Boxed Office

is a Los Angeles Times reporter. His book The People's Machine: Gov. Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy is due out next summer. fresno, californiaThe governor of California is refusing to stand at center stage. As the head of the Fresno County Farm Bureau talks to the cameras, Arnold Schwarzenegger drifts off to the left of the podium, leaving cameramen from local news stations with a choice: Get a dull shot of Schwarzenegger as he stands and listens, or shoot the tableau of farmers, two John Deere tractors, and a green- and-yellow sign that reads ag leaders for reform yes 74 75 76 77. One cameraman turns his lens slightly away from Schwarzenegger and toward the sign. That counts as a small victory for Schwarzenegger in California's latest campaign season. Schwarzenegger has called a special election for November 8. Californians will vote on eight ballot initiatives, four of which--Propositions 74, 75, 76, and 77--are the focus of the campaign that has brought the governor to the Central Valley. The election coincides with the bottoming-out of Schwarzenegger's once-lofty approval ratings, from nearly 70 percent late last year in public polls to less than 40 percent as of early October. All manner of explanations have been offered for that decline: The governor has moved too far to the right; he has neglected his conservative base. He has raised too much money (in the eyes of his critics) and not enough to counter his opponents, who have outspent him better than two to one (in the eyes of his supporters). He spends too much time campaigning for his ballot initiatives; he spends too much time in Sacramento and has not done enough to explain his ballot initiatives. But the debate over how he squandered his popularity aside, the consensus is that, as The Sacramento Bee put it, "The governor's star has dimmed." Except that it hasn't. Schwarzenegger's recent attempts to deflect attention from himself prove that his star is still bright--perhaps too bright for his immediate political needs. Driving Schwarzenegger's more subdued stage presence is the realization that his huge persona is obscuring his ideas. These ideas-- mostly centrist measures that include an extension of the time teachers must work for tenure, a limit on state spending, and a redistricting designed to elect more moderates to office--are more popular than he is. Whether Schwarzenegger's ballot measures succeed or fail in the November 8 election may depend on the outcome of a peculiar contest between Schwarzenegger and his own stardom. In this, the governor is battling not just his lifelong habit of seeking the limelight but also a world of people who want to put him center stage, from TV cameramen to his worst political enemies. From the beginning, Schwarzenegger designed his political persona as an extension of the characters he played in the movies. As "the action governor," he drove farm trucks, various hydrogen-powered vehicles, and a Hummer that was rechristened Reform 1. At various events, supporters waved signs with his simple, all-purpose, populist slogan, join arnold. Schwarzenegger's persona gave him an enormous advantage in using California's system of ballot initiatives and referenda to advance his agenda. Schwarzenegger used ballot initiative campaigns to force the legislature to change workers' compensation laws, to pressure Indian tribes to renegotiate gaming compacts, to support his business base (by backing an initiative to curb lawsuits against companies), and even to score bipartisan points (by endorsing a $3 billion bond for stem-cell research). In his first year in office, Schwarzenegger participated in campaigns for and against 17 different ballot measures. Schwarzenegger discovered that a campaign for a ballot measure is in many ways like one to promote a movie. Each involves a six-week barrage of TV advertisements, tracking polls, and press interviews. As a politician campaigning for ballot measures, the governor was able to use many of the same tricks he learned selling films. On the stump, he even took to wearing the same logo-emblazoned "message jackets" that had been a staple of his movie promotions since Terminator 2. Schwarzenegger's stardom does not give him greater political credibility with voters, pollsters from both parties say. But voters will pay more attention to him than to his opponents because of who he is. If Schwarzenegger has a political message that resonates with voters, he can move poll numbers with startling speed. In a campaign for a bond to refinance the state's debt on the March 2004 ballot, Schwarzenegger boosted poll numbers 25 points in less than a month. Last fall, in his campaign against Proposition 66, which would have amended the state's popular "three strikes law" for convicted felons, Schwarzenegger drove down support for the initiative by nearly 20 points in ten days. Independent pollsters say such a fast drop is unprecedented in the history of California politics. The difference this year is that the governor's opponents--most notably, political strategists for the state's public employee unions--have figured out how to use the phenomenon of Schwarzenegger's stardom against him. Angry that the governor delayed the implementation of new nurse-to-patient ratios in some hospital units, the California Nurses Association (CNA) made a practice of protesting all of his public appearances and some of his private fund-raisers. This strategy created TV pictures juxtaposing nurses with the governor. As a result, the union received far more press coverage than it would have with any other strategy. "We took his strength--the ability to get attention-- and turned it into weakness," says