacy the morning after Schwarzenegger announced his campaign on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”

The payback has been handsome. Cox, who looks like a lot of 39-year-old guys around here -- tall, husky and with a tricked-out truck -- now is easily recognized around town, a rarity for a voice on the radio. His show has soared in popularity, beaten in the morning commute hours only by KUZZ-AM (550), a country radio station owned by Buck Owens.

All this has given Cox tongue-in-cheek bragging rights. “Let’s face it, I don’t know if you realize this or not, but I am essentially the guy who got you elected,” Cox told Schwarzenegger during a Dec. 3 on-air interview -- the same interview in which he wheedled the strudel klatch out of the governor.

“I’ve got a campaign kickback,” Cox said. “I need you to sign a picture for me tomorrow for some friends of mine. Can you do that?”

“You’ve got it. And Scott, let me tell you something .... You have done an incredible job to help us with that rally, the last time we had this huge rally in Bakersfield, and I know you are doing a real job for the Valley again, so I really want to thank you very much for being so helpful.”

“That is no problem at all,” Cox said. “Arnold, I’ll see you tomorrow. And I’m holding you to it on the strudel deal.”

Much has been said of talk radio’s catalytic effect on conservative causes, including the recall election that replaced Gov. Gray Davis with the charismatic former action-film hero. The power equation, however, runs both ways.

Schwarzenegger has made small-market talkers like Cox into power brokers who can be called out in a pinch to rally the masses when the governor goes on the hustings for his budget programs, as he will between now and the March election.

“They fulfill the role that ward bosses did 50 years ago,” said Sal Russo, a political consultant who used talk radio to help Bill Simon win the Republican gubernatorial primary last year. “They are a central source of information.”

Not all of the AM radio hosts ride the Arnold coattails wholeheartedly. Cox, for one, says that if Schwarzenegger starts acting like a liberal, he’ll start asking tough questions in his AM rants. And Cox’s rants reach from roughly where “The John and Ken Show,” broadcast on L.A.-based KFI-AM (640), fades, to where KMJ-AM (580) fills in from Fresno.

So far, Schwarzenegger’s $15-billion bond measure, slated for the March ballot, doesn’t put him in the liberal camp, Cox said.

Not so for Inga Barks, who follows Cox on KERN-AM’s morning lineup. She steadfastly supported state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) and has jabbed -- albeit lightly -- at Schwarzenegger’s bond measure. It’s no surprise to Barks that the governor’s office doesn’t return her telephone calls.

“I do find it interesting that, as a McClintock supporter, I could not get an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was running for office,” Barks said. “And I can’t get an interview with him now.”

Barks, who jokes that she is “too stupid to keep my mouth shut,” vows to press the governor on borrowing, immigration policy and a conservative agenda that she succinctly describes as “God, guns and the unborn.”

In a staunchly conservative town that once banned the John Steinbeck novel, “The Grapes of Wrath,” the differences between Barks and Cox are subtle. They are conservative and more conservative. Jocular, with the sharp wit and impatience of an overgrown teen, Cox is a bit of Rush Limbaugh tinged with Howard Stern. She’s Ann Coulter, without the Ivy League swagger.

“Our job is to be biased,” Barks said. “I fully support my co-workers’ getting as close to Arnold as they can. I fully support them hosting the rallies and doing all that, because it benefits my station. Whether or not it benefits what I believe in as a conservative is a whole other issue.”

Schwarzenegger clearly benefits KERN-AM, in the eyes of program manager Blake Taylor. “In my opinion, you can’t have too much Arnold on-air right now,” he said. “When is he a dead issue? I don’t know. As long as he keeps stirring it up, I don’t think there’ll be a down time for him in talk radio. Our trends are up, and I think he’s part of it.”

As for Cox’s moment in the sun with the new governor, Taylor said, “He’s a big boy. He knows what he’s doing and he’s intellectually honest as well. He’s been backing Arnold Schwarzenegger from the get-go. It’s definitely good for him to have the access. Governor Davis was, for all intents and purposes, inaccessible to us. Now we do have a bit of access to the governor.”

KERN-AM, which uses Schwarzenegger snippets (“I am humbled, I am moved -- and I am honored beyond words to be your governor”) as background to its station promo (“You’re listening to a radio revolution!”), is not all-Arnold, 24-7. On an average show, Cox may rant about the workers tiling his house or spend an hour accusing Oprah Winfrey of running a cult. He has grudgingly praised the political intellect of U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), one of AM radio’s favorite villains.

“I don’t ever want to sink into that mold where I’m just a mouthpiece for the Republicans,” Cox said. “I’m a pretty conservative guy, but I mean, there’s some pretty messed-up stuff the Republicans do, too.”

If part of Cox’s job description is to complain, he comes by it naturally.

“I was the kid, 11 years old, yelling at Dan Rather, because what he said was clearly not true,” Cox said, recalling how, even as a boy, he followed TV news and pored over the local newspaper. “And I always thought, ‘Man if I can just get involved, if I can just get in the game ... and eventually I got the opportunity.”

Cox’s opportunity came when the station owner offered him a job, nearly six years ago. It was an odd choice. Before that he sold tennis rackets at his own sporting goods store. The son of a truck driver and a housewife, he never ventured far from his hometown of nearby Corcoran, except for a brief time in Oklahoma.

“There’s nothing like being a minor celebrity in a small market,” he said shortly after a clerk at Barnes & Noble greeted him with a “What’s up, Scott?” “There’s just enough people out there who love you.... You’re going to run into somebody at the grocery store. That’s pretty cool. You sign one autograph a week.”

If Arnold Schwarzenegger asks Cox to rally voters for the March ballot initiatives, the radio host stands ready.

“You know, when somebody calls you and says, ‘Look, we’re with Schwarzenegger’s people, would you like to emcee a rally?’ anybody in the media is going to say yes because you’d be crazy not to,” Cox said.

That, said Barks, is just the problem.

“When will the honeymoon end with those who are blindly supporting him? I don’t think ever,” Barks said. “Because as long as someone like him who’s got rock-star status ... is calling you up and saying, ‘Can I come on your show?’ you are going to be flattered into forgetting everything you disagree with, because he’s willing to be with you.”

But how long before strange bedfellows become estranged?

Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers Magazine, a talk radio industry monthly, bets Arnoldmania will run its course in six months to a year, maximum. After that, he said, the governor will be tossed in the same stack as the Spice Girls’ CDs.

“Schwarzenegger is the cool thing of the moment,” Harrison said. “If the audience starts to turn away from Schwarzenegger, the cool element would rapidly diminish.... Basically, it operates by the same rules of pop culture as anything else.”

Democratic strategist Garry South, who ran two of Davis’ campaigns, can’t wait for the talk radio circuit to sour on the governor.

“You had a guy who was pro-choice, for gun control, running around using right-wing talk radio to promote his candidacy,” South said. “These AM radio hosts, to my mind, had to swallow their pride and principles to support him .... Are they committed to principles or are they committed to basking at the elbow of some politician?”

At least for now, economics dictates that Cox basks a little longer.

“I don’t know how long we’re going to milk it, but it’s going to be long after it’s used up,” Cox said. “And if Arnold never calls me again, you know what? No harm, no foul.”