Governor’s Initiatives Go It Alone

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger describes the November election as a sequel to the recall that swept him into office two years ago. But to succeed, he may have to give up star billing in his own production.

Facing a steep drop in the governor’s popularity and mindful of his diminished effectiveness as a political salesman, strategists are designing a campaign focusing less on Schwarzenegger and more on the substance of the four ballot measures to which he has staked his name.

The swaggering jibes at “girlie men” and platitudes about “pumping up Sacramento” have been replaced by wonky, statistics-laden talk of traffic tie-ups, overburdened ports and other facilities stretched thin by California’s unceasing population growth. Gone is the Terminator, replaced by the policy tutor.

The governor is not even appearing in all of the TV ads produced by his election team, an unusual omission for a political figure with Schwarzenegger’s larger-than-life image -- where else do they sell T-shirts of the governor at the airport? -- not to mention a performer who was once one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars.

It is just one of many paradoxes surrounding an election originally envisioned as a way for the governor to solidify his power in Sacramento and seal his bid for a second term -- but which has since helped drag Schwarzenegger down to a perilously low standing in opinion polls.

Strategists concede that the governor faces an uphill fight to pass the four initiatives that form the heart of his political agenda in the Nov. 8 election. If he wins just one, Schwarzenegger probably will claim a victory of some sort. (He is, after all, the governor who lost a $4.5-million campaign finance judgment and declared it “fantastic.”)

Still, political aides say they are heartened by their reading of voters, convinced that people are more disappointed than angry at Schwarzenegger and remain willing to hear him out over the 44 days left in the campaign. And they caution against confusing sentiments about the special election -- which a majority of likely voters say they oppose -- with the decisions that voters will make when they enter their polling places.

“I don’t want to go to the doctor, but I go when I need to,” said Mike Murphy, a Schwarzenegger campaign consultant. “People are confusing opinions on the election with what [Californians will] vote on.”

The initiatives that Schwarzenegger has made his main focus would make it easier to fire schoolteachers, would make it tougher for public employee unions to use members’ dues for political purposes, would give the governor more tools to control state spending and would take the job of drawing California’s election boundaries away from state lawmakers. Though he has also taken positions on four other November measures, they are not expected to draw nearly as much of the governor’s attention.

Opinion polls show the teacher-tenure and dues initiatives leading among likely voters, and the budget and redistricting measures trailing badly, though views are considered fluid.

Schwarzenegger describes the disparate measures as necessary steps to “fix the broken system” in Sacramento.

“The only thing that changed during the recall was the governor,” he told an audience in San Diego last week as he formally announced his bid for a second term. “We still have the same government employees’ union bosses up there; we still have the same special interests; we still have the same legislators.”

The language echoed the combative address Schwarzenegger delivered before state lawmakers in January when he first laid out his agenda. “If we in this chamber don’t work together to reform the government,” he said then, “the people will rise up and reform it themselves. And I will join them. And I will fight with them.”

That groundswell never occurred. Indeed, very little has gone the governor’s way since he issued his threat. For starters, there is the package of measures he is promoting.

Originally, Schwarzenegger called for a strict spending limit, merit pay for teachers, overhauling the state pension system and taking redistricting away from lawmakers. Of those proposals, only the latter -- arguably the one most removed from people’s day-to-day lives -- is going before voters in November. The spending cap on the ballot is weaker than the version Schwarzenegger first sought. The other two proposals have been abandoned.

But if voters failed to pay the governor much mind, the same cannot be said of his political enemies. While Democrats in Sacramento worked to stymie Schwarzenegger and cast the special election as an exercise in ego, their allies have spent millions of dollars on statewide TV and radio advertisements that exploited public sympathy for teachers, nurses and other caregivers, undercutting the governor’s credibility and his carefully crafted image.

In an irony his predecessor Gray Davis could appreciate, the millions of dollars Schwarzenegger collected to fight back only contributed to the decline in his standing as the state appeared to have traded one fundraising-focused governor for another.

As a consequence, in just eight months Schwarzenegger has shredded his greatest political asset -- his enormous personal appeal -- and with it the leverage he once had to work his will in Sacramento. That leaves him in a very different position than he might have imagined when the upcoming election was conceived, and his public persona has shifted accordingly. Now it is specifics over sizzle, particulars over personality.

“We have an increase of population of 500,000 people a year,” Schwarzenegger told his San Diego audience. “That means 5 million more people in 10 years.... If we cannot provide for the people already now, with 37 million, how can we provide for 42 million?”

Tying all that to initiatives on matters such as teacher tenure is not easy, but Schwarzenegger is trying with his slogan “Recover, reform, rebuild,” a forward-looking theme that plays nicely, from his strategists’ perspective, into the governor’s reelection campaign.

“By focusing on transportation, healthcare, economic issues, it gets back to the big things that are relevant to people and he needs to focus on” in 2006, said one Republican consultant who has discussed the race with the governor but refused to speak publicly.

It is a strategy that offers Schwarzenegger his best hope of prevailing in November and reversing his sagging fortunes, Republican strategists say.

“They’ve got to convince voters it has to do with making a better state, making a better life for them and repairing the state, repairing the state’s governance in a way that ultimately benefits its citizens,” said Ken Khachigian, a veteran GOP strategist.

Aides to the governor acknowledge as much, though they refuse to be identified to avoid incurring their boss’ wrath. By pushing Schwarzenegger toward the background, they hope to make the Nov. 8 vote an up-or-down decision on the merits of his favored measures.

Hence, in a pattern likely to be repeated, the governor was nowhere to be seen in one of the two Schwarzenegger TV ads that began airing Thursday. Instead, there were testimonials from an ethnically and gender-balanced array of amateur endorsers, peering earnestly into the camera and urging, in the words of one woman, a change in “screwed-up” Sacramento.

The governor, never one to shrink from the spotlight, is content to play a lesser role, said one Republican strategist familiar with Schwarzenegger’s thinking. His fierce sense of competition, this ally said, overmatches any blow to his self-esteem. “At the end of the day,” the strategist said, “he wants to win.”