Gov. Plays It Right, Left and Down the Middle

As Democrats try to defeat Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a theme is emerging: The governor is a “Bush Republican” bent on opening California’s door to far-right friends and a conservative agenda.

State Treasurer Phil Angelides, one of the Democrats vying to unseat Schwarzenegger next year, hardly says the governor’s name without linking him to the unpopular president. Actor Warren Beatty, one of the governor’s persistent critics, declared recently that “a Schwarzenegger Republican is a Bush Republican who says he is a Schwarzenegger Republican.”

Despite efforts to tie him to the conservative Bush, however, Schwarzenegger’s record after nearly two years in office is far more nuanced than his foes suggest. He has become a master of varied messages, unaligned philosophies and assorted personalities. At times he is a Hollywood liberal, at others a rock-ribbed conservative. Often he is a mixture of both.

The split was most striking this week when Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have legalized same-sex marriage and signed four measures to bolster domestic partnerships.

Randy Thomasson, a lobbyist for religious conservatives, thanked the governor for his veto, then expressed outrage that he signed “other radical sexual agenda bills.”

The governor’s staff calls it “Arnoldism.” Schwarzenegger said he tries to follow a centrist path.

“I have not deviated,” he said in an interview in his Capitol office. “I have not moved one inch to the left or one inch to the right.

“I don’t want to hear the right-wing side, just one side, or just the left-wing side,” Schwarzenegger said. “In the end, I am not representing the Republican Party when I am governor; I represent both parties.”

In recent months, he has shown a more conservative bent, presumably to rally his GOP base before November’s special election, when he hopes to push through a package of four ballot measures.

In addition to vetoing the same-sex marriage legislation, he has supported parental notification for underage girls’ abortions, praised the Minuteman border group, dumped state Reclamation Board members who had offended developers and tried to appoint an industry lobbyist to a key environmental post.

He has also embraced -- to the delight of conservative activists -- Proposition 75, a measure designed to hobble public employee unions by diminishing their political clout.

But since taking office, Schwarzenegger has also pressed an initiative to curb greenhouse gas emissions that goes beyond the Kyoto treaty that Bush rejected. He has supported stem cell research -- opposed by many social conservatives and limited by the president -- as well as a plan to outfit 1 million homes with solar power. In contrast to former Gov. Gray Davis, Schwarzenegger has been more willing to grant freedom to murderers and other convicts judged suitable for release by the state parole board.

Most strikingly, Schwarzenegger has drawn heavily from Democratic ranks to stock his administration and California’s judiciary. About half of his appointees to 1,566 state positions have been Republicans. A quarter have been Democrats and 14% independents. Nearly four in 10 of his judicial appointees have been Democrats and about half Republicans.

By contrast, 85% of Bush’s U.S. District Court appointees in his first term were Republicans, according to a survey conducted for the American Judicature Society, a nonpartisan research group. Of a dozen Cabinet secretaries -- the highest-ranking officials in the Schwarzenegger administration -- four are Democrats and one is not registered with any party. Democrats in the Cabinet head two of the largest state bureaucracies -- Business, Transportation and Housing and the Department of Corrections -- as well as the California Environmental Protection Agency and the education agency.

Shaun Bowler, a UC Riverside political scientist, said Schwarzenegger’s pick-and-choose approach to governing has largely reflected the views of most Californians -- socially liberal and fiscally conservative. “Typically, California voters are in the middle on things,” he said. “The governor really is in that area.”

That said, Schwarzenegger’s profile may be less a product of ideology than improvisation. He has explained his support for Proposition 73, which would ban abortions for minors unless their parents were notified, by saying he would “kill” anyone who took his daughter to get an abortion without telling him. “I just don’t want someone else to make that decision and ... leave me out as a parent,” Schwarzenegger said.

He supports vocational education, a stand that stems in part from his youth in Austria, where a two-tiered system prepares some students for college and others for trades. Schwarzenegger was put on the trade track; he sold wood at a construction materials company in Graz before making it big in bodybuilding. His environmental views also are drawn from Graz, where his relatives worked in a steel mill that polluted the Mur River and blackened windows.

Aides have described him as basically an Austrian businessman, despite his action star career. And, with a few notable exceptions, Schwarzenegger has indeed aligned himself with the California Chamber of Commerce. He has sided with the chamber on legislation nearly 90% of the time, according to a Times review.

“I don’t have a list of the things they peddle or they want us to pass,” Schwarzenegger said. “But I assume we are in sync, because for me the most important thing is to bring the economy back.”

At the same time, he has sought to balance his pro-business stance with an aggressive environmental agenda.

During the 2003 recall campaign, Schwarzenegger unveiled an “action plan” that included big cuts in emissions, more parks, mass transit and green buildings. Since then, he has approved a 25-million-acre Sierra Nevada Conservancy, promoted hybrid cars and hydrogen fuels, and resisted Bush administration efforts to overturn power plant pollution controls and allow offshore oil drilling.

His executive order requesting a cut in greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 thrilled environmentalists. Jim Marston, director of state climate issues for the Environmental Defense advocacy group, called the “fact that a highly visible Republican like Schwarzenegger said, ‘The science is settled and let’s get on with a solution’ ” a “big deal.”

Lately, however environmentalists have grown more skeptical. They fought the governor’s appointment of an industry representative to head the Air Resources Board; the Democratic-led state Senate rejected her. They point with alarm to cuts in coastal and wildlife protection funding.

“I don’t want to sound overly negative with the recent stuff. His administration deserves credit,” said Craig Noble, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But the trend has been troubling lately, and he really needs to stay the course if he wants to live up to his pronouncements.”

Gays and lesbians are also watching the governor cautiously. Last year, Schwarzenegger signed all three bills important to the gay community -- changes to employment and housing law, insurance policies and hate crime statutes. This year he signed four out of five gay-rights bills.

At the same time, within hours of its passage, Schwarzenegger issued a statement saying he would veto the same-sex marriage bill. The move was apparently intended in part to appease religious conservatives as he headed to the state GOP convention in Anaheim.

Before Thursday’s veto, Schwarzenegger’s aides organized a meeting with more than a dozen gay-rights activists to explain his position.

John Duran, a West Hollywood councilman, said the meeting seemed to be designed “to remind us that they were friends of the gay and lesbian community, that they had gay friends and they were not right-wing kooks.”

But Duran suggested that Schwarzenegger and his aides “are making some serious miscalculations” by moving right. “Most Californians thought he would be a breath of fresh air, someone in the center, a moderate,” he said. “And tacking to the right is just making more enemies in a blue state.”

Schwarzenegger insists that he remains in the center.

“The question comes down to who do I represent, what is my intention, what is my goal here in California?” he said. “Is it to represent the Republican convention? No. Those are my friends, those are my allies.... But there is a whole other side out there.”

When asked if he worries what Republicans think about his more liberal decisions, he twice answered: “I don’t care.”

And yet by refusing to plant himself firmly in one camp or the other, the governor risks alienating both sides.

All told, religious conservatives are still trying to figure Schwarzenegger out, said Ron Prentice of the California Family Council.

“The very brief history of his leadership,” he said, “suggests it’s very difficult to place Gov. Schwarzenegger into any particular category.”

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Schwarzenegger’s appointments

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger frequently confounds his critics by taking positions all over the political map. His appointments, too, look left, right and center.

Administration appointments

*--* Total 1,566 positions Republicans 830 53% Democrats 414 26% Decline to state 215 14% Other/did not list party 107 7%

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Judicial appointments

*--* Total 94 judgeships Republicans 45 48% Democrats 36 38% Decline to state 13 14%

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Source: Governor’s office

Los Angeles Times