Arnold's Campaign Pushes On Amid Hitler, Harassment Reports
Saturday, October 04, 2003
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — While opponents spent the final day of the business week trying to trip up Arnold Schwarzenegger’s (search) campaign amid reports he groped women and praised Adolf Hitler, the Hollywood action star continued his sweep around the state to garner support in his bid to replace Gov. Gray Davis (search).
Addressing voters who might be disturbed by his alleged treatment of women, the Republican actor said he felt badly that women hadn't confronted him in the past so he could have apologized. More people stepped forward Friday accusing the candidate of sexual misconduct.
Schwarzenegger also reiterated that he despises Hitler. Media in his native country of Austria, meanwhile, reported that the action star helped break up a neo-Nazi march there when he was a teenager.
As for the candidate's supporters, some of them shrugged off the accusations. "He can grope me," one woman shouted at a campaign stop in Santa Clarita. Some supporters held signs reading: "Gray Davis groped me ... While reaching for my wallet."
In Arcadia, his first campaign stop of the second day of his four-day bus tour, he made no reference to either controversy, but had famous friends vouch for him.
Actress Tia Carrere, who shared a kissing scene with him on the movie "True Lies," said of the candidate, "He was never anything but a gentleman.”
Republican Rep. Mary Bono, widow of entertainer and former Rep. Sonny Bono, also called Schwarzenegger a gentleman.
Such endorsements meant little to women's groups and religious leaders, who were working feverishly to galvanize opposition.
Several women — including radio psychologist Dr. Joy Browne (search) — came forward Friday with new allegations Schwarzenegger groped or made inappropriate comments to them. A former TV network intern also said the gubernatorial candidate inappropriately touched her when she showed him around a sound stage 25 years ago.
In Beverly Hills, a coalition of women's groups met at the Feminist Majority (search) offices in Beverly Hills to unveil an anti-Schwarzenegger ad campaign.
As the women came forward, Schwarzenegger campaign spokesman Todd Harris said one of the accusers was a member of a union that opposes Schwarzenegger.
"So here we have the first direct fingerprint of Democratic involvement in this last-minute anti-Arnold sleaze campaign," Harris said.
Criticism also poured in from religious leaders and the state's top Democrats for remarks attributed to the actor in 1975 that he admired Hitler's ability to rise from humble beginnings. Schwarzenegger also played Nazi marches and mimicked SS officers, according to the director of the 1975 bodybuilding documentary "Pumping Iron."
Stories by ABC News and The New York Times said the actor told an interviewer during the filming of "Pumping Iron" that he admired Hitler's rise to power and wished he could have experienced the thrill Hitler must have had in speaking to huge audiences who agreed with everything he said.
The news organizations said the remarks were contained in transcripts from a book proposal made by "Pumping Iron" director George Butler (search).
"To express admiration for a person directly responsible for the death of tens of millions of people during World War II is beyond comprehension," said Rep. Tom Lantos (search), D-Calif., the only Holocaust survivor in Congress. "I think it probably ends any political ambition he may have had."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (search), D-Calif., called praise for Hitler "appalling" and Davis said it was "unconscionable."
In West Los Angeles, leaders of Jewish, black and Muslim community groups called a news conference Friday to denounce the Hitler report.
"There is a chance that a man who admires Adolf Hitler could be the next governor of California," said Scott Svonkin, Southern California chairman of the B'nai B'rith Center for Public Policy.
Jona Goldrich, who said he escaped from the Nazis at age 14, said an apology in this case wouldn't be adequate.
"There is no room for apology, to praise someone who killed 6 million Jews," said Goldrich, 76.
Schwarzenegger on Friday repeated that he could not imagine saying anything positive about Hitler. The actor added that his father, a member of the Nazi party, never discussed what he did during World War II.
"There was a certain denial in my country. I have never heard my father talk about the war. Never ever," he said. "When I went to college here I learned much more about our history than when I was over there."
The Austrian newsmagazine NU reported Friday that Schwarzenegger and some companions disrupted the gathering of neo-Nazis in the city of Graz when he was 17.
NU quoted Alfred Gerstl, a former leader of the upper house of parliament, as saying the young Schwarzenegger — already muscular from bodybuilding — "hunted down the Nazis" gathered outside the office of a teaching institute run by an avowed anti-fascist.
The Schwarzenegger campaign also released a statement from Butler on Friday saying the transcripts were part of a private document he never intended for a wide audience.
"As I have made clear to The New York Times and ABC, statements by Schwarzenegger (taken from the "Pumping Iron" outtakes) were not in context and not even strictly accurate as it turns out from a closer reading of a copy of what (I believe) to be a transcript of the original, now found after many years," Butler said.
He added that he does not have the "Pumping Iron" outtakes.
Representatives of the Feminist Majority, National Organization for Women, CodePink and other women's groups said they were organizing demonstrations around the state.
"Arnold Schwarzenegger has an appalling record of disrespect and abuse of women," said Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn.org, an Internet-based political action group that paid for the new television ad unveiled at the women's coalition news conference. "It would be a disgrace to women and a disgrace to all the people of California if he became governor."
The Los Angeles Times quoted six women on Thursday — two by name and four anonymously — who said Schwarzenegger had groped or sexually harassed them during separate incidents between 1975 and 2000.
Browne told "Inside Edition" Friday that Schwarzenegger groped her ankles and knees during an interview in the 1970s.
Another accuser was Dan Lurie, a prominent figure for decades in the sport of bodybuilding, who told The Associated Press on Friday that he watched in amazement as Schwarzenegger repeatedly groped waitresses at a snack bar at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York around 1969 or 1970.
"I said, ‘Arnold, what are you doing?" Lurie, now 80, recalled from his home in New York. "He said, 'I want sex, this is what I do in my country.'
"I said, 'You're in America now, you can get killed for that, you don't know if they're married."'
The San Diego Union-Tribune, which has endorsed Schwarzenegger's candidacy, said in a Friday editorial that the sexual allegations raise serious questions that must be addressed further. Representatives of several women's groups said they would call for a criminal investigation, though none of the women filed complaints about the alleged groping.
Such cases are handled by police investigators and not the district attorney's office, William Hodgman, who heads the office's sex crimes division, said in response to one request for an investigation. He also indicated the allegations do not rise to the felony level prosecuted by district attorneys. |