Rose Ann DeMoro, the CNA executive director. "It was jujitsu." DeMoro jokes that the CNA building in downtown Oakland is so covered with anti- Schwarzenegger signs that "we're no longer the CNA headquarters. We're the stop arnold building." This fall, an alliance of unions is using the same tactic in ads opposing the governor's measures. These ads say very little about the ballot initiatives; their stated target is a governor who has one "bad idea" after another and wants to "weaken the voice" of public employees. The irony is that the governor's stardom has provided a megaphone for the unions. As a result of their campaign, at least three of the governor's four initiatives trail in the polls. But the same surveys suggest that the concepts behind each measure are broadly popular. A poll by the Public Policy Institute of California (ppic), a private foundation, conducted from September 12-19 found that, while 49 percent of likely voters support strict limits on state spending, only 26 percent support Proposition 76, Schwarzenegger's proposal to limit state spending. Likewise, while 66 percent of likely voters endorsed Schwarzenegger's belief that legislators should be stripped of the power to draw their own districts, his measure to do just that--Proposition 77--has the support of only 33 percent of the voters in the same poll. Schwarzenegger has spent an entire lifetime expanding his persona to as many corners of American life as possible--cigar smokers, Hummer drivers, fitness buffs, movie fans, immigrants, and even nudists (the Terminator always arrived from the future unclothed) claim him as their own. Now he struggles visibly to dial back his persona. He has cut out the "hasta la vista, baby," but there are times when he can't help himself. He talks about this year's troubles as the "second act" of a movie in which the hero is briefly struggling. In trying to explain the sheer force of the more than $80 million the unions have spent attacking him, Schwarzenegger told a radio interviewer, "We're talking about three, four times the amount of money that they would use in the movie business to promote a movie." At the Fresno farmer rally, Schwarzenegger wins the day's fight to play down his persona. In earlier days, he might have driven a tractor into the event. Here, he limits his "action" to grabbing a handful of freshly picked grapes and popping them in his mouth. He wears a simple blue sport coat--not a message jacket. While Schwarzenegger is the star of the ads against his measures, the governor appears in only two of the first six TV ads his team has made for his initiatives. Supporters of the redistricting measure are actively distancing themselves from the governor. "Proposition 77 is not Arnold Schwarzenegger," says Bill Mundell, who is chairing one organization supporting it. Last month, when Schwarzenegger decided to declare that he would run for reelection in 2006, he made the announcement not on "The Tonight Show" but in a small theater in downtown San Diego. Schwarzenegger made the assembled press--including two dozen TV cameras--wait through a 45-minute town hall meeting on the ballot initiatives before dropping the news into his closing statement. Now that the governor has never looked weaker, the full political power of his stardom is most apparent. Even though a majority of state voters say they would have preferred that Schwarzenegger not call the special election, nearly seven in ten say they are paying close attention to election-related news, according to the ppic poll. That election ballot is thoroughly dominated by the governor. In addition to the four initiatives for which he is campaigning, there are four other measures, two of which he nominally supports. The other two initiatives--one on drug prices, the other on energy regulation--were placed on the ballot by the alliance of public employee unions specifically to create political problems for Schwarzenegger. This is the perverse silver lining for the governor: He may be trapped in his stardom, but so are his opponents. The public employees' unions can get attention for attacking him--but not for the rest of their agenda. Democrats, worried that a prolonged budget fight would help the governor pass his measures, acquiesced to most of his budget demands. They got widespread press coverage mainly for bills that proposed new regulations on two industries with which Schwarzenegger has personal ties: video games and dietary supplements. (The governor signed both in the end.) To be heard politically in California, one must talk about Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger's two declared Democratic opponents in the 2006 race, State Treasurer Phil Angelides and State Controller Steve Westly, have had little success creating political identities separate from the incumbent. (Angelides, who is running as the "anti-Arnold," rents hotel rooms near Schwarzenegger campaign events in an effort to capture his TV cameras.) Schwarzenegger's stardom remains so great that even other stars depend on him to get political attention. The director Rob Reiner, who has talked about running for governor, has grabbed headlines by campaigning against one of the initiatives endorsed by Schwarzenegger. Actor Warren Beatty, who is also flirting with the race, has been giving speeches attacking Schwarzenegger, who talks publicly about Beatty as if the actor were a hopeless star-stalker: "He throws my name in because it becomes newsworthy and it becomes big and gets coverage." Even when Schwarzenegger is stepping out of the frame, the governor grasps the political truth: However the special election turns out, California will remain an Arnold vehicle.

By joe mathews