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It might be easier to know what to expect from Schwarzenegger if anyone knew just how he ended up where he is. If the rest of the world was surprised by his announcement on Leno's show, imagine how Richard Riordan felt. He and Schwarzenegger are friends and close political allies. Not two weeks before, sources close to Riordan say, Schwarzenegger had faxed to Riordan's Malibu beach house a four-or five-page speech that the actor was planning to make two days later. It said Schwarzenegger had decided not to run for family reasons and that he was endorsing Riordan. At that point, Riordan had asked him to hold off for a while, to give Riordan time to put together a political organization. As late as the Sunday before the date with Leno, Schwarzenegger, his wife Maria Shriver and their children spent five hours with the Riordans in Malibu without Schwarzenegger once letting on that he might be reconsidering the race. And the day Schwarzenegger announced, Riordan had spent three hours at lunch with California Congressman David Dreier, mapping out his own race. Riordan backed out as gracefully as possible under the circumstances, but not everyone believed it when he said he was "relieved" that his friend Schwarzenegger had decided to run after all.
What no one knew in the days leading up to Schwarzenegger's announcement was precisely how the pieces were falling into place for the actor. He had started to doubt whether Riordan really had his heart in the race. And Feinstein's decision not to run removed from the field his most formidable opponent. (In the TIME/CNN poll, she edges out Schwarzenegger by 2 percentage points.) George Butler, a co-director of the Schwarzenegger film Pumping Iron, said that if Feinstein dropped out because she believed Schwarzenegger wasn't running, then she fell for the same tactic the bodybuilder used when he wanted to make his opponents believe he would stay out of the competition. "It looked to me like an old-time Arnold maneuver," Butler says. "What you're dealing with is one of the canniest operators who ever walked across the road in America."
But most important, advisers say, is the fact that Shriver's reluctance had softened. No one could understand better than a Kennedy the costs that politics could exact, so it made sense that she would come around slowly. The couple hasn't confided just how or when it happened. "What was widely publicized as her opposition to do this was wrong. She wasn't against it," says an adviser. "And she got to a place where she supported it."
Schwarzenegger shouldn't expect to see many of the other Kennedys stumping for him. "I like and respect Arnold," said Shriver's uncle Teddy Kennedy. But the Massachusetts Senator added, "I'm a Democrat, and I don't support the recall effort." But Schwarzenegger has never tied his fortunes, political or otherwise, to those of his famous in-laws. When Shriver threw an outdoor party at their house for Teddy and her cousin Caroline Kennedy during the 2000 Democratic convention in Los Angeles, Schwarzenegger mingled for half an hour or so and then retreated inside. "That was not his crowd or his comfort zone," recalls one guest. "He views himself as much larger than the Kennedys in many ways."