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Thursday, May 17, 2012
Department: January 2006
Facing the Music
With the Arnold Mystique gone, does Schwarzenegger have a chance next year?
Story by Tony Quinn
What a difference a year makes. As 2005 opened, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was sitting on top of the political world, with a 65 percent favorability rating in the Field Poll and a handful of successful initiatives under his belt.
As the year closed, Schwarzenegger was suffering one of the biggest defeats in California history and was sitting at only 38 percent approval in the latest Field Poll.
California did not need a statewide election in 2005, but has to have one in 2006 when Schwarzenegger’s term is up. Trying to figure out whether he can be re-elected is going to be one big headache for California business.
There’s a very real possibility that the defeats of 2005 will follow the governor into 2006. Not only is there the declining personal popularity of Gov. Schwarzenegger — a product in large part of his yearlong drubbing by public-employee unions — there is also the very uncertain 2006 political climate.
Here we have an eerie echo of the year 1966, exactly 40 years ago, when Gov. Pat Brown, like Schwarzenegger a onetime giant killer, faced the voters in his unsuccessful race for a third term.
As that year began, Republicans were demoralized (having lost most elections of the past half-dozen years), just like Democrats are today. Their leading candidate was a former mayor of San Francisco, but he was being challenged in the GOP primary by a retired B-movie actor named Ronald Reagan.
Democrats were ecstatic; Brown might have been in some political trouble, but Reagan was a shallow right-winger and would be easy pickings in the fall — so easy, in fact, that Democratic operatives worked to help Reagan win the Republican primary that June.
Boy did they make a mistake — Reagan won the governorship by a million votes. But it’s also important to remember that many factors beyond their control did in the 1966 Democrats. There was an unpopular war in Vietnam — a product of the Democratic administration — just as there is an unpopular war in Iraq today, a product of the Republican administration. There was unrest and scandal affecting Democrats in 1966; there are a series of national scandals that could hurt Republicans in 2006.
So Schwarzenegger’s fate rests very much on factors beyond his control. If there is a hostile political climate, there may be no way to save him. In 1994, Republicans and especially Gov. Pete Wilson benefited mightily from the revulsion some voters felt about Hillary healthcare and higher taxes.
Wilson began 1994 well behind his likely Democratic opponent, State Treasurer Kathleen Brown, but the political climate lifted all Republicans that year, and Brown could never get out from under the anti-Democratic tide. Had Wilson been forced to run in 1992, the year Clinton swept California and two Democratic women won U.S. Senate seats, he surely would have lost. But he didn’t — his year was 1994. In politics there is nothing like luck, and right now Schwarzenegger needs a lot.
Schwarzenegger also faces problems arising directly from his political team’s conduct in the 2005 special election. You have to go back many decades to find a campaign as poorly run as the Schwarzenegger campaign for his four special-election ballot measures.
The Arnold Mystique that made him so popular in 2004 — being above the political fray — is now gone. Schwarzenegger may well move far to the left to prove he is above partisan politics. He’s already appointed longtime Democratic activist Susan Kennedy as his chief of staff, which could lead to the signing of the minimum-wage law he vetoed last year, more aggressive environmental policies, and maybe even a tax increase.
Business people could face a squeeze play this year: a Schwarzenegger who has turned on them to restore his popularity, balanced by the reality that, without Schwarzenegger, labor and the high-tax crowd will be in total control of California government. And there may be very little the business community can do to help Schwarzenegger survive anyway.
So business leaders need to face the reality that a Democrat could be in the governor’s office a year from now. Should they cover their bets by helping State Controller Steve Westly win the nomination, on the grounds that he would be a more business-friendly Democrat than Treasurer Phil Angelides, who marches lockstep with organized labor? Or should they stick with Team Arnold despite widespread criticism from business leaders over its 2005 effort?
In private conversations, over long lunches and in many a paneled boardroom throughout California, the corporate leadership will confront this Hobson’s choice. Weighing on them will be the possibility that this is another 1966 or 1994, when the political tide carries all ships in the same direction, whether it is where you want to go or not.
Tony Quinn, a Sacramento political analyst, has written extensively on California politics.
