From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Team Arnold
Schwarzenegger's a strong candidate, but he's no shoo-in.
They say everything leaks in politics except the airtight Bush White House. Add to that Arnold Schwarzenegger, who kept his announcement that he's running for governor of California so close to his chest that he stunned his own staff with the news. George Gorton, his political adviser, stood in the parking lot of "The Tonight Show" studio last night after the announcement and showed a reporter a statement he had prepared that began, "I have decided not to run . . ."
With 60 days before the Oct. 7 recall election, Mr. Schwarzenegger's brilliant political tease has cost him valuable time in what will have to be a blitzkrieg campaign. And now other big names are getting into the race. Now that Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat, has announced his candidacy, hardly anyone expects Gray Davis to win the 50% of the vote he'd need to hang on to the governor's mansion. And if the voters oust Mr. Davis, all Mr. Schwarzenegger, Mr. Bustamante or anyone else needs to win is a plurality of the vote.
The consultants Mr. Schwarzenegger has assembled--call them "Team Arnold"--are all battle-hardened veterans of the four successful campaigns that Pete Wilson ran for senate and governor in the 1980s and 1990s. Several played a pivotal role in Boris Yeltsin's come-from-behind re-election campaign for Russian president in 1996. Mr. Gorton, Team Arnold's captain, helped engineer Mr. Wilson's dramatic defeat of Kathleen Brown, Jerry Brown's sister, in the 1994 gubernatorial election. Sean Walsh was Gov. Wilson's communications director; Bob White and Joe Shumate, former top staffers for Mr. Wilson, may play key roles. Don Sipple will actively be involved in message development, although Mr. Schwarzenegger seems to have an instinct for connecting with voters. "The people are working hard," he said at his announcement. "The people are paying the taxes, the people are raising the families, but the politicians are not doing their job. The politicians are fiddling, fumbling and failing."
Even with his knack for sound bites, Mr. Schwarzenegger faces a daunting task. The campaign desperately needs position papers on key issues that will help demonstrate the actor's plans for overcoming California's $38 billion budget deficit. Without a clear plan, his opponents will attack him for being vague. Every issue that he dodges--from reform of Medi-Cal (the state's version of Medicaid) to pollution in the Colorado River--will bolster the perception that he is too inexperienced to be governor. Republican activists aren't even convinced that Mr. Schwarzenegger is conservative enough for them. Volunteers aplenty will be available, but many of them will be completely new to politics. His populist campaign message has already invited comparisons to Jesse Ventura.
Still, Mr. Wilson is bullish on Mr. Schwarzenegger. The bodybuilder-turned-actor served both Gov. Wilson and the first President Bush as a physical-fitness adviser. Mr. Wilson says the candidate "has a total focus and clarity of vision about California that would surprise and impress voters."
"Total focus" is perhaps the best way to describe Mr. Schwarzenegger. Variety, the show-business newspaper, marveled at how he can move at will between his various personas: "actor, producer, politician, entrepreneur, motivational speaker, Hummer enthusiast, Adjunct Kennedy, Primeval man."
Mr. Schwarzenegger's biography exemplifies the American dream. Determined to make it in the Hollywood movies he saw in his native Austria, he first spent countless hours training to become a world champion bodybuilder in an unheated gym in his parent's home. At age 21, he came to America in 1968 with little money and even less command of English. A natural capitalist, he bought up office buildings and apartment complexes before he ever made a film. His business empire now includes shopping malls, a Boeing 747 he leases to an airline, and a large chunk of Santa Monica real estate. He took evening courses in business at UCLA, and earned a bachelor's degree in business by mail from the University of Wisconsin at Superior. Over the course of several years he wooed and won Maria Shriver. He became the highest-paid actor in the history of movies, pulling down $30 million for this summer's "Terminator 3."
His charitable activities include a foundation that provides after-school programs for 200,000 kids and served as the inspiration for Proposition 49--an initiative he sponsored last year to expand after-school programs to every school in California. In a stroke of political genius, the initiative didn't raise taxes or cut any other program. Its funding mechanism only kicks in when economic growth naturally increases state revenues. Proposition 49 carried 50 out of the state's 53 congressional districts, winning endorsements from both Rep. Chris Cox, an Orange County Republican, and Rep. Henry Waxman, a Hollywood Democrat.
Californians will be bombarded with this life story, but none of it will matter if he doesn't present a plausible plan to fix the state's fiscal chaos and flesh out his beliefs. "There are a lot of conservatives who wonder if Arnold is an empty suit," says John Kurzweil, publisher of the California Political Review.
Mr. Schwarzenegger will also have to weather attacks on his personal life. He has told reporters that "I've had a wild life" and once said he didn't want a political career because "you have to clean up your act." Jamie Lee Curtis, his co-star in "True Lies," gushes that he would be "a natural in politics, although I'm afraid he'd have to curb his ribald and wicked sense of humor." But the attacks will go far beyond Hollywood high jinks. "We'll have the tabloids go after him," a top Democratic strategist confided to Bill Bradley of the LA Weekly. But his adversaries clearly run the risk of engaging in cartoonish overkill.
The left-leaning Guardian newspaper in Britain has already run a headline calling him "an inarticulate sex-pest and ex-druggie" (he used steroids and marijuana in the 1970s and now urges everyone against both).
Bill Saracino, a former head of Gun Owners of California, believes that when it comes to conservatives evaluating Mr. Schwarzenegger, "the glass is half full or way more." He notes that Mr. Schwarzenegger has opposed strict gun controls and contributed to several free-market think tanks. He will no doubt make overtures to social conservatives.
Mr. Schwarzenegger has quite a race to run. During the next two months he will try to build an unusual coalition of Republicans, disaffected Democrats who are satisfied with his moderate stances on social issues, independents, alienated nonvoters, and admirers who are merely starstruck. Every day will compel him to say and do things that will alienate or puzzle elements of that coalition. Yet for a candidate, the beauty of a recall campaign is that there's less time window for such missteps or revelations. The problem is that in the chaos of such a short campaign the mistakes novice candidate will likely make will be magnified.
Still, if anyone can pull it off it is Mr. Schwarzenegger, who like George W. Bush, has enjoyed being underestimated for his entire career.
