Arnold Gets Mail - An anonymous letter brings on office interrogations

Political life since the Novemeber 2005 defeat of his “Year of Reform” special-election initiatives has been a whirlwind of change for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has thoroughly revamped his political operation.

The Weekly has learned that just before the upheaval began, the governor received an anonymous letter alleging serious financial mismanagement and improprieties in his political operation. The letter triggered an unprecedented round of questioning of the governor’s political consultants by his legal counsel.

The “letter was a stupid smear and 1,000 percent bullshit,” said Mike Murphy, who until last month was the man in charge of Schwarzenegger’s political operation. He referred questions to the governor’s lawyer, Tom Hiltachk.

The letter alleges that some $2.5 million was ripped off from the Schwarzenegger political operation in “under the table compensation,” which was purportedly accomplished in a variety of ways, from kickbacks to signature gatherers to unusual commissions. (Schwarzenegger was paying as much as $3 per signature in some cases in his late-starting special-election campaign operation’s bid to qualify ballot measures.)

Questions were also raised about lucrative media buying — which had long been a source of contention and competition within the team — and fund-raising events and overhead.

Hiltachk acknowledged that although Schwarzworld is a place of control and confidentiality agreements, this marked the first time that the governor had asked his legal counsel to question his political consultants about their financial and other practices. After first saying that he was unaware of previous rumors about malfeasance, which, according to sources, Schwarzenegger ignored, his attorney acknowledged having heard them and dismissing them.

These rampant rumors, which not infrequently surfaced in daily newspapers, sometimes with Republican names attached to them, had previously alleged that Schwarzenegger was being taken to the cleaners by his political consultants. Hiltachk, like the Schwarzenegger consultants before them, says he thought the claims were “sour grapes” from people who weren’t making the money.

Yet this time, with the anonymous letter in hand, he proceeded to contact and question individual members of then–Team Schwarzenegger about them.

Asked why he would bother, Hiltachk says: “It was my obligation to Arnold and Maria to let them know the charges had been checked out.” Why was this letter, “unfounded” as earlier rumors were said to be, any different from those rumors? Hiltachk had no direct answer but repeated his line about his obligation to Arnold and Maria. His conclusion after investigating, he says, is that the charges were “unfounded.”

And yet, soon after the questioning ended, Schwarzenegger began making major changes in his political operation. Whatever the merits of the charges, says an informed source, “this helped crystallize his thinking that he needed to make big changes.” The governor had the biggest, most expensive political operation in California history and nothing to show for it but four big defeats, a tired fund-raising cadre, and $8 million gone from his personal bank account.

Murphy, frequently absent while working for other political clients and corporate clients and pursuing potential Hollywood projects, became viewed as “an absentee political manager.” After being replaced as chief strategist by Bush adviser Matthew Dowd, Murphy became a “volunteer.” Although not all the consultants had supported the special election, an entirely new core group emerged.

I'm sure LA Weekly (a free throwaway rag whose columnists are all anarchists or marxists) never noticed the corruption in the Gray Davis campaign.

Although I do have to hand it to LA Weekly for one of the most insighful questions ever asked in a political campaign. Back in 1998 when Gray(out) Davis was running against GOP Dan Lungren, the rag asked them both a list of questions. One questions was: Name some of your close friends. Lungren listed some old friends from high school football, church members, people in his home town of Long Beach. Gray Davis mentioned Bill Lockyer (Lockyer is the current CA AG and is a lifetime political tool.). If the CA voters had ever just looked at this question they would never have made the mistake. Gray Davis never had any friends because he was not a normal human being and had nothing in common with actual Californians in any way other than his address. (Fortunately, Gray Davis has gone back to having no friends now that he screwed up the state and nobody has any political need for him).

I'm sure LA Weekly (a free throwaway rag whose columnists are all anarchists or marxists) never noticed the corruption in the Gray Davis campaign.

They noticed. Here's what they said in a 2002 piece about Davis:

"The aloof Davis acts like someone who wants to be loved, but who is afraid to try because he doesn't think he can be. So, in classically American materialist fashion, he substitutes what to him is the next best thing: money. Not money for himself, for he owns very little other than a condo in West Hollywood and Israel savings bonds. No, it's money for his political committee, a chimera of identity which some think is more important to him than his own personality. Given the central role that money has played -- both in winning the office and in holding on to it this year -- it is perhaps not surprising that he confided in 1998 that if he lost the election, he would become a merchant banker, eschewing the more customary law-firm route for out-of-office politicians with law degrees."

"In fact, the most interesting thing he does is raise money, and lots of it, sometimes in questionable ways. His widely noted money-raising mania has made him California's all-time champion, with his re-election campaign closing in on an astonishing $70 million. His obsession with money raises serious questions about the integrity of his "pay-to-play" administration, where few are heard in Gray Davis' Capitol without anteing up."

The weekly also had a great piece about the riots in France last year:

"Ironically, the biggest beneficiaries of the riots in France are likely to be the imams and the mosques — Islam’s influence, in short, will have grown yet again. To judge from the French news broadcast, Le Journal (available in the U.S. on cable), which simply cannot show enough peace-loving mosque footage, Islam, not Catholicism, is now the religion in France that matters. The church is dead, and the state, in the form of its enfeebled president, Jacques Chirac, has literally had a stroke. Whether or not the riots are a form of jihad, or a new kind of intifada, or have much of anything to do with Islam per se, the fact remains that many of the rioters are Muslim and identify themselves as such. French Muslims burn cars, destroy community centers, terrorize the locals and shoot at police, and, once in a while, shout Allahu Akhbar! while they’re doing it. Then their imams step in and lead the calls for peace, harmony and mutual respect. Either way, Muslims are the story."

"The poet Philip Larkin once wrote about how age pushes people “to the side of their own lives” as a new generation takes over. As they see what’s occurring in France and elsewhere, many Europeans must privately feel that something similar is happening to them. Only in this case, they’re being shoved. Not simply because of age (though that’s a factor — one out of every three babies born in France is now said to be Muslim), or because they’re a dwindling majority surrounded by a swelling minority. It’s also because they’re no longer sufficiently patriotic or violent or worked up about anything of consequence to count as “news.” That’s fine — ideal, in fact — when no one else is either, but such is no longer the case. And for a white Frenchman who’s technically a Catholic but probably an agnostic, it must be depressing to open the newspaper each morning and read yet another headline about an alien creed that seems intent on imposing itself on his country. If it’s a really “class” newspaper like Le Monde, the editorial will probably inform him that the fault for this state of affairs is largely his own and that he will soon be expected to pay the price economically while redoubling his efforts to be exquisitely sensitive about all things Muslim. How long he’ll put up with this, that is the question."

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