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  California's Green Governor: Schwarzenegger Steals Thunder from Democrats

California's Green Governor Schwarzenegger Steals Thunder from Democrats

By Marc Hujer in Sacramento, California

Part 2: Cigars and compromises

Schwarzenegger sits in his smokers' tent and puffs on his cigar. He has his own, custom-made cigars, which he has imported from the Dominican Republic. Each one is individually wrapped and labeled "Schwarzenegger" in gold lettering. The cigars are only available in this tent, where he negotiates his most important compromises. The tent is Schwarzenegger's seraglio of power, where he greets influential people -- members of Congress, important lobbyists -- who were already familiar with politics in 1982, when the current governor of California appeared in a loincloth as "Conan the Barbarian."

The tent's floor is covered in Astroturf, and the furnishings include a small cabinet, a humidor and a wooden table with pastries. In the past, mainly Republicans came here, but these days it's mostly Democrats -- people who were still opposed to Schwarzenegger only a year ago, but whom he has since managed to win over.

Schwarzenegger's early days in California

Barbara Outland, the author of a book called "Arnold and Me," recently came to see Schwarzenegger here in Sacramento. In the foreword to the book, he wrote that he had had no idea how much of a role he had played in her life. She stood in front of him and said: "It certainly is strange that you're now my governor."

Outland was Schwarzenegger's girlfriend for six years, his first great love. She came from a good family and taught him English, manners and a bit of culture. After he left her, it took Outland three marriages to get over the relationship. Now an English professor, she has a small office in the basement of the library at Moorpark College west of Los Angeles. She plans to retire next semester.

Schwarzenegger met Outland at Zucky's Delicatessen, a popular hangout near Muscle Beach in Santa Monica where she worked as a waitress.

He sat next to her at the counter and asked her on a date. At first she thought he was odd, this man with the monstrous body, but she soon became attached to him. "He had a great vision," she says, "and all I wanted to do was get married." In the end, however, their goals were too incompatible.

Sixteen years later, he married Maria Shriver, a niece of former President John F. Kennedy. Shriver and the Kennedy clan introduced him to the world of politics. Schwarzenegger says he learned everything he knows about politics from her father, Sargent Shriver. Shriver was Schwarzenegger's gateway into a great new world.

Athletic spirit

Schwarzenegger has retained much of what he learned and acquired in bodybuilding: strength, discipline, trust and an athletic spirit. He also knows how to assess and optimize his own body, how to be his own creator and his own creation. After all, bodybuilding is all about testing the limits of one's abilities.

Neither has he forgotten his old friends from the bodybuilding world. Until recently, he continued writing a column for Flex, a bodybuilding magazine. Once a year he travels to Columbus, Ohio to attend the world's largest bodybuilding event, a show he created almost 20 years ago. And whenever he goes he meets Frank Zane, his former adversary for the title of Mr. Olympia and now his friend.

Zane lives in a house near San Diego, on a hill next to the freeway. Unlike Schwarzenegger, he hasn't strayed from the business and now trains young bodybuilders. His home gym is a museum of curios from days gone by, including weightlifting equipment that now seems anachronistic, almost quaint. For years, Zane had no new pictures taken of himself, and the walls are covered with old photographs -- as if to preserve his moment in history. Unlike Schwarzenegger, Frank Zane never wanted to move on. He just tried to hold on to what he had.

He likes to tell stories from the days when young bodybuilders approached Schwarzenegger to ask whether their bodies were strong enough to win competitions. Schwarzenegger always responded: "If I had your body I would win." Zane says he remembers this sentence clearly because Schwarzenegger said it to everyone. "And he wasn't even lying," he adds. "Arnold would have won in any body."

Schwarzenegger captured the Mr. Olympia title seven times. Then he went into real estate, where he made his first fortune. As "The Terminator," he ultimately became the highest-paid actor in Hollywood history. Still, it's worth noting that no other movie star has managed to prevail in a political seat as prominent as the California governor's with so little previous experience. Ronald Reagan was active in politics for decades before becoming California governor (and later president). Wrestler Jesse Ventura will remain a footnote in history as a former governor of Minnesota.

