ShareThisBy PHILLIP MATIER and ANDREW ROSS
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's political rehabilitation and re-election has Democrats wondering whether he'll take on Sen. Barbara Boxer when her term comes up in 2010.
Termed-out state Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, has already raised the question, and so has former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.
The thinking? "His wife is part of the Kennedy clan, and so it would be natural for a glamorous Kennedy star to elevate himself to the U.S. Senate as the next Barack Obama," Brown said.
After all, "here's a guy investing $15 million to $20 million of his own money in the governor's race," Brown said. "That can't be what he's after."
Speier said she heard Schwarzenegger recently in San Francisco saying how much he enjoys public service. That convinced her he intends to stay in the game.
"He said it in such a way that this guy is going to go wherever he can go," Speier said. "And where else can he go but to the Senate? ... He is a competitor more than anything else."
In public, Schwarzenegger's people say they aren't looking down the road. "Gov. Schwarzenegger is 100 percent focused on being governor," campaign spokesman Adam Mendelsohn said.
But one senior Schwarzenegger adviser, speaking on background, said that "nothing is being taken off the table. We would not say he is (looking to a Senate race) _ but we aren't ruling it out."
First, however, he has to keep the Big Mo going and take care of business with the Legislature _ and that might prove to be a tough trick in the upcoming year.
"A lot of the favorables we had last year have gone south," said Democrat state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, of Oakland, whose cooperation with the governor this year helped give Schwarzenegger his aura of bipartisanship and contributed to his rebound.
"For starters," Perata said, "there are money problems."
The state budget could start out $5 billion to $6 billion in the red, Perata said, and "that's going to bring out tensions, because we're not going to be able to paper over the problems like we did last year."
Plus, the Legislature and the governor have taken care of all the popular causes, such as raising the minimum wage, taking steps to combat global warming and providing prescription drug assistance for poor people. "So there's not a lot of low hanging fruit left to pick," Perata said.
Everyone is touting universal health care as the next big thing. But getting that done without raising taxes _ that will be a neat trick.
(Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross can be reached at matierandross(at)sfchronicle.com.
