His critic say Arnold Swarzenegger has sold out to the special interests he vowed to opopse. But the governor of California copuld still be a White House contender one day, reports Conor O'Clery, North America Editor.
In the film Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the cyborg played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, known as Terminator 850, tells the heroic John Connor (Nick Stahl) that he must kill him, explaining, "I have no choice! The TX has corrupted my system." Connor tells him, "You don't want to do this," to which the Terminator replies, "It is irrelevant, I am a machine."
Nearly half way through his term as Reublican Governor of California, has Arnold Schwarzenegger's system been corrupted by 18 months of political power, and has he become a machine politician, a creature of special interests like his Democratic predecessor, Gray Davis, which he vowed he never would? It depends whom you talk to.
"No he hasn't been compromised," says Shawn Steel, former chairman of the California Republican Party and one of the prime movers behind the recall of Davis that led to Schwarzenegger's election. "I keep waiting for him to compromise on the four big issues, and so far he hasn't," said Steel, over a lunch of salad and mineral water (this being California) at a restaurant in Palos Verdes Peninsula, an affluent community south of Los Angeles.
Steel listed the issues. One: capping the budget. Two: shifting the state's pensions to a 401-k (private accounts) system. Three: bringing in a merit system for hiring and firing teachers. Four: redrawing the boundaries of what Steel calls California's "rotten boroughs". The initiatives will be put to the people in a special poll in November and it promises to be America's hottest political event in a non-election year.
With his popular appeal as a Hollywood celebrity, the Republican governor is banking on enthusing enough voters to carry the day, and see off the opposition of the Democrat-controlled state legislature in Sacramento. The former Mr Universe dominates the elected body by force of will, the glow of power, and showmanship. Last time I visited his office in the East Annex of the state building in Sacramento just after his election 16 months ago, there was only the faded word "GOVERNOR" carved above the door. Now the name SCHWARZENEGGER is inscribed in bright gold.
"He doesn't like to lose," explains Steel, a hard-core conservative and director of the tax-cutting Club for Growth in California. "This is the man who would invite his opponent in chess games to sit in a chair marked "LOSER", while he sat in a chair saying "WINNER". And when he got beaten one day he went for chess lessons to a grand master."
Since defeating Governor Gray in the recall election, Schwarzenegger has used his star power relentlessly to push a pro-business agenda, with the raucus support of California's conservative talk radio. One of his big triumphs was getting Californians to reject Proposition 66 in a poll in November. This initiative, which would have modified the state's "three strikes and you are out" law by requiring the third strike to be a violent crime, had earlier been favoured by three out of four people.
Nor is Schwarzenegger magnanimous to his opponents. He has taunted Democrats by calling them "economic girlie-men", "losers" and "stooges". He courts friendly media outlets where he is subjected to softball questions from starstruck interviewers. On Los Angeles radio station KZLA a reporter asked about the governor's exclusive Giacomo Trabalza suits, and commented: "May I say, from one man to another, beautiful? They drape unbelievably." Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver posed for Annie Leibovitz on a Harley-Davidson for the cover of January's Vanity Fair. The film-star governor staged his State of the Union Speech in January like Oscars night. As he tours the state to promote his four initiatives, a Terminator look-a-like throws Arnie T-shirts to the crowds.
While he gets consistent 65 per cent approval ratings, Arnie has made enemies too. Arianna Huffington, an independent candidate for governor in 2003, accuses him of serial betrayals. She said he reneged on his campaign pledge not to accept contributions from special interests, wheras he has since raised $28 million, almost all from "the usual special interest suspects".
In her syndicated column she wrote that he undertook not to withhold money due to schools to balance his budget, and then held back nearly $3 billion. He personally promised the California League of Conservation Voters he would not support an initiative making it more difficult for Californians to use the courts in environment cases, but he did, and it passed. He promised to "tear up the credit card" if voters passed a balanced-budget initiative, but they did and he then sought to borrow $6 billion more.
Labour leaders also accuse Schwarzenegger of moving to part-privatise the state pension system after undertaking not to in return for their acquiescence in his 2004 budget. Schwarzenegger did fulfill a promise to convert one of his Hummers to hydrogen power, and got General Motors to do the trick, but the result - the world's first hydrogen-fuelled six-litre Hummer with an enormous carbon-fibre bottle in the back - was dismissed by the LA Times automotive critic Dan Neil as a sadly comical misapplication of technology and a monstrosity that "can only come from monstrous egos".
Schwarzenegger's opponents say he is using his celebrity to ram through bad policies. When he was heckled at one event he said "Pay no attention . . . the special interests don't like me in Sacramento because I am always kicking their butts". The protestors were nurses opposed to his decision to delay new rules requiring hospitals to have more nurses on duty. Their association is furious with the governor and has created a commercial showing a nurse warning that one day "you will be in that bed (and) you may be calling and there's no one there".
