Sacramento Showdown
Arnold Schwarzenegger takes on California's "evil" empire.
WSJ.com OpinionJournal
JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL
Monday, February 14, 2005 12:01 a.m.
SACRAMENTO, Calif.--Arnold Schwarzenegger is a political moderate, but he has decided to lead a revolution against the unions and other interest groups blocking his package of four reform initiatives that will likely go before voters this fall.
On Friday, the governor nominated a socially liberal former legislator named Bruce McPherson to be California's new secretary of state, replacing scandal-plagued Democrat Kevin Shelley, whose resignation becomes effective at month's end. A few hours later, Mr. Schwarzenegger walked across the street and gave a fiery half-hour speech to 700 GOP activists in which he asked for their help in a "great battle." He pledged his reforms will go "to the source" of California's problems. "We're going right there where all the evil is, and we're going to fix this problem once and for all," he thundered. As the governor visits Washington this Thursday, national reporters should note that the most interesting political story other than Social Security this year is going to be the championship match for control of California.
"It's the governor's 'evil empire' speech," said columnist Bill Bradley, a friend of the governor who used to consult for Democratic candidates. Mr. Bradley has suggested the governor raise taxes as part of a bipartisan solution to the state's budget woes, but now he acknowledges the governor has decided he must crush his opponents rather than continue to cajole them.
Indeed, the governor's aides were stunned when he abandoned his brief prepared remarks before the semiannual GOP state convention and instead taunted his Democratic adversaries. He called liberal legislators "spending addicts" who need "outside intervention." "Those poor little guys," he said of the attempts by teacher unions and others to run ads accusing him of budget cruelties "They're trying very hard. . . . They may have a wonderful dream about that. But the reality is very sad for them. The reality is that they're not going to get my numbers down." He said he had received word that opponents of his four reforms would raise $200 million from around the country to defeat his proposals. "I say, bring it on!"
Democrats say they the governor has overreached and is falling back on action-hero rhetoric to conceal the fact that his ideas are less popular than he is. "He's set on having a little war here," Vincent Duffy, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, told reporters. "The governor is becoming as embarrassing as Jesse Ventura."
Liberals hope that the governor's four-part plan is too complicated and wonkish to bring backers to the polls. First, the governor wants automatic spending cuts to be imposed when expenditures exceed revenue. Second, he wants to change government employee pensions from defined-benefit plans to 401(k)-type plans. He also calls for scrapping the 2001 bipartisan gerrymandering of the state's political districts. And he wants to link pay for teachers to their performance, while making it easier to fire bad ones.
Traditionally, such process reforms haven't excited voters. But this year may be different. If the governor calls a special election this fall to get public approval of his ideas, the lower off-year turnout will likely favor conservatives. In addition, ballot measures to require parental notification for abortions and to ban the issuance of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants may be on the ballot, driving up GOP turnout. Democrats respond they will put up their own measures hiking the minimum wage and increasing taxes on millionaires, but those are less likely to generate public passion.
Then there is the Arnold factor--his ability to create attention and enthusiasm for anything he attempts. "I have gone through my life hearing that 'you can't do that,' " the governor told me last year. "But you see over and over, the impossible can be done. And it will continue to happen." This year, his self-confidence has reached a state that columnist George Will says "approaches mysticism." In a meeting with Mr. Will last week, the governor put a curved palm up towards his face as if he were holding an invisible orb and said "If I can see it"--any goal--"I can achieve it. And I have the ability to see it." He told the GOP audience last Friday much the same thing, saying he "can see victory, and it will happen."
Privately, Democrats fret that a full-blown Marketing by Arnold campaign this fall might just seize the imagination of Californians the way the 2003 recall did. Cooler-headed liberals have urged Democratic legislative leaders to cut a deal with the governor. Others are urging a "monkey wrench" strategy, which would include slowing up the governor's signature-collection efforts and filing endless legal challenges. The precedent here is the 2003 recall, not promising for would-be obstructionists.
The public-employee unions that exercise inordinate influence over the Democratic Legislature are spoiling for a fight this fall just as much as the governor is. On Saturday, some 120 shouting union activists disrupted speeches at the GOP convention by conservative leaders Grover Norquist and Ken Blackwell with piercing whistles and chants such as "Arnie, Arnie, you can't hide. We can see your evil side." Union spokeswoman Cathy Hackett told me the "evil" lies with the governor's budget cuts that she says slash services to the poor, seniors and children.
In truth, the governor's just-released budget is a moderate document. Health and welfare spending goes up by about 1% after accounting for inflation and population growth. Per pupil expenditures in public schools will top $10,000 a year for the first time, at the same time that half of the kids in public school are failing to read at their grade level. Elizabeth Hill, the state's nonpartisan legislative analyst, has called teacher union claims that school funding has been cut "technically flawed."
Where the Schwarzenegger administration has toed a hard line is on keeping California competitive. Tom Campbell, the governor's finance director, likes to quote Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers, who noted last December that his fellow business executives will refuse to add jobs in California until the state's "hostile business environment" improves. Mr. Chambers cited "increased regulations, the threat of new taxes [and] growing litigation costs" as major drags on job creation.
Such warnings help explain why the governor had the jaws of the liberal Sacramento Bee's editorial board dropping to the floor last month. He called raising taxes "out of the question." He explained that "taking money out of the private sector is a no-no because we don't want to feed the monster. We want to feed the private sector, and we want to starve the public sector."
This kind of rhetoric infuriates Democrats. They suspect that Mr. Schwarzenegger has a "master plan" to add to his "four reforms" an initiative sponsored by GOP state Sen. John Campbell that would limit the growth of state government to inflation and population increases. In effect, such a measure would restore the Gann spending limit that prevented runaway growth in state expenditures from 1979 until 1990, when a ballot initiative weakened it.
Gov. Schwarzenegger clearly enjoys confounding his critics and keeping them guessing as to his true intentions. "I have no idea whether he believes [his free-market rhetoric]," sputters Assembly Speaker Nunez. "But he can't get away with just saying stuff like this."
As the governor finished his fire-breathing speech last Friday to the GOP faithful, a veteran Sacramento political reporter dismissed it by telling me that "Reagan believed this stuff, but Arnold clearly doesn't." But Mr. Bradley, the New Democratic columnist who has been a longtime Arnold watcher, disagrees. "Reagan willed himself to convince people of what he had decided to believe in," he told me. "Arnold is equally determined."
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