[Mb-civic] Has the Terminator Lost Touch? - David S. Broder - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Has the Terminator Lost Touch?

By David S. Broder
Sunday, October 2, 2005; Page B07

MENLO PARK, Calif. -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was deep into nostalgia 
when he came here the other day to pitch several hundred Sun 
Microsystems workers on the four initiatives he is promoting in a Nov. 8 
special election.

"Remember," he said, "you sent the Terminator up to Sacramento to fix 
those problems" -- mounting debts, power blackouts, rising taxes and 
gridlocked government -- that led to the ouster of Democratic Gov. Gray 
Davis and the bodybuilder-movie star's victory in the recall election.

That was only 24 months ago, but, oh, how the world has changed. In a 
post-rally interview, lighting up a cigar and complaining that the 
outdoor event had left him "sweatier than I've been since I visited the 
troops in Baghdad," Schwarzenegger managed to display the same chin-out 
aggressiveness that marked his action-movie career. "Absolutely!" he 
shot back when asked if he expected to win the uphill battle facing him 
in next month's election.

But a poll released that same day last week told a different story. The 
Public Policy Institute of California survey showed Schwarzenegger's job 
approval down to 38 percent. An initiative he is backing to make it 
easier to fire weak teachers is trailing by four points. Another, to 
shift redistricting power from the legislature to a panel of retired 
judges, is losing by 17 points. And a budget reform to put government 
back on track and greatly increase his control of spending -- which he 
told me is "the most important" of his proposals -- is failing by an 
astonishing 37 points.

Facing possible defeat on all three of those issues, Schwarzenegger also 
has endorsed a measure to restrict the power of public employee unions 
by requiring them to get annual permission from each of their members to 
use dues for political purposes. But private polls show support for that 
initiative is also slipping, as the unions mount a TV campaign modeled 
on their successful effort to defeat a similar but broader restriction 
in 1998.

Schwarzenegger has made the "union bosses" his favorite target, after a 
rupture with the Democratic legislature. In his first year, he 
negotiated with the Democrats to reduce the state's debt, finesse a 
school financing crisis and reduce the workers' compensation burden he 
and others said was driving jobs out of California.

But when he balked this year at raising any taxes and instead reneged on 
his deal with the teachers union to make up the $2 billion in school 
funds deferred from 2003, the honeymoon ended. As Schwarzenegger told 
the technology workers here, he first blamed the legislators, calling 
them "girlie men," but then realized their hands were tied by those 
"union bosses" who financed their election campaigns.

By targeting the public employee unions, including police, firefighters, 
nurses and teachers, Schwarzenegger unleashed on himself a year-long $25 
million ad campaign that has shattered his once-broad coalition of 
support, costing him dearly among Democrats and independents.

Only on Sept. 20 did he get his own first two ads on the air, and the 
people running the unions' campaign say their focus groups show that 
neither of them is effective. "The one in which Schwarzenegger himself 
appears gets people saying, 'Why doesn't he fix things rather than just 
complain about them?' " one labor strategist told me.

In retrospect, some Democratic political operatives say, 
Schwarzenegger's whole strategy of forcing a special election now, a 
year before he is up for reelection, was wrecked when his allies messed 
up an initiative targeting the fat pension benefits that public employee 
unions had obtained from Davis and the Democratic legislature. "Those 
would have been hard to defend," one person familiar with polling from 
last January said. But that initiative was so badly written it would 
have eliminated survivor benefits for police and firefighters killed in 
the line of duty, and it had to be withdrawn.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/01/AR2005100100931.html?nav=hcmodule
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