Schwarzenegger offers glitter and a moderate voice

NEW YORK - He's the bling-bling of this year's Republican National Convention, California's own self-made, foreign-born, legal-immigrating, iron-pumping, movie-starring governor who preaches bipartisanship.

A free-market Republican with liberal-to-moderate social views who married into the Democratic Kennedy family and enjoys enormous popularity with voters in his home state, Arnold Schwarzenegger is at once a pillar of the establishment and a transcendent curiosity. Nearly a year after the recall election, he remains to many Americans a celluloid hero swept into office in a protest vote by California's flaky electorate.

His status as a political oddity is what campaign analysts say could make him so useful to President Bush in New York City this week, as the president puts him out there along with other mainstream party figures to try to capture the attention of swing voters and reassure the ideological moderates who could decide the race in November.

But for the 57-year-old Schwarzenegger, who is scheduled to arrive in New York today, the televised prime time speech he is to deliver Tuesday night is an opportunity to move beyond his caricature and establish himself nationally.

excerpted from OC Register

Schwarzenegger on star tour

http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2004/08/30/sections/news/beyond_the_news/article_220872.php

By JIM HINCH
The Orange County Register

This week, America's most famous governor comes to the nation's largest city for the Republican Party's biggest bash.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once conquered the Big Apple in his first - and arguably worst - movie, "Hercules in New York," returns to Gotham as the second-brightest star in the Republican National Convention firmament.

He gives a prime-time speech Tuesday (wags are wondering whether it draws better ratings than President George W. Bush's acceptance speech on Thursday), then plunges into a round of parties and public appearances.

He comes to New York a somewhat changed man from that 1970 movie appearance, which even he makes fun of, frequently promising to punish those who cross him by forcing them to watch the film.

These days, Schwarzenegger is a little grayer - at least his eyebrows are - a little less muscle- bound, but richer and a great deal more powerful.

Republicans couldn't be happier.

BEHIND THE SCENES

It will cost $300,000 to $350,000 for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his staff to attend the GOP convention. Among those picking up the tab:

Amgen, California Chamber of Commerce, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, Fox Entertainment, Motion Picture Association of America, Outback Steakhouse, Recording Industry Association of America, SBC, TimeWarner, the Walt Disney Co., Viacom and Visa.

"He's been a great success story," said Gerald Parsky, head of Bush's campaign in California. "I am delighted."

FRom the LA Times

Schwarzenegger's Prime-Time Task: Broaden the GOP --

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-cap30aug30,1,1277354.column?coll=la-center-elect2004

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be given a politician's equivalent of a basketball free throw Tuesday night. A football kicker's chip shot field goal. An uncontested tennis smash. There'll be one major difference, however: Schwarzenegger will be ringing up a lot more points if he executes. And it's hard to see how he would miss. George Skelton in the Los Angeles Times -- 8/30/04

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