Arnold Schwarzenegger’s term years as California’s governor, 2003–11, remain one of the most consequential periods for California since 1991. That was the year Republican Gov. George Deukmejian left office and was replaced by moderate Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who promptly increased taxes and went to war with the conservatives in his party over those tax increases, badly wounding the party.
“I then realized that we need more after-school programs, and I created an organization,“ Mr. Schwarzenegger said. ”And actually what I realized was this is addictive—to help other people. Which is not something that was in my vision at all. It really feels great when you come home at night and you’ve helped so many people. So I thought it was great, and one thing led to the next.”
But it did permanently increase general fund spending. So when the deficits hit again when he was governor in 2008, the program inevitably became part of the budget crisis, contributing to the ensuing budget cuts and record 2009 tax increase of $13 billion.
Prop. 49 was a practice run for governor, as Mr. Schwarzenegger crisscrossed the state promoting the initiative, which garnered 57 percent of the vote.
It was one of the worst cases of what’s called “ballot-box budgeting,” in which powerful special interests, in this case an ambitious governor wannabe, tie up budget spending for their own priorities. This prevents the Legislature from doing its job of weighing the state’s many needs and deciding priorities based on compromise.
Schwarzenegger the Moderate?
Mr. Schwarzenegger said people since the 1970s had told him he should run for governor. As he has many times, he said that after immigrating here he became a Republican when he preferred Richard Nixon’s platform in 1968 to that of the Democratic nominee and loser, Hubert Humphrey.“So people mentioned it a lot of times, but when the recall happened, I said, ‘This is perfect, because I’m not right wing, I’m not left wing, I’m in the middle,’“ he said. ”That doesn’t play well in California with the primaries, because you have to be really to the right as a Republican. I said: ‘This is perfect: There’s a recall election, there will be no primaries, there will be no problem, I can go directly to the people and I can go and win. All I have to do is tell them my plan and be convincing.’ And that’s exactly what I did. I said it’s between me and the voters.”
That’s a distortion. For one thing, Mr. Wilson, elected in 1990 and 1994, was a moderate Republican. Indeed, one of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s mistakes was hiring a lot of Mr. Wilson’s associates, who had promoted the governor’s disastrous “moderate” tax increases with Democrats in 1991. Moderates also won the GOP nomination with billionaire Meg Whitman in 2010 and in 2014 with economist and banker Neel Kashkari, now a member of the Federal Reserve Board.
During this period, the only conservative the Republicans nominated for governor was Bill Simon in 2002.
Mr. Friedman obviously wasn’t a “moderate” but one of America’s foremost free-market economists. About that same time in the 1990s, Mr. Friedman visited us at the Register. I remember that he said he was impressed by how much Mr. Schwarzenegger knew about free-market economics.
I also distinctly remember many conservative Republicans voting for Mr. Schwarzenegger precisely because he gave the impression he would govern as a conservative. I told them I was skeptical and that state Sen. Tom McClintock (now in the U.S. House of Representatives) was better, but they replied, “I like McClintock, but he can’t win.”
Well, once in office, Mr. Schwarzenegger applied Mr. Friedman’s free-market principles for two years, then spent five years increasing government, increasing taxes, and leaving the state worse off than in 2003, as I detailed in my aforementioned Epoch Times article.
His touted “moderate” schtick also allowed him to avoid helping real Republicans, such as Mr. McClintock, who came close to winning for lieutenant governor in 2006, garnering 45 percent of the vote to 49 percent for the winner, Democrat John Garamendi. If Mr. Schwarzenegger had teamed up with Mr. McClintock and run on a unified party ticket, Mr. McClintock could have won, setting up his own position as successor in 2010. But Mr. Schwarzenegger’s 2006 campaign precluded that. That continued how, in this interview, he never mentions the Republican Party in anything but a negative light.
Mr. Schwarzenegger’s attacks on his own party left it a wreck on the side of the political road, turning California into the one-party state it is today.
Governor of ‘the People’
Mr. Shanken asked what was Mr. Schwarzenegger’s high moment after the election.“I walked by the television set, and I heard our new governor will be Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said. “When I heard that on the news, I literally had tears coming down my eyes. It was the most powerful thing that I had ever felt or heard. I am going to become the governor of a state that has 40 million people, it’s the No. 1 state in the United States, it’s the fifth-largest economy in the world. I am going to be the governor.”
“And that’s why I tell people you can call me whatever you want, but don’t call me a self-made man,” he said. “There were 5.8 million people who voted for me to be governor. Each one of those people made me governor.”
Siding With Democrats
Mr. Shanken again flattered him with the possibility of becoming president and asked, “What are some of your ideas to fix our country?” Mr. Schwarzenegger continued with his fantasy, almost the script for a sci-fi movie: “We are all part of the team. Yes, you have your beliefs—quite contrary to mine—but you’re all part of the team. And we only can win if we all play together. So let’s figure this out.He Got Rolled Like a Cuban Cigar
Finally, Mr. Shanken brought up the cigar-smoking tent Mr. Schwarzenegger set up outside the state Capitol building to avoid anti-smoking laws he had signed. Democrats then passed a bill specifically banning smoking in his tent.“I vetoed it with a nice veto message on it to let them know that this is unacceptable,” he gloated. “No one is there that doesn’t want to smoke. In fact, Democrats and other legislators came down and asked me, begged me, ‘Can I come down and smoke?’ That’s how I got most of my deals done.
“We found something in common, which is smoking, and we smoked our stogies, took our jackets off, took our ties off, and we were sitting there and saying, ‘What are you working on?’ So we started working together. So this is what we did, and we got a lot of the things done because of the smoking tent.”