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California's speciai eiection:

Poiiticai miscaicuiations and PR missteps
By Steve Mehlman,APR
In the closing days of the 2005
California special election campaign.
Republican campaign consultants decided to pull several television spots off the
air, having determined that they were
doing more damage than helping.
That's a normal tactic in most campaigns, but these weren't just any commercials.They featured the Terminator
himself, Arnold Schwarzene^er,
Hollywood star, enormously popular
governor of 35 million Californians,one
of the hottest natnes in politics.
What happened? How, in less than a
year, did a charismatic leader with an
approval radng in the high 60s become a
political liability? Why did the four ballot
initiatives strongly supported by
Schwarzene^ersome of which were
leading by more than 20 percent in early
polling all get soundly defeated in the
Nov. 8 special election?
According to Daniel Weintraub,
Sacramento Bee political columnist:
"[2005] was a year when a man touted as
a marketing genius lost his touch and
his ability to cotimiunicate with the voters."
Associated Press political reporter
Michael Blood explained it this way:
"[The governors ballot initiatives] were
ideas with narrow appeal, ftirther damaged by a flat-footed campaign and an
unpopular messenger, the governor himselt. And that s just what
Schwarzene^er s fellow Republicans
said."
The special election which cost
California taxpayers some $50 million
was marred by enough political tniscalculations and PR missteps tofillthis
entire issue of PR Tactics. Here are a few
examples:

Forgetting who eiected you

Schwarzenegger rode into office in
2003 on a wave of disgust with the previous administration. His support was
across-the-board: Moderate and conservative Republicans, Independents and
even many Democrats were attracted by
his charm and his promise to be a different kind of politician.
During 2004 he governed in a
bipartisan way, working with Democrats
to push through a bond measure to narrow the state s budget gap, among other
things. His approval rating soared.
But then Schwarzene^er made a
sharp turn to the right, confronting
Democrats and their allies instead of
12

February 2006 TACTICS

ers d o ^ e d Schwarzenegger wherever he

went across California and all the way to
NewYork and Boston.A regular feature
on TV news during the summer and fall
was video of protestors picketing in fix)nt
of a fund-raiser site while
Schwarzene^er unlike his tnovie
persona avoided them by going in
through the service entrance.

Not keeping it real

77/ he back: How did the popular Arnold Schwarzenegger become a political liability lastfall during California's special election?

working with them. (One critic su^ested tongue-in-cheek that

Schwarzene^er had been bitten on the
neck by Karl Rove during a trip to
Washington.) He threw down the gauntlet during his State of the State address in
January, threatening to call a special election unless the Legislature met his
demands for more control of the budget,
immediate legislative redistricting and a
4() 1 {k)-type pension plan for public
employees.
Whatever the reason for the shift in
strategy, the governor and his advisors
seemed to forget that he had successfully
run as a centrist, not a conservative, and
that California is a solidly Democratic
state.
They also forgot the pledge he made
on "TheTonight Show with Jay Leno" in
2003 that he wouldn't beg for funds like
other politicians. "I don't need the
money; people can't buy me," he said.
Yet, less than two years later, he proceeded to break allfinancialrecordswith a
series oflavish fund-raisen in California
and across the country that put his predecessors to shame. As Democratic political
consultant Garry South advised
Schwarzenejiger s consultants in an article
in the Capital Morning Report during the

campaign:"Do not have your client call

the kettle black when he looks like a pot."

Picking too many figiits

Unlike in the movies, even an action
hero like Arnold Schwarzenegger can
have too many enemies. During 2005 the
governor seemingly went out of his way
to pick fights with his opponents.
He broke a promise he had made to
teachers the previous year on school

funding.
He fought with nurses over hospital
staffing ratios. He made a bad situadon
worse by labeling nurses as "special interests" and bragging about "always kicking
their butts."
He even managed to alienate police
andfirefighters,many of whom are normally sympathetic to Republicans.
Preparing a ballot initiative aimed at
reforming public pensions, the governor's advisors wrote it in a way that
would have eliminated death and disability benefits for police and firefighters and
their families. (An embarrassed
Schwarzene^er was forced to withdraw
the pension reform initiative in April.)
Schwarzenegger might have confix)nted one of these groups and still won
the day. Instead he took on all of them at
once. In response they formed coalitions
such as the Alliance for a Better
California, California Families against
Privatizing Retirement and the N O on
Prop. 75 Coalition that successfully
pooled financial and human resources
during the campaign.
"Schwarzenegger was trying to run
against institutions the Legislature, the
unions, what he liked to call 'special interests,"'said the Bee's, Daniel Weintraub.
"But his opponents shrewdly made
working nurses,firefightersand teachers
the faces and voices of their campaign ...
They completely reversed the dynamic of
the debate. Now he was the bad guy
the power-hungry politician and they
were his victims, seeking protection from
a sympathetic public."
Throughout the year, hundreds (in
some cases, thousands) of nurses, teachers, firefighters, state employees and oth-

Republican political strategist

Arnold Steinberg described the
Schwarzene^er campaign in a postelection interview with the San Francisco
Chronicle as such:"He mistook spin for
policy and backdrop for context. He
engaged in theatrical carnivals contrived sessions with preselected audiences.These staged events made him into
a caricature ... He wotild not connect
with voters."
In Sacramento, the governor tried to
help people visualize the budget deficit
by posing in fiunt ofa giant spigot from
which poured"red ink."He rode around
in an open-topped Hummer with a
"Reform 1" license plate.
In San Jose, he helped workers fix
potholes in the street to spotlight his
transportation initiatives. A reporter later
learned that the workers had created the
potholes a few minutes earlier.Total cost
to local taxpayers: $25,000.
In various cities, he participated in
so-called "town hall meetings" at which
the audiences were preselected by the
Chamber of Cotnmerce or other
Schwarzenegger allies. Even at events
where the audience wasn't stacked, he
reflised to appear onstage with opponents of his ballot initiatives.
"Through it all, Schwarzenegger
behaved as though he was the same
crowd-pleasing celebrity who ran two
years ago," according to Los A ngeles Times
reporters Peter Nicholas and Mark
Barabak." 'Enjoy the show,' he seemed to
be telling Caiifornians ignoring the
reality that he had pursued an agenda
with winners and losers and real-life consequences for each."

Lessons ieamed?
"If I would do another'Terminator'
movie," Schwarzenegger told reporters
following the defeat of his ballot initiatives,"! would have theTerminator travel
back in time to tell Arnold not to have a
special election."
The governor and his aides have
pledged to reach out to and work with
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