Schwarzenegger Aims to Lift California's Clout

State Seeks Influence Befitting Its Size in '08 Race and Beyond

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, shown this week in San Antonio, sees an earlier California presidential primary as key to giving the state more power in Washington. (By William Luther -- San Antonio Express-news Via Associated Press)

SACRAMENTO, March 23 -- Barred by the Constitution from running for president himself, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) is trying to do the next best thing: make sure his adoptive state plays a critical role in picking the next occupant of the White House.

The movie star-turned-governor was the dominant force behind California's decision to shift its presidential primary to Feb. 5, 2008, a date that puts the nation's most populous and diverse state near the front of the nominating calendar. Schwarzenegger believes that the move will help restore California's power to play kingmaker in the Republican and Democratic nominating contests.

In Schwarzenegger's view, it has been decades since Californians played a decisive role in the primary process. "For years, way before I became governor, I was always mad about it," he said in an interview Thursday. "I was always angry. Boiling. Because I think of California as so important and so big and so deserving and all this stuff. I'm kind of like, 'I want to go fight for this thing.' "

For all its size and importance as a national trendsetter, California suffers from an insecurity complex when it comes to presidential politics. The state has become so reliably Democratic over the past decade that presidential nominees from both parties spend little time or money there during the general election campaign. In the primaries and caucuses, Iowa and New Hampshire have dwarfed California in influencing who wins the party nominations.

Schwarzenegger is determined not just to change that situation but also to ensure that the next president will feel indebted to California and be committed to the issues that he and California voters care most about, including global climate change and the share of federal dollars the state receives.

"The most important thing is that they make commitments," he said.

It rankles Schwarzenegger that Washington returns to California just 79 cents of every dollar Californians send to the nation's capital, and he thinks the state's lack of influence in the nominating process may have contributed to that.

"California was never part of it," he said. "You say to yourself, 'Maybe the reason why we don't get more money and why we're a donor state and why we don't get the money for the incarceration of undocumented immigrants and money for all those things is because they [the candidates] don't need California, they don't need to promise us anything the way this is right now,' if the primary was in June. I think that changes, and they will pay attention to us."

California is just one of the nation's more populous states -- a group that includes New York, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois and Florida -- that could end up with primaries on Feb. 5. Florida legislators are engaged in an effort to move their contest up even further, to Jan. 29. Schwarzenegger pushed the legislature to move the date of the state's primary and signed the legislation into law on March 15.

Its early primary will not only put California into the limelight of presidential politics, it will inevitably also raise the national profile of the governor, who is constitutionally barred from ever becoming president because he was born outside the country, in Austria.

California's prominence affords Schwarzenegger, who won a landslide reelection victory last fall, an opportunity to promote his style of Republican governance, one that stands in sharp contrast to the style of the party's leader, President Bush.

Since suffering