For Gov., Poll Is Unpleasant But Required Reading

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger would suffer a severe bashing if his special election were held today. Californians are sour on him and his pet “reforms,” according to a new poll.

In fact, voters are sour on many things: the very idea of a special election, the direction of the state, the Republican president and the war in Iraq.

Of course, the election won’t be held until Nov. 8, giving Schwarzenegger more than 10 weeks to pitch voters. He’s all over puffy talk radio this week, and after Labor Day he’ll be running tens of millions worth of TV ads.

The governor’s chief adversaries -- the public employees unions -- have been attacking him in TV ads for months, and his counter-barrages have been lighter and weaker. So it’s way too early to count the guy out. And I suspect many voters are still rooting for him.

But those likely-voter poll numbers released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California indeed are bleak for Schwarzenegger:

* The governor’s job rating is down around the Bush level: 41% approval, 50% disapproval. (Among all adults, it’s a dismal 34%-54%.) Schwarzenegger’s popularity has plummeted since January, when his job rating was a lofty 63%-32%. Until recently, he has been too pugnacious and politically polarizing.

* Proposition 76, the governor’s proposed spending cap, seems to be running out of contention: Yes 28%, no 61%. At this early stage of a campaign, before opposition attack ads hit full stride, the yes number should be at least 50%. Schwarzenegger can take some solace in the fact that he hasn’t really begun to make a case for the proposal. But, of course, this is also a colossal error.

* Proposition 77, the measure to strip the Legislature of its political redistricting power and give it to retired judges, also is faring poorly: Yes 34%, no 49%. Democratic voters seem to be seeing this particular proposal for what it is: less of a political reform than a Republican power play. It’s opposed by 62% of Democrats. But only 51% of Republicans support it, perhaps because of many conservatives’ natural suspicion of courts.

* The $53-million special election is considered a waste. By 60% to 36%, voters say the ballot measures should have been put off until the next regular election in June 2006.

* President Bush and the war aren’t helping the Republican image among Democrats and independents in California, as voters become increasingly polarized and see Schwarzenegger as a GOP partisan. Bush’s job disapproval is at 58%, and 61% of voters believe the war was not worth it.

* The state’s headed “in the wrong direction,” say 58% of voters. That worked for Schwarzenegger during the 2003 recall of Gov. Gray Davis. But now Schwarzenegger is at the helm. “The public is in a state of mind like it was two years ago,” says pollster Mark Baldassare of the policy institute.

“The governor’s got a major challenge ahead of him,” Baldassare continues. “First, he’s got to improve his image among voters. Second, he’s got to sell his ideas for reforming government.”

Back in March 2004, when Schwarzenegger was peddling voters on his $15-billion budget-balancing bond and that season’s version of a spending cap -- “make them tear up the credit card and throw it away” -- the new governor only had to sell the ballot measures. Voters already were sold on him. And the measures were an easy pitch. Most Democratic leaders also were supporting them, after they’d worked out a bipartisan deal.

For weeks, Schwarzenegger has been trying -- so far unsuccessfully -- to improve his image by cooling the bombast.

In recent days, he has been putting on a public display of trying to work cooperatively with legislative leaders. In fact, he called them into his office for a rare multi-subject “Big Five” meeting Wednesday -- an event regarded in the Capitol as more about PR than policy.

And he has been making the rounds of fawning radio talk-hosts this week, previewing a central theme of his campaign for the “reforms:”

“The reason we had the recall election was because the people were sick and tired of the status quo. They were sick and tired that the state employees union and the legislators all were kind of in cahoots, and nothing got done. And now it’s time to clean house....

“We now have a special election so the people have a chance to go out and vote on things that the politicians are refusing to vote on and to fix.”

The problem for Schwarzenegger is that people understand he now sits at the top of the government in Sacramento, which 75% of voters told poll interviewers they trusted only some of the time or not at all. “Voters have begun to see him as part of the status quo,” Baldassare says.

But there are some specks of brightness for the governor within the bleakness of the poll:

* The Legislature is even less popular than he is, with 64% disapproval. So he may be able to make the campaign a referendum on the Legislature.

* Proposition 74, which would make it harder for teachers to achieve permanent status, seems to have a fighting chance. It’s ahead by 49% to 42%. Schwarzenegger calls this one of his reforms. Nevermind that it’s unworthy of the label.

* Voters overwhelmingly, by 71%, agree that “state government is pretty much run by a few big interests.” That used to be a Schwarzenegger theme, so conceivably he could recapture it. The bleak part for him is that voters feel more strongly about this now than they did when Gray Davis was governor. And for good reason: this governor has broken all records for special-interest fundraising.

This poll will not make pleasant reading for Schwarzenegger. But he should dig through it, looking for clues on how to avoid the worst drubbing of his life.

George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday.