Surprise, Party: Governor Really Is an Outsider

Just when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was looking like every other politician, he jolted the system this week -- endorsing ballot initiatives for stem cell research and a blanket primary that hurts his own political party.

He was only getting started.

In a freewheeling speech in Monterey, Schwarzenegger said California’s uneven property tax system needed to be revamped, the borders should be open to prescription drugs, and health insurance might need to be required for everyone just like auto insurance.

“Whether it was in the bodybuilding sport, whether it was in show business or in business in general or in government, I was an outsider,” the governor insisted at the Monday evening event.

The surprising endorsements and comments in Monterey helped Schwarzenegger, at least this week, tackle his biggest dilemma as a Republican governor: how to appear like an outsider while frequently acting like an insider.

Schwarzenegger was elected in a tumultuous recall election that he said would end politics as usual. But subsequently he has cut deals with Democrats and capitulated to the forces of power in Sacramento, while collecting record amounts of money from special interests he had ridiculed as corrupting the Capitol.

Yet much like when he called California lawmakers “girlie men” for not bending to his will on the state budget, Schwarzenegger has simultaneously cast himself as an outsider within the Republican Party and the political world.

Schwarzenegger may be surprising people with his political positions -- but the surprise comes because voters knew little about his political philosophy on a host of social issues before they elected him.

Now they do. Free needles for drug users. Stronger domestic partnerships. Tougher hate-crime laws and gun control. Parole for a higher percentage of murderers than Gov. Gray Davis.

The developments have angered conservatives who watched Schwarzenegger take a prominent role at the Republican National Convention, the height of political establishment events. Perhaps they thought he was one of their own, and Schwarzenegger’s speech gave them no reason to think otherwise; it was about his immigrant experience.

National and state Republican officials were reluctant to criticize Schwarzenegger for bucking his own party this week -- he is, after all, one of the most popular Republicans in the country. Christine Iverson, a spokeswoman for the national party, said that “the ballot initiatives are for the people of California to decide.”

But Schwarzenegger’s views on many subjects represent a sharp contrast to President Bush, who does not support expanded stem cell research and has embraced religious conservatives throughout his four years. And they highlight the vast differences between California and the middle of the country -- he is at this moment uniquely Californian in substance and belief.

“He is certainly not representative of mainstream Republicans and certainly not representative of conservatives,” said Richard Lessner, executive director of the American Conservative Union, based in Arlington, Va. “In one sense, you might call him a bicoastal Republican. He certainly could not get elected in the heartland of America with those views.”

Schwarzenegger was -- and remains to many people -- a global celebrity but a political enigma. Some days he seems like an avid Republican taking care of business interests. Other days he seems like a liberal Democrat.

The cynical view would be that Schwarzenegger is triangulating -- tacking to the left and then to the right -- because he wants people to believe he is a political rebel or that he someday wants to run for U.S. Senate or whatever.

But it is more likely Schwarzenegger has been making socially liberal decisions and protecting business interests for the Chamber of Commerce because that is what he believes.

Schwarzenegger’s comments came Monday evening as part of a lecture series sponsored by Leon Panetta, the former chief of staff to President Clinton and head of the Panetta Institute. It was an enthusiastic discussion -- “part of this great asking-questions, answering-questions thing,” as the governor put it.

He made people laugh by relating a conference call he received featuring Democratic and Republican officials asking him to oppose Proposition 62. “Then you know something is fishy,” Schwarzenegger said about the bipartisan call.

The initiative would create an open primary in which the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, would advance to the November election. This supposedly would lead to more moderate candidates from either party getting elected.

“It’s the Republican Party’s interest to keep to the right of the electorate and the Democratic Party to keep to the left of the electorate,” the governor told the crowd. “And then the battles continue. It seems there is no interest to get along. The action I think is really in the center.”

Without giving many details, Schwarzenegger hinted even further about his aims for the future -- including possibly tackling the inequities of California’s property tax system under Proposition 13.

And he fully embraced the free-market principles of his mentor Milton Friedman by saying the federal government should open borders to all goods and services, including prescription drugs. (Schwarzenegger vetoed several bills that would have allowed prescription drugs from Canada on the grounds that federal law prohibits it.)

Of course, these ideas are just somewhat random thoughts from Schwarzenegger during an energetic conversation with Panetta. He still must put his plan on paper if he’s serious, and then ask the voters, the federal government or the state Legislature for help. He’s got to be a politician to get what he wants.

To conservatives, Schwarzenegger’s endorsement of Proposition 71, the stem cell initiative, was a double whammy: It embraces the notion of using human embryos for scientific research and costs taxpayers $3 billion in funding, plus another $3 billion in interest over 30 years. Hardly fiscally conservative, they said.

Catholic League President William Donohue took an angry tone Tuesday against Schwarzenegger, a Roman Catholic who regularly attends Mass:

“As it turns out the only thing he was bothered about was cash: He struggled over how to finance the killing of embryos, not over whether the killing was justified. Thus does Schwarzenegger give the lie to the idea that it is only Catholic Democrats who live a double life these days.”

Others were less surprised.

“You have to remember his origin is in a country that is somewhat liberal on the moral issues,” said the Rev. Lou Sheldon, the outspoken founder of the Traditional Values Coalition.

“His early life was not that of a puritan, and much of that belief system he has brought over into his administration as governor.”

Bill Whalen, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and one-time advisor to Schwarzenegger, said it always has had been clear the governor was pro-economic growth and socially liberal. That is why, Whalen said, Schwarzenegger endorsed the stem cell initiative on economic grounds -- it will create jobs.

But the open primary may be a different matter, he said. The Republican governor came to power without having to survive a state primary, dominated by more conservative elements of the GOP.

And now he is trying to change that system by embracing the open primary initiative and putting the drawing of legislative districts in the hands of retired judges, not the Legislature.

“What you could argue he is doing is trying to recast California politics,” Whalen said. “Seems to me the open primary is going to make Democrats and Republicans more moderate. You’re talking about him having lasting impact on his party.”

Is Schwarzenegger a loyal Republican? Even the most conservative in the GOP believe he is. At the Panetta event, Schwarzenegger made a joke about defending his Republican positions against his wife, Maria Shriver: “I don’t know why I watched the presidential debates. If I want to watch a smart liberal Democrat and a Republican leader argue, all we have to do is go out to dinner.”

There has been a lot of speculation that Schwarzenegger, who does not personally connect with Bush and disagrees with him on a host of issues, won’t campaign for him. But he is expected to show up in Ohio just before election day -- the kind of “cannonball from the high board,” as Whalen called it, that causes the biggest wave in the media.

Grover Norquist, a conservative activist, said Schwarzenegger’s recent position on stem cells “is not grounds for divorce or the last straw or anything like that.”

Norquist, for example, is anxious to see if Schwarzenegger embraces a strict government spending cap, perhaps on the 2006 ballot. He said that could make California a national leader on fiscal restraint, with Schwarzenegger at the head.

“Therefore,” he said, “don’t sweat the small stuff.”