ShareThisBy PETER HECHT
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was in trouble. His 2005 special election initiatives had been routed. The movie star-turned-"governator" was suddenly just a political caricature and, worse, an incumbent vulnerable to defeat.
So at the start of 2006, Steve Schmidt, the governor's re-election strategist, says he demanded changes in the governor's political wardrobe. The cheesy political props and Hollywood grandstanding had to go.
"There was to be no more driving around in Hummers ... and no more 'Cartaxula,'" he said, referring to a Count Dracula figure Schwarzenegger once trotted out to slam the state's vehicle license fee. "People wanted to see the governor in a suit _ and for him to go out and do governor things."
This week, Schmidt and other campaign consultants deconstructed the 2006 political campaign in a meeting with The Bee's editorial board.
Their post-election observations chronicled both a dramatic turnaround by Schwarzenegger and missed opportunities by his opponent, Phil Angelides, and Democratic Party forces to capitalize on the governor's seemingly disastrous stumbles in the 2005 special election.
Democratic political consultant Gale Kaufman, who directed the successful campaign to defeat the 2005 Schwarzenegger measures, said neither Angelides nor Democratic primary opponent Steve Westly took advantage of Schwarzenegger's special election failure and his shrill attacks on union members, including teachers and nurses.
Kaufman said the special election, including initiatives targeting teacher tenure and union dues, also drained financial resources of unions and other Democratic constituencies.
After raising more than $80 million to defeat Schwarzenegger's initiatives, it became doubly hard to raise more money for the 2006 Democratic gubernatorial bid.
Bill Carrick, Angelides' general election campaign strategist, said Angelides emerged so battered from a costly and bruising primary battle against Westly that his gubernatorial bid was already teetering on life support.
"We did the first poll and the most devastating single piece of information was that Angelides had a very high negative (poll rating) from the primary," Carrick said. "He started out the general election with real damage."
Carrick said Angelides, after taking three years to raise $29 million for his gubernatorial bid, was still little known and also nearly broke after fending off Westly's $43 million campaign, much of it attacking Angelides.
Before Angelides could gain his footing, Schmidt said the Schwarzenegger campaign immediately went on the attack with a $14 million advertising buy in an effort to define the Democratic challenger. The goal was to significantly weaken him so that the election momentum would be set in Schwarzenegger's favor as early as mid-July.
"We always believed that June would be the decisive part of the race," Schmidt said.
While Schwarzenegger ads portrayed Angelides as a hapless bureaucrat walking backward, the governor took on a forward-looking persona and, notably, started getting things done, the consultants said.
The notable breakthrough was the governor's deal with the Democratic Legislature to put a public works bond package on the November ballot.
"It gave him his first substantial bipartisan event of 2006," Kaufman said. "It gave him credibility as an incumbent."
Schmidt says Angelides' campaign tactics and television commercials attempting to tie Schwarzenegger to President Bush only seemed to help the governor. He said the attacks locked in the conservative Republican base for Schwarzenegger and thus gave him the cover to move to the political center.
Kaufman said Schwarzenegger soothed the anger of 2005 and co-opted much of Angelides' campaign agenda by striking deals with teachers and restoring funding to education.
Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger not only dressed and acted like a governor, he even took on the persona of a chief of state as he signed an accord with British Prime Minister Tony Blair on global warming.
Carrick said the Schwarzenegger campaign turnaround was stunning in that it changed how Californians viewed their state.
"They improved the mood of the electorate in California," he said. "Most of the electorate who thought California was moving in the right direction voted for the governor. And ... that number became a sizable majority."
