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Davis was sharpening his knives again for conservative Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, who had spent $2.96 million to get the recall (and himself) on the ballot. But soon after Schwarzenegger got in the race, Issa bowed out, leaving Davis with an opponent who not only has star power but also will be far more difficult to paint as a tool of the right wing. In fact, it could be difficult to attach any labels at all to Schwarzenegger. What do you call an advocate of fiscal discipline who sponsored a successful 2002 ballot measure that requires spending more than $400 million on after-school programs?
The comparisons between Schwarzenegger and the last actor to be elected Governor of California are hard to resist. But by the time Ronald Reagan ran for office, he had spent a decade cultivating powerful backers and honing his ideas on the political-dinner circuit as a spokesman for smaller government and unfettered business. When then Governor Pat Brown dismissed Reagan as capable of doing nothing more than reading the scripts that had been written for him by hired speechwriters, the future President shrewdly changed the format of his appearances to question-and-answer sessions with his audiences. "Well, it worked like a charm," Reagan later recalled.
Assuming the media and the voters can get past making corny puns out of Schwarzenegger's film titles, he too will have to change his act to prove that he is a serious man with serious ideas for a serious time in California's history. "This isn't the movies," says Democratic political consultant David Axelrod. "No one is going to throw him a ray gun so he can blow up the deficit." But will a two-month campaign give anyone enough time to pin Schwarzenegger down on the issues that bedevil the state, from air quality to immigration, water rights to education? Schwarzenegger is promising detailed plans for how he will solve the state's myriad problems, but thus far his positions have been as vaporous as his witty one-liners (see following story).
Schwarzenegger's political organization is still very much a work in progress, built largely from the team that surrounded former Governor Pete Wilson. Some might question that choice, given that the Republican Party in California has yet to get itself back on the rails after Wilson's disastrous anti-immigration effort. But who Schwarzenegger surrounds himself with may not matter. The way in which the actor made his announcement suggests he's not a candidate who will heed his advisers--or even tell them what he plans to do.