What to expect from Arnold
He’s building bridges and raring to go
By Daniel Weintraub -- Bee Columnist - (Published November 16, 2003)
Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger will have three years to serve as California’s chief executive after he takes office Monday. But the success or failure of his term as governor will probably be decided within the next several weeks or a few months at the most. And Schwarzenegger’s transition since the Oct. 7 election suggests the immigrant actor is training his famous focus tightly on the task at hand.
Despite media and public perception that Schwarzenegger ran a campaign free of substance, the new governor actually presented an ambitious and in some cases detailed agenda as he fought to remove Gray Davis and seize the office for himself.
He has spent the past five weeks in discussions with advisers working to hone that outline into workable proposals. Now he is preparing to come out of the gate with a call to action on several fronts at a pace that might seem breathtaking to Californians accustomed to government moving at the rhythms of the agrarian society this state once was.
“Action, action, action, action,” Schwarzenegger said during his first visit to the Capitol after the election.
“That’s what people have voted me into this office for. They wanted to have a governor that is filled with action, that performs and that represents the people, and that’s what I’m here to do.”
Those words prompted snickers from some longtime Capitol hands who expect Schwarzenegger will soon find himself bound by all the usual influences and crosscurrents that have bedeviled California governors for decades. Not to mention a state constitution that binds the governor and the Legislature with a number of voter-approved strictures that are difficult to navigate.
But this is a governor who has rewritten the rules wherever he has gone, first as a world champion body builder and then as an actor who won international fame despite limited skills and a heavy foreign accent.
His successful campaign for governor also stunned many who underestimated him once again. Don’t look for him to go all traditional on us now.
Schwarzenegger is already surprising people by sticking fast to two campaign promises that Democrats in the Legislature find abhorrent: rolling back the recent tripling of the car tax and demanding the repeal of legislation Davis signed allowing illegal immigrants to get drivers licenses.
Opponents suggested that the recent Southern California fires provided the perfect opportunity for Schwarzenegger to wiggle out of his pledge on the car tax.
But he refused to do so.
Latino lawmakers appealed to him to compromise on his promise to repeal the drivers license bill. He responded that there would be no middle ground.
Instead, his first act as governor after he is sworn in, according to transition aides, will be to issue an order rescinding the Davis car tax hike. He will then demand that lawmakers convene in special session to quickly repeal the drivers license bill, while suggesting that if they do not, he will support a referendum to block the measure from ever taking effect.
Next he will offer a plan for fundamental change in the often- criticized system for compensating injured workers.
But all of that will be only the opening act. Advisers say Schwarzenegger hopes to use any momentum gained from the car tax cut and an early repeal of the drivers license bill, if he can get it, to pressure the Legislature into adopting what will be a controversial plan to balance the budget over the next two years.
That plan will have two pillars.
One is a proposal to restructure several pieces of existing state debt – and possibly some of next year’s pending obligations – into one huge new bond measure that would go before the voters on March 2. Coupled with that would be a spending limit designed to prevent California from ever again descending into the fiscal abyss in which the state finds itself today.
The fate of those two proposals will most likely set the tone for the rest of Schwarzenegger’s time as governor.
If the measures pass, he will have engineered a dramatic trade-off, giving Democrats breathing room to avoid deep cuts in programs they value while providing Republicans the tax cut they desire and an assurance that the future growth of government will be limited.
Everyday Californians, meanwhile, would gain the peace of mind that comes from knowing that their government has a work-out plan in place and a new law to prevent a recurrence of the crisis just past.
The pricetag: potentially $2 billion a year in debt service for the next 30 years. That’s money that would otherwise be spent providing health, education and social services to a new generation of Californians, or building new roads and schools.
Instead, it would go to paying off the excesses of the past three years.
The alternatives, however, would surely be even less palatable to most Californians, including most members of the Legislature.
One option is to raise taxes. But the recall was in a sense a referendum on taxes, and taxes lost.
Schwarzenegger pledged to cut taxes, not raise them. Having won on that promise he is not about to renege on it now. The Republicans in the Legislature who held out last summer against a tax increase and then saw themselves vindicated in the recall are no less likely to support such a reversal.
Schwarzenegger is expected to propose some serious spending cuts in health and welfare programs as part of his package, either this week or when he proposes his first full budget in January. And Democrats who oppose those cuts will likely find themselves not only supporting the governor’s borrowing plan but perhaps fighting to enlarge it.
Attention will then shift to the spending limit. Schwarzenegger appears set to propose a strict cap that would limit the expansion of state government to no more than the rate of population growth plus inflation.
Democrats will counter with amendments that would use the growth in personal income rather than inflation as the benchmark, a standard that already is part of state law and one that would allow the size of government to keep pace with the growth of the economy.
Whatever final shape the spending limit takes, the test will be how it would have performed during the boom and bust of the late 1990s and the years that followed. If Schwarzenegger can make the case that the new limit would have prevented or at least blunted the wild swings that led to today’s problems, he could credibly argue to both sides of the political aisle that trading the debt measure for the spending cap is worthwhile.
That kind of bipartisan bridgebuilding is likely to characterize the Schwarzenegger administration.
Despite his appeals to the voters and his threats to sweep the special interests out of Sacramento, the new governor is showing that he can play the inside game as well.
Schwarzenegger already has scheduled a Sacramento fundraiser with the very lobbyists he vowed to overcome, a move that suggests his promise to bring fundamental change will not include changing the close links between campaign contributors and policymakers.
He has hired a personal staff that includes a few conservative Republicans, many centrists and at least one left-leaning Democrat – his longtime friend and confidant Bonnie Reiss. He is placing Democrats and independents of some stature – such as Silicon Valley business leader Sunne McPeak and Santa Monica environmental activist Terry Tamminen – in key cabinet posts.
He has consulted frequently with former Democratic Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg, who has engaged in regular policy debates opposite former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, with Schwarzenegger as their audience.
Schwarzenegger is also making a point to do something that Davis rarely did: reach out to his opponents. During the transition, he visited the Democratic leaders of the Assembly and Senate in their offices, and also paid courtesy calls on two labor leaders – Dean Tipps of the Service Employees and Bob Balgenorth of the Building Trades Council – hoping to establish connections that might grow into something more significant later, especially in the battle with trial lawyers and doctors over workers compensation.
Balgenorth said Schwarzenegger’s visit to his office, while brief, surprised and pleased him.
While his union was a big supporter of Davis, Balgenorth said the Democrat never came personally to his offices to meet with him, even before he was governor.
“You can’t do a lot of business in a half-hour,” Balgenorth said.
“What you can do is begin to build a relationship. He can find out that we don’t have horns and tails. We can send a message that we want to work with him rather than be at war with him.
think we accomplished that in the first meeting.”
Schwarzenegger’s strategy, then, is to surround himself with smart and experienced people, lay out a plan of action, listen to everybody and then act decisively – always reserving the right to return to the voters if anyone gets in his way.
It’s a tack that promises at a minimum to be interesting to watch. It could also make him very successful governor.
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