California has the strongest unions in the US and not all their members are happy. A teacher in Santa Monica tells me desparingly that the unions have blocked teaching through English to Mexican immigrant children - which she believes is essential to their progress - because it would affect the employment of Spanish-speaking teachers.
Taking on the unions is one of the reasons conservatives love the Terminator. Two weeks ago at the California Republican Party spring convention in Sacramento, the often fractious members suspended the rules and nominating him to run again in 2006, a full year before they needed to do so. The convention was held in the Hyatt where Arnie, whose home is in LA, stays when visiting the state capital. He ran up a bill last year of $91,000 but a special foundation took care of that.
Schwarzenegger has an extraordinary ability to get people to give him money. Last year he raised more than $23 million in political donations for initiative campaigns, travel and fundraising. Billionaire Henry Nicholas gave him $1.5 million to help defeat Proposition 66. Schwarzenegger also used donations to help clean up his image, paying more than $300,000 for defence lawyers in libel suits arising from allegations of serial groping. The former film actor is still fighting a libel suit in London brought by ex-British TV host Anna Richardson, who claims she was groped by Schwarzenegger and then defamed by his campaign staff. Schwarzenegger told Vanity Fair he has been cured of his "inappropriate" behaviour by taking sexual harassment lessons and "I learned my lesson.".
To raise cash this year for his big issues, an initiative committee called Citizens to Save California has organised fund-raising dinners where guests can get a single photo with the governor for $10,000, or two photos, sitting down, for $25,000, or a picture with a guest for $50,000, or four photos with three guests and a seat at the head table for $100,000.
The California newspapers have been scathing about this type of fund-raising to finance his political agenda. "Schwarzenegger says he can't be bought, but apparently he can be rented," snorted the Sacramento Bee. Invitations to the diners, headed "An Evening with Governor Schwarzenegger," were sent to lobbyists, raising question about the governor's own relationships with special interests and whether he is breaking campaign law. Schwazenegger told a small group of supporters in Sacramento where invitations were handed out he wasn't doing the job to get rich or become famous, as he was already both, but the Los Angeles Times gleefully reported that Schwarzenegger made his way around the room shaking hands and saying: "I'd like for this meeting to stay out of the LA Times."
I remember being on the campaign with Schwarzenegger in 2003 and hearing him repeat like a mantra his criticism of a system where "the money comes in and the favours go out". However the money is pouring in for the incumbent now and he is seeking to change to system so he can raise even more. The big bucks are however in Washington in the form of federal funds and last week Schwarzenneger travelled to the US capital to use his seductive charm and celebrity on a tougher audience - members of the US Congress. The 'Collectinator" as the Caifornia governor has called himself, said he wanted more federal funds to help cope with the state's $8.6 billion shortfall.
He protests that California receives only 80 cents for every tax dollar it sends to Washington cut little ice. It was his fourth visit to Capitol Hill and some of the stardust has worn off. California is a rich state with a young population and federal money is doled out on per-capita income, so poorer states with older populations get more. It gets less homeland security money per person than Wyoming and has the added expense of locking up thousands of illegal immigrants.
Democrats in Sacramento hope that if Arnie collects they can get credit for forcing the issue but if he comes back empty-handed they can accuse him of failing to make good on another campaign promise. While in Washington Arnold Schwarzenegger also created some buzz about his potential as a presidential candidate. This would require a change in Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution which says only a natural born citizen shall be eligible for President.
Shawn Steel, whose early efforts to promote the Austria-born Schwarzenegger as California governor were scorned, doesn't dismiss the possibility. "Always remember that throughout his career Arnie has fought to win," he says. "He certainly sees himself as qualified. If there was another 9/11 he would be odds on to be Republican candidate in 2008."
In the 1993 science fiction movie, Demolition Man, a cop played by Sylvester Stallone is frozen in time and awakened a quarter of a century later to find (to his horror) that the real Arnold Schwarzenegger had been elected president after a successful move to change the constitution. Life is imitating the movies. Republican Senator Orin Hatch has already proposed an amendment to the constitution, which to be adopted must get two thirds support of both houses of Congress and three out of every four states. He has the support of Maria Shriver's uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy, the Wall Street Journal and the LA Times, and two eminent figures also born in Europe, Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright. Democrats could also benefit from a constitutional amendment. Fans of Michigan's popular Democratic governor, Jennifer Granholm, who was born in Canada, would like her to have a chance to run for president some day.
American voters are not so keen on changing the law for Arnie: only 22 per cent say they think he should be given the chance to run for president. But the cyborg machine keeps beating the odds. As someone said once, when money and stardom have been achieved, power becomes interesting and then "one moves into politics and becomes governor or president or something".
That someone was Arnold Schwarzenegger, in an interview with the European press in 1977, when still a mere bodybuilder.