Schwarzenegger’s People Power

Someone once asked the late Herbert Baus, a pioneering GOP consultant, why he preferred ballot-proposition campaigns to those with candidates. An initiative, he said, never arrives drunk or embarrasses you at a news conference, and a proposition’s spouse doesn’t call up in the middle of the night to harangue you.

It’s all about control, Baus said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger probably feels the same about control. He got most of what he wanted from the people, proving again that the people may be the only partner he needs to carry out his pledge to remake state government.

California voters followed 10 of his 14 initiative recommendations. And each win enhanced his political clout and sent a message straight to the Legislature.

Schwarzenegger most visibly called for defeat of Propositions 68 and 70, which would have dramatically expanded gambling in the state. Having won that battle, he has more leverage to get the revenue and regulations he wants from Indian gambling tribes.

Passage of Prop. 1A ratified a deal he cut earlier this year with local governments to help ease the state’s current money mess. Now he won’t have to face a more restrictive initiative sponsored by locals who are tired of watching their treasuries raided by the state.

Schwarzenegger’s opposition to three “job-killer” initiatives was a no-brainer. Voters ignored his wishes and raised taxes on millionaires to pay for mental health programs. But his opposition to frivolous lawsuits carried the day, and voters listened when he argued against imposing health insurance on employers.

The governor’s biggest win was defeat of the initiative to amend the three-strikes law, a cause he took up in the eleventh hour. Pollsters called the initiative’s reversal of fortune -- it was ahead in early polls -- “the biggest and fastest California electoral flip-flop in memory.”

Schwarzenegger’s support of stem cell research and blanket primary elections didn’t sit well with his party’s conservative base, but it bolstered his moderate image.

It was his loss on changing the primary system that was the most harmful politically and most threatening to his control of things. A blanket primary would have spared Schwarzenegger-the-moderate a battle with Republican conservatives in a closed primary. The Republican Party is not overflowing with attractive candidates capable of knocking off an incumbent governor in a primary. But a more centrist political landscape would help his legislative agenda.

Oddly enough, Schwarzenegger’s coattails extend to Ohio but not to California. Conventional wisdom says that he hurt himself by campaigning for GOP legislative candidates in tight races, and because there were no Republican pick-ups in the Democratic-controlled Legislature, this may be right. Outgoing Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) crowed, “It’s clear the Democrats in the Legislature have nothing to fear from the governor, and they can deal with him as equals.”

Or Schwarzenegger doesn’t have to deal with the Legislature at all.

As Baus wrote, “Enactment of legislation is the implementation of political power” -- whether the legislating is done by lawmakers or by circumventing them. He called this initiative strategy “legislation by campaigning.”

Campaigning is what Schwarzenegger does best, especially when he really puts his mind to it.

Last week’s results show that the governor holds more sway over Californians on policy issues than on candidate choice. His personal strength doesn’t automatically translate into Republican strength.

The governor failed in his halfhearted bid to change the partisan makeup of the Legislature, but did he really want the conservatives he was stumping for to win and block his moderate reforms?

What California’s governor may have succeeded in doing -- even without yet qualifying an initiative to break the Legislature’s stranglehold on redistricting -- is to begin to radically reinvent government.

In Arnold’s World, he is the governor, “the people” are his Legislature and Sacramento lawmakers are irrelevant.