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Schwarzenegger becomes focus of election in US

Nearly 160 people have tossed their hats, beads or tutus into the three-ring circus of California politics, but the morning after the filing deadline to be the state's replacement governor the talk of the town was of just one candidate: Arnold Schwarzenegger.

While the headliners and lesser lights of California politics -- including Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante; Arianna Huffington, the author and radio personality; and Senator Dianne Feinstein -- used the Sunday morning talk show circuit to plot their positions in relation to Schwarzenegger's lodestar, he stayed silent.

Admonished by his advisers not to make news out of the box, Schwarzenegger left his campaign chairman, Pete Wilson, the former California governor, to attack Davis as an incompetent spendthrift, and lesser political minions to explain his personal finances to a press corps demanding details, any details.

Sean Walsh, a spokesman for the Schwarzenegger campaign, released tax statements Sunday afternoon showing that Schwarzenegger is a rich man.

Worth millions

His tax returns show that his gross adjusted income for 2000 and 2001 was slightly more than US$57 million. For that period, Schwarzenegger owned at least ten stock and bond portfolios worth more than US$1 million each. His interests include real estate, a racetrack, an Ohio shopping mall and commercial aircraft.

Walsh said Schwarzenegger had not decided whether he would place his holdings in a blind trust if elected.

Schwarzenegger's financial documents describe not just what he has earned but also how he has shared his wealth.

In 2000, he gave a 1934 Bentley valued at US$41,500 and a 1996 Humvee valued at US$86,000 to the Inner-City Games Foundation, which runs after-school programs. The following year he donated a house in Santa Monica appraised at more than US$2 million to the Roman Catholic church.

Schwarzenegger is fond of reminding voters of his history as a penniless Austrian farmboy who became one of Hollywood's highest-paid entertainers. But on Sunday, Art Torres, chairman of the California state Democratic Party, challenged Wilson on Schwarzenegger's rags-to-riches immigrant story and ridiculed Schwarzenegger as no friend of the immigrant.

Torres reminded voters on This Week with George Stephanopoulos that Schwarzenegger had once stumped for Wilson, the sponsor of Proposition 187, a successful ballot initiative barring illegal immigrants from receiving state services. The measure was eventually struck down in state appellate court.

"Arnold did support it," Wilson confirmed, noting that about 60 percent of the state's electorate had supported the proposition, too. "Mr. Torres and the Democrats are trying to play the race card," Wilson said.

When Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy last week, it sent the Democrats into disarray. An agreement to offer no alternative to Davis and instead present a united front to beat back the recall fell apart as two prominent Democrats joined the race.

But in an 11th-hour compromise on Saturday, John Garamendi, the state insurance commissioner, pulled out, leaving Bustamante as the sole sanctioned Democratic option.

Democratic strategists are betting that the presence of Bustamante, the first statewide Latino officeholder in 100 years, will draw Hispanics to the polls to vote no on the recall, as Bustamante is urging them to do.

But others worry the Hispanic voters may choose to remove the unpopular Davis and install Bustamante in his place.

"It's a really good question, the US$64,000 question," one Democratic strategist said. "We're going to have to see what the polls say."

For his part, Bustamante, appearing on This Week, said he was "a positive second option" and encouraged Californians to "vote no on the recall, but yes on Bustamante."

Bustamante contends that Schwarzenegger does not possess the political acumen needed to run the fifth-largest economy in the world. "I'm the only person in this race," he told Stephanopoulos, "who has been in a leadership position in the state Legislature."

Bustamante strategy

But on Meet the Press on Sunday morning, Darrell Issa, the San Diego County congressman who bankrolled the recall drive and dropped out of the race last week, said Bustamante's strategy would not work.

"I'm interested to see if Cruz Bustamante will come out of the shadows of this failed administration and start talking about how he would do it differently," Issa said.

Asked why he had dropped out of the race only hours after promising to stay in, Issa said he cared more about the health of California than his own political fortunes.

"It became obvious that morning as the first, then second, Democrat entered the race, that I would only complicate things," Issa said. He blamed his swift decline on Davis' relentless attacks.

"I very much feel that Gray Davis' 16 weeks of pounding on me, in very much the same way as he did on Dianne Feinstein, needed to be taken out of the mix."

Davis lost to Feinstein by 26 percentage points in a 1992 Senate primary despite television advertisements comparing her to Leona Helmsley, a convicted tax felon.

Feinstein, who turned down the beseeching of some in the Democratic establishment to put her name on the ballot, agreed that Davis did play dirty and said that he would need to run an above-the-belt campaign if he wished to keep his job.

"I think the governor has to be given on opportunity to plight his troth to the electorate of California," she said. "I think a negative campaign is a big mistake. People need to see Gray Davis, governor of the largest state in the union, in a positive mode."

And then there is Huffington, who has taken to tailing Schwarzenegger at media events in order to draw him out and bask in his glow. She has joined Feinstein and other progressives in demanding an end to bare-knuckle politics. She has also pledged to cap her campaign spending at US$10 million and promised not to run negative advertisements or conduct opinion polls.

"I think the people of California are sick of demolition derbies," she said on This Week.

Of the replacement candidates, Schwarzenegger is the odds-on favorite, according to various polls, with Bustamante the next closest competitor. By state law, one needs only a plurality to win.

Torres, the Democratic chief, said Sunday morning that Davis was toying with the thought of apologizing for being a bad governor, contending that he may have made some mistakes but that his motivations were in the best interest of Californians.

"It's something he may consider," Torres said before launching into a litany of the governor's successes: improved student test scores, a paid family-leave act and an eventual solution to the state's energy crisis.

Meanwhile, pressure is mounting on Schwarzenegger to detail his own political agenda. But instead of wading into the morass of California's finances this afternoon, he chose through aides to explain his own.

His financial documents show that he may be reluctant to spend on political campaigns other than his own. When asked on his tax returns whether he wanted to contribute US$3 to the Federal Election campaign fund, he checked the "no" box.
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