Schwarzenegger aims to deflect allegations
By Mary Anne Ostrom, Dion Nissenbaum and Laura Kurtzman
Mercury News
BAKERSFIELD - Republican front-runner Arnold Schwarzenegger sought to regain his momentum Friday as he headed into the final weekend of his recall campaign. But Democrats and liberal activists kept the pressure on with new protests over charges that he has harassed women and once professed admiration for Adolf Hitler.
And three more women came forward to accuse Schwarzenegger of making unseemly advances, joining at least seven others who have accused him of sexually harassing them.
The actor shrugged off the charges as last-minute attempts to derail his fledgling political career.
``They'll try to tear your character down and everything you stand for,'' Schwarzenegger told more than 1,000 cheering supporters in Arcadia on the second day of a statewide bus tour. ``Let me tell you something: They already have begun. But I -- I will stay focused. I will always stay focused, because the fight continues.''
The allegations clouded what was supposed to be a quasi-victory lap around California, but political analysts said it was too soon to know whether they would damage the actor's campaign.
``There's plenty to be concerned about,'' said Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at California State University-Sacramento. ``The question is: Does it reach people who were going to vote for Schwarzenegger?''
Celebrity power
Darrell West, author of ``Celebrity Politics,'' said the charges may fall flat because most voters have already heard about Schwarzenegger's alleged womanizing.
``If these charges had come up in regard to a conventional politician, it very well could destroy that person's chances of winning,'' said West, a political-science professor at Brown University. ``But I think there are things about celebrity politicians that help to insulate them.''
Schwarzenegger apologized Thursday for behaving ``badly'' as a movie star, and denied that he had ever expressed admiration for Hitler.
Friday, the actor tried to focus on the themes that have positioned him as the most likely candidate to succeed Democratic Gov. Gray Davis if he is recalled Tuesday.
But liberal activists kept the controversy alive. One day after a Los Angeles Times article quoted six women who accused Schwarzenegger of sexual harassment, three more spoke to the newspaper.
One, Colette Brooks, the 45-year-old founder of a Culver City public-relations firm, made her claims public at a Los Angeles news conference organized by liberal groups who unveiled an anti-Schwarzenegger TV ad that is scheduled to air statewide in limited rotation this weekend.
Brooks said Schwarzenegger made a crude remark and grabbed her buttocks in 1981 when she was a 23-year-old intern at CNN. She said she was too shocked and afraid to speak out.
``He was a star. I was a peon, basically,'' she said.
Two other women who worked with Schwarzenegger on the 1988 film ``Twins'' spoke to the Times. Linnea Harwell, whose job was to retrieve the actor from his dressing room, said he once pushed her down on a bed after he had stripped to his underpants. And Carla Baron, who was a stand-in, said Schwarzenegger once forced his tongue down her throat.
MoveOn.org, a Berkeley-based liberal activist group, has made a 30-second ad that says: ``If you're a woman, or your mother is a woman, or your wife, or your sister, or your daughter, or there's a woman where you work, you cannot vote for this man . . . because Arnold Schwarzenegger has a serious problem with women.''
Schwarzenegger aide Rob Stutzman refused to address Brooks' claim and said the campaign was focusing on Election Day -- not 20-year-old allegations.
``We're not going to let last-minute smear tactics distract us in the last few days,'' he said.
In an interview Friday, Schwarzenegger said he did not realize his conduct had been offensive until now, and questioned the timing.
``Why am I getting all this stuff thrown at me a few days before'' the election? he said. ``And why none of these women contacted me in the past and said, `Arnold, I still have a problem with this, what you did to me or what you said to me 10 years ago, I want an apology'? I'm around.''
Supporters energized
If anything, the charges appeared to energize some Schwarzenegger supporters, who delighted in jeering the media for focusing on the controversy. One made light of it with a sign that read: ``Gray Davis groped me . . . while reaching for my wallet.''
Schwarzenegger, whose bus tour ended with a rally in Bakersfield, urged voters to put an end to special-interest influence in Sacramento.
After a speech in Newport Beach, his wife, Maria Shriver, did her part to quash the controversy. The TV reporter called her husband ``courageous'' for apologizing and disputed the charges.
``I'm not going to go down this road because I don't believe in gutter politics, and I don't believe in gutter journalism,'' she said. ``I believe in taking the high road, and I believe he handled himself in this situation in the best possible manner.''
While women's groups hammered Schwarzenegger over alleged sexual harassment, leading Democrats said they were horrified by reports that the actor had once praised Hitler as a role model.
Hitler allegations
The New York Times and ABC News reported Thursday that Schwarzenegger had cited the Nazi leader as a role model.
``I admire Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education up to power,'' Schwarzenegger said, according to a transcript of a 1975 interview that was obtained by the news organizations as part of a 1997 book proposal. ``I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it.''
While Davis at first kept his distance from the controversy, he said Friday that the allegations raise ``serious questions about his ability to govern this state.''
``If true, his personal behavior was disturbing and unacceptable, and his professed admiration for Adolf Hitler unconscionable,'' he said.
Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, a Holocaust survivor, agreed.
``To have a man who is aspiring to be governor of the largest state praise Hitler is something utterly contemptible,'' he said on the NBC's ``Today'' show.
But Schwarzenegger denied lauding the Nazi leader, saying, ``I can't imagine saying it, and I always despise everything that Hitler stands for.''
Transcript at odds
His campaign released a letter from ``Pumping Iron'' filmmaker George Butler, author of the 1997 book proposal, who defended Schwarzenegger.
``I have never witnessed or heard of Schwarzenegger making remarks that are derogatory to anyone of the Jewish faith,'' wrote Butler, who said he had unearthed the original transcript that was at odds with the version obtained by the New York Times.
According to Butler, Schwarzenegger said he admired Hitler ``for being such a good public speaker and for his way of getting to the people and so on. But I didn't admire him for what he did with it.''
Throughout his career, the actor, whose father was a member of the Nazi Party in Austria, has been confronted with such charges.
More than a decade ago, Schwarzenegger sued the British tabloid News of the World and a writer for libel over a 1988 story that claimed he held pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic views. Schwarzenegger won both suits. The tabloid and the writer apologized and agreed to pay undisclosed damages in 1989 and 1993, respectively.
At the time, Mark Stephens, the attorney representing writer Wendy Leigh, whose material led to the newspaper running the story, said Leigh ``accepts that Mr. Schwarzenegger has never espoused Nazi or anti-Semitic views (and) has never been an admirer of Hitler's evil regime.'' |