Much of what Schwarzenegger does seems to be part of a plan, but the truth is that he always took chances when they presented themselves. "I see something," he says, puffing at his cigar with relish, "and then I just go for it. Once I have a vision no one can stop me. I can't even stop myself."

The comeback

Things have never been easy for Schwarzenegger. Nothing fell into his lap, he says, and he was repeatedly laughed at. But he managed to pull himself together again and again, even when his life seemed to be going downhill.

His comeback in California wasn't normal. In fact, it was practically a miracle. Only a year ago, the state's organized workers all seemed to be against him: teachers, nurses, prison guards, police officers, all the most powerful lobbying groups.

His adversaries followed him wherever he went, even beyond California's borders to New York and Ohio. At public appearances he faced protests against his reforms. They called him a bluffer and a phony, a puppet of big capital and the president. His approval rating among Californians last fall plunged to 37 percent.

He wanted to reform California all at once, by breaking the obstacles to reform that had also plunged this state of great opportunity into one its deepest economic crises since the Great Depression. It was like weightlifting, he says, "It could be that I could lift 500 pounds. I could fail, but I could also set a world record. But even if I fail, I could still walk away and say, 'Okay, I gave it my best shot.'"

One sample of the controversy: The teachers' union agreed to a $2 billion cut in education money in negotiations with Schwarzenegger in 2004. He promised that the money would be repaid, but later retreated from the agreement, saying the state couldn't afford it. Teachers found their champion in a woman named Liane Cismowski -- a high school English teacher in Concord, a town north of San Francisco, once voted "Teacher of the Year." She appeared in TV ads opposing Schwarzenegger and became the anti-Arnie campaign's Joan of Arc.

Altogether, trade unions and the Democrats spent more than $160 million on the 2005 campaign, and for weeks the two sides engaged in a relentless series of mudslinging attacks and counterattacks. In the end they defeated Schwarzenegger with his own weapons. "Anyone who has to fight against a $160 million budget is bound to lose," he says, reflecting for a moment. "Not even Mother Teresa could have won that contest."

Trial balloons

Today Schwarzenegger has professionals test his ideas first, his chances of winning the election, his popularity and the "winnability factor" of his moderate policies. His advisors use focus groups throughout the state to provide information on voters' current perceptions of him -- that is, whether they see him as being on the left, on the right, or as a moderate. The approach allows him to shift his image at will, depending on the current percentages.

He also had pollsters determine how he should best respond to regularly recurring rumors that he groped women in his past life.

When Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm, surveyed 800 Californians, the one statement that generated a particularly strong response was that in his "career as a movie star, Schwarzenegger, like most movie stars, wasn't always a gentleman." Since then the governor knows exactly what to say when countering accusations of womanizing. "The world is a classroom," he says. He tells his detractors that he is a learning machine, someone who learns from his mistakes.

Schwarzenegger says that he plans to be more circumspect in approaching reform. He won't try to push through every possible change at once. "I had to learn that there are people in California who spend six years working on a single piece of legislation. I had to get a big, heavy train moving here. That's a little different than a Porsche, which does zero to 100 in six seconds."

It's a feeling reminiscent of his days as a bodybuilder, when he would tie lead weights to his feet during training to build strength and to prepare himself for the next challenge. As far as Schwarzenegger is concerned, his first term was just a warm-up session, even if it meant giving up his greatest dream, namely to become president of the United States. The US Constitution bars anyone not born in the country from assuming the nation's highest office, and no one is likely to amend the Constitution for Schwarzenegger's sake.

There isn't much left of his cigar, and his press secretary is getting impatient. Schwarzenegger puts out the butt in a crystal ashtray. It's campaign time, and he's scheduled to appear in Orange County, a Republican stronghold. But he also plans to designate a piece of land there as a National Natural Landmark. His audience is already looking forward to his arrival.

His skin is bronzed, his hair dyed brown, as it has been for the last 20 years, as he moves athletically to his waiting plane. Once again, it's time for Arnold Schwarzenegger to get moving.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan