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Arnold Schwarzenegger: the next governor of California?

By Lawrence Donegan
THE OBSERVER, SAN FRANCISCO
Tuesday, Jul 08, 2003, Page 9

ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE

TV talkshow host Jay Leno is one of the most overrated comedians in the US so, when he asked his studio audience last week to "please welcome, the next governor of the great state of California ... Arnold Schwarzenegger," it was tempting to believe this was another bad joke. In fact the worst Leno could be accused of was allowing personal feelings to color his political punditry. Schwarzenegger, Leno's friend and fellow Republican Party supporter, is not the "next governor" of the richest, most populous, most powerful state in the Union. Not yet.

A peculiarly Californian drama will play out over the next five months while voters decide whether to get rid of Governor Gray Davis. Peculiar in that Davis was only re-elected to office last November peculiar in that the state's electorate has the legal right -- it's called a "recall" -- to dump any politician who is is deemed to be guilty of an "egregious act." (In effect, all election results in California can be thrown out at a time of the voters' choosing.)

Davis, a bland Democrat with roughly the same star power as a Schwarzenegger toenail, is accused of plunging the state into a US$38 billion budget crisis. If, as seems increasingly likely, he is forced from office then a fresh gubernatorial election will be held in November. The list of aspiring, plausible Republican candidates grows daily but in newspapers, on talk shows, and especially, in the nightmares of the Democratic Party, there is one name that keeps on coming back like a -- well, like a Terminator.

Naturally, the actor's supporters point out the same was said of Ronald Reagan before he was elected governor of California. For his part, Schwarzenegger has hinted he might one day run for elective office but for now seems happy to let the speculation run amok.

"I just want to talk about the movie," he said when Leno asked him directly if he coveted Davis' job.

The movie is called Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Yet while he has tried desperately to keep the conversation focused on its special effects and the beauty of co-star Claire Danes, his interrogators had other ideas.

Schwarzenegger's story has an uplifting, aspirational theme that appeals to American voters. The son of Austrian policeman, he moved to New York in the early 1970s to further his career as a body- builder, winning six Mr. Olympia contests. In between times, he put himself through business school, invested in real estate and parlayed his obsession with fitness into a profitable video and book sales business.

Indeed, he might have remained a businessman but for the success of the 1977 documentary Pumping Iron, which turned him into a minor celebrity and planted the seed of his Hollywood ambitions. But it wasn't until he was offered a 74-word part in an obscure sci-fi film that he finally became a star. The first Terminator film was released in 1984. The next decade was golden.

T3 is the third in the series of high-action, high-budget, high-body count tales of a time-traveling, monosyllabic robot's effort to save John Connor, himself the savior of the human race. Released in the US to meet the July 4 holiday market, the film cost US$170 million (US$30 million of it the star's salary) and -- if the pre-release trailer is anything to go by -- ploughs the same mindlessly entertaining field as Terminator 1 and 2. Less predictable than the plot, however, is how Terminator 3 will fare at the box office.

A lot has changed since T2 raked in quarter-of-a-billion dollars in the early 1990s, not least Schwarzenegger's status as a bankable star. The fact is he has not had a bona fide hit movie since 1994's True Lies. He is 55 now -- well-preserved, certainly, but old by Hollywood leading man standards.

You don't have to be the ghost of Sam Goldwyn to work out that T3 is almost certainly Schwarzenegger's last chance to remain in Hollywood's upper echelon. He has said he won't combine political office with acting. If the new film is a success then it's hard to imagine him turning down the US$100 million he'd get for Terminator 4 and 5.

If it should fail, however -- and Hollywood's accountants will pass judgment within days of T3's release -- then it is unlikely that Schwarzenegger will allow his career to atrophy in the way that Stallone has done. The drive and ambition that transformed the son of an Austrian Nazi into the biggest movie star in Hollywood will almost certainly propel him into the race to become the man charged with running the world's sixth biggest economy.

Current polls suggest that he could win -- hardly surprising given Davis's unpopularity and Schwarzenegger's fame. However, a fully fledged political campaign might produce a different answer.

Californian state elections [even by American standards] are uniquely poisonous and there are enough "scandals" surrounding the actor -- allegations of extra-marital affairs, his father's Nazi past, the actor's curiously conflicting versions of his up-bringing -- to give his opponents plenty to work with. Indeed, they already have been working. His reported flirtation with the idea of running against Davis last year produced a spate of negative stories in both the supermarket tabloids and serious press.

In the end, he decided against a gubernatorial challenge, settling for pushing Proposition 49 -- which required the state government to financially support after-school activities.

Schwarzenegger won easily, despite opposition from Democrats and some trades unions. Victory aside, Prop 49 gave him valuable campaign experience as well as silencing those Republicans who doubted he had the verbal dexterity and political gravitas to deliver votes. It also ensured he will have political and financial support from the party establishment should he decide to go for the bigger prize.

Schwarzenegger has been a long-time supporter of the Bush family, even in the dark days of former president George Bush's 1992 presidential defeat. US President George W. Bush would gladly return the favor, partly out of loyalty but mostly out of political expediency. Since the days of Nixon and Reagan -- both former California governors -- the state has been a bust for the Republican Party.

Having such an ally in the governor's office could help reverse this trend, giving the White House incumbent at least a fighting chance of winning the state's 54 electoral college votes. It helps that Schwarzenegger's politics adhere to Bush's so-called "compassionate conservatism," although the two men's record shows their differences.

In office Bush has been a right-wing zealot, particularly when it comes to social policy. By contrast, Schwarzenegger has often taken a liberal, quintessentially Californian stance on social affairs admitting to having smoked marijuana, supporting of gay rights and anti-poverty programs. On economic policy, he appears clueless about how the state's financial crisis can be solved. But so too did Davis and he was somehow re- elected last November -- a result that produces expressions of disbelief from many Californian voters.

This desire for change -- any change -- coupled with Schwarzenegger's profile could well be enough for victory should his name be on the ballot. All he now requires is his own campaign slogan.
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