Schwarzenegger Puts Political Cart Before the Horse -- but Can He Drive It?

This has a really weird look to it: a governor putting the political cart before the horse. But, strangely, that’s probably the only way this contraption can work.

Normally a governor would focus on his ambitious special election first. Afterward, he’d assess the outcome and other factors -- like his popularity and personal desire -- then decide whether to run for reelection the next year.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is turning it around. He intends to announce Friday in San Diego that he’ll run for reelection in 2006 -- just as he is moving into a special election trot for this November.

There are some perception problems with this because now he’ll not only be a sitting governor, he’ll be a running candidate. Everything he does between now and election day 2006 will tend to have a political taint.

At the moment, his declaring for reelection so early makes the governor’s “reform” agenda look more political than it already did. The political glare will be magnified by his announcing on the eve of a state Republican convention in Anaheim.

His strategy is to fire up the faithful this weekend and inspire them to work for a conservative-skewed voter turnout Nov. 8. But voters elsewhere will be reminded that the special election, at its core, has become a fight between Republicans and Democrats. And there are more Democrats in California.

Actually, Schwarzenegger doesn’t have much choice but to announce now. It’s a sign of the governor’s weakness and how far he has fallen. Ordinarily, he could wait until the last possible day -- the March 10, 2006 candidate filing deadline -- before declaring his bid for reelection.

But bankrollers of his special election ballot initiatives aren’t allowing him that leeway. They’re demanding that Schwarzenegger commit to running for reelection. Virtually everyone agrees there’s no other Republican who has any chance of beating the Democratic candidate, most likely Treasurer Phil Angelides or Controller Steve Westly. If his business patrons contribute to the governor’s initiatives, then the measures lose and he leaves town, it will leave them vulnerable to Democratic payback.

“I’ve talked to several donors who have made it clear they think that if he doesn’t run, they’re left naked before their enemies,” says veteran Republican strategist Ken Khachigian.

There’s another way that the special election is pushing the governor into an early announcement. He wants to show voters that he’s in this for the long haul -- not just “the short run,” he told a campaign audience Wednesday in Fresno. “If you start something, you’ve got to finish it.”

His reform initiatives are part of “a five-year plan,” says Schwarzenegger’s communications strategist, Rob Stutzman. “They’re not going to disappear through the floorboards. They’re what he needs for a second term.”

Ordinarily, people in my business would be trying to assess the governor’s prospects for a second term. And that’s what is so weird. The upcoming announcement really isn’t about running for reelection as much as trying to rescue his two major reform proposals -- Proposition 76, a spending cap that reduces school funding guarantees, and Proposition 77, which seizes political redistricting from the Legislature and gives it to retired judges.

The most recent poll of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that only 28% of likely voters supported Prop. 76, 34% favored Prop. 77 and 41% approved of the governor’s job performance.

The consensus of political junkies is that Schwarzenegger’s reelection fate will largely hinge on the outcome of his initiatives. “If he pulls them out,” Khachigian says, “no question he’ll be King Kong.”

And how does he do that?

He needs to stop bellowing about “special interests.” Khachigian echoes many other pols when he says that line of attack is “shopworn.”

Moreover, when Schwarzenegger rails on about the Democrats’ interests, he invites the spotlight to shine on his own money-grubbing from GOP special interests.

He also should knock off the “union bosses” lingo. It just riles up union members.

“The public employees unions are his Katrina,” says Allan Hoffenblum, a former GOP consultant who publishes the California Target Book, which analyzes state political races.

“Arnold has to do two things: He has to rehabilitate his image. And he has to concentrate on the merits of the ballot measures.

“As governor, he has to start taking the voters seriously and talking directly to them.”

Hoffenblum doesn’t mean those staged “town halls,” where handpicked local supporters applaud the governor’s every other sentence. “He has been talking to the people who are already with him. What’s that all about?”

It’s about guaranteeing softball questions and avoiding hecklers. Guess he never read about Gov. Ronald Reagan’s marching out onto the Capitol steps, against his staff’s advice, and shouting into a mike at UC Berkeley protesters: “Obey the rules or get out.”

Reagan always said you couldn’t hit a home run off a soft pitch.

My view is that Schwarzenegger has an opportunity here to resurrect himself in the special election, even if he doesn’t sell his initiatives. He can mute the bluster and present an upbeat, positive image of his proposals and himself. Not attack, but promote. Act like a governor, not a cinema character.

That contraption could carry him to a second term. We’ll find out whether he can operate the thing.