ShareThisBy DANIEL WEINTRAUB
Monday, November 13, 2006
Whatever pitched partisan battles might be looming in Washington, D.C., Tuesday's election was a victory for collaboration over confrontation in California, as the state voted overwhelmingly to give a second term to a celebrity chief executive who has redefined what it means to govern from the center.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's landslide victory and the approval of his package of proposals to rebuild the state's public works showed that in the Golden State, voters will value and reward politicians who reach out and work with their opposition rather than trying to run them over in pursuit of total policy victories.
Schwarzenegger was leading Democrat Phil Angelides by more than 16 percentage points with only the late absentee vote still to be counted Wednesday.
Propositions 1A through 1E, which he shepherded onto the ballot, all passed by large margins in a year when voters cast a skeptical eye on most other propositions put before them.
Schwarzenegger's victory was sweeping. He carried 51 of the state's 58 counties, with Angelides winning a plurality in five and a majority in only two: San Francisco and Alameda, the state's liberal strongholds.
Schwarzenegger won big along the coast and bigger inland. He did well in the cities and demolished Angelides in the suburbs and rural areas.
According to exit polls, Schwarzenegger won among men, women and everybody more than 30 years old. He won among all income groups except those making less than $30,000 a year. And he won among all but the least educated, as Angelides managed to eke out a victory only among high school dropouts. Schwarzenegger even showed strength among ethnic minorities, winning 27 percent of the black vote, 39 percent among Latinos and 62 percent of the Asian American electorate.
"Tonight, I believe that the people have given us a mandate," Schwarzenegger said at his Beverly Hills election party. "Not a mandate for me. Not a mandate for any specific party. But a mandate to move the state ahead. A mandate for leadership. A mandate to build a better and brighter future for California. And that is exactly what we are going to do in the next four years."
He added: "I love doing sequels."
In a year when Republicans nationally lost control of the House and, it appears, the Senate, Schwarzenegger stands out as one of the party's rare success stories. The fact that his success came in arguably the most Democratic state in the country makes it all the more remarkable.
But it was not entirely out of character for California, which in recent history has hewed to the center in statewide races and when considering ballot propositions.
Beginning with the election of Pete Wilson as governor in 1990, Californians have tended to go with whichever candidate they viewed as the most moderate. In 1998, Democrat Gray Davis won a landslide over conservative Republican Dan Lungren. By 2003, it was Davis who was seen as out-of-the-mainstream as he was recalled from office and replaced by Schwarzenegger, whose ideology has always crossed party lines.
The novice governor wowed voters in his first year with a string of policy victories built on cooperation with the Democrats who controlled the Legislature. But when he tried to do too much too soon in 2005, the Legislature balked and voters rejected his slate of reforms in a special election, sending him back to work out his differences with lawmakers.
That he did, with gusto. Schwarzenegger was steadfast in his opposition to raising taxes but split the difference with Democrats on a minimum wage increase, hammered out an agreement on a landmark global warming bill and abandoned his opposition to a measure demanding discounts for low-income and middle-income Californians from the prescription drug industry.
The turning point came when the governor proposed a series of bond measures to rebuild and expand the state's aging infrastructure, from its highways and transit to its schools and universities and its network of flood control levees. Working to overcome skepticism from both sides of the aisle, Schwarzenegger ultimately presided over the passage of a $37 billion package that included bonds for transportation, education, housing and flood control. A separate measure that he endorsed will provide money for parks, endangered species habitat and water projects.
The placement of the infrastructure package on the ballot was the beginning of Schwarzenegger's rehabilitation in the eyes of the voters, who began to see him as a forward-looking builder concerned about the state's future. When Democrats nominated Angelides _ an angry, bitter man who called himself the "anti-Arnold" and attacked Schwarzenegger personally while proposing policies that appealed mainly to the Democratic Party's left wing _ the result was almost a foregone conclusion.
California Republicans have been mired in the minority because their party's leaders have focused on social issues such as opposing gay rights and abortion and have been identified as hostile to the environment.
Schwarzenegger is proof that voters here will embrace a Republican who fights for economic freedom and lower taxes as long as he is socially moderate and willing to compromise to get things done.
