Posted on 02/22/2006 7:16:45 PM PST by NormsRevenge
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Atoning for a year in which California voters turned against him, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger confessed to a litany of political sins last month but took solace in a few words, "I led from my heart."
A lot of voters might wonder what that means. After executing political pirouettes to the right and left, Schwarzenegger is struggling to re-establish the centrist appeal that helped elect him to office in 2003.
Last year, he pushed a slate of losing ballot measures that alienated independents and Democrats. Shortly after the election, he angered conservatives within his own party by naming a Democratic activist as his chief of staff and promoting a series of left-leaning policy initiatives.
As he begins his pursuit of a second term in Sacramento, the twists and lurches of recent months have left a residual question about his leadership: What does Arnold Schwarzenegger believe in?
He arrives at an early marker in the campaign Friday - a keynote speech at the state Republican Party winter convention - with conservatives openly questioning why they should support him.
Is he the governor who sought new power to choke off state spending in 2005, or the one who this year called for record borrowing and submitted a budget that doles out $6 billion more than the state will collect in taxes?
Is he the governor who on his first day in office said, "My administration is not about politics," or the one who taunted "girlie men" Democrats and campaigned for President Bush in Ohio, a swing state, on the eve of the 2004 presidential election?
Is he the governor who has rankled business interests by pushing for a higher minimum wage, or the free-market devotee whose agenda rarely breaks from the state Chamber of Commerce?
"When you look at the gyrations in his policies, it appears he's plagued by an absence of core values," said longtime Republican strategist Arnold Steinberg. "He comes across as a caricature, where energy and enthusiasm are confused with core values."
Threats by activists to strip Schwarzenegger of the GOP nomination have faded, even if they never appeared realistic. State Sen. Tom McClintock, a conservative Republican running for lieutenant governor, has tamped down unrest on the right wing despite his concern about the governor's spending proposals.
Nonetheless, conservatives at the convention have proposed resolutions that challenge Schwarzenegger's positions on the minimum wage (he wants it increased $1-an-hour, to $7.75, over two years), judicial appointments (he's named nearly as many Democrats as Republicans to the Superior Court), and spending and borrowing proposals.
The governor will have to find a way to reassure a rebellious right without handing the Democrats and independents he needs to win in November new reasons to distrust him.
"I see real problems for the governor," said pollster Mark DiCamillo, noting that the gulf between the state's Democratic-leaning coastal areas and Republic-rich inland counties has grown deeper.
"His recent statements and policy positions make it look like he's trying to cut into the Democrats' advantage among coastal voters. However, others are trying to get him to backtrack to shore up support among his Republican base. How he ends up resolving this will probably be the major strategic decision facing his re-election campaign," DiCamillo said.
Schwarzenegger faces the same dilemma faced by California Republicans in all statewide races: GOP registration is about 35 percent, meaning he has to look elsewhere for votes. Surveys that analyzed the 2003 recall election found that the governor picked off a sprinkle of Democrats and nearly half the independents, who now make up 18 percent of registered voters in California.
Schwarzenegger was elected after giving voters a fleeting impression of his politics.
Aided by his Hollywood celebrity, the first-time candidate hewed to broad if sometimes vague themes about fighting special interests and renewing confidence in government, which resonated with a public grown weary of the budget and energy crises under then-Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat.
The actor-turned-governor is known to invoke Reagan and Nixon, but then there's the Kennedy connection via his wife, Maria Shriver. He tends to be too conservative on fiscal issues for some Democrats, and too liberal on social issues for some Republicans.
The historian Kevin Starr has called Schwarzenegger "the oddity of a free market-oriented governor ... who is possessed simultaneously of an almost instinctive respect for the public sector and its safety nets."
His early months in office were marked by bipartisan dealmaking, and he pushed through budget reforms with Democrats campaigning at his side. But his decision last year to try to undercut the power of public employee unions in Sacramento, while giving his office new authority to curb state spending, damaged his moderate image. Voters rejected all four of his ballot proposals in November, and his approval ratings dived below 40 percent.
Schwarzenegger has disputed suggestions of a new direction in 2006.
"Anyone who says I am changing my positions is totally wrong," he said last month.
His attempt to increase the minimum wage aside, Schwarzenegger has been a consistent friend of business since he took office. He has not raised taxes and pushed through reforms to the state's workers' compensation system.
"He's clearly made economic prosperity the hallmark of his administration," says Allan Zaremberg, who heads the state Chamber of Commerce.
But on other issues, he's sometimes sent muddled messages.
He campaigned in 2003 as a maverick reformer, boasting "I cannot be bought." He has since loaded his campaign treasury with millions of dollars from business and corporate special interests, many eager to win state contracts or favors.
Schwarzenegger says he supports a law approved by California voters in 2003 that states that marriage can only involve a man and a woman. But in 2004 he said same-sex marriages would be "fine with me" if the courts or the voters make them legal.
Last year he asked voters to approve his plan to slow the growth of state spending, then rolled out the largest borrowing plan in state history to build schools, hospitals and other public works projects.
"Last year he was adamant that public employees were destroying the planet. ... Now he's into infrastructure." said Gale Kaufman, the Democratic strategist who spearheaded the union-funded campaign to defeat the governor's ballot proposals last year. "Tell me how he got there? It's a long way from the first sentence to the second sentence."
I saw this headline and I knew without looking who hit the post button. Didn't your Mother tell you not to poke a hive with that stick?
Poor Arnold, I'd love to be able to replay some of the conversations he must have had with Republican legislative leaders early in his administration. I bet he would listen a little closer now but then that's all water under the bridge now.
It's pretty sad. Here we have a grown man who doesn't know what he wants to be when he grows up...
Actions speak louder than words.
I think Steinberg has him pretty well figured out.
That depends on which Arnold you're asking... : (
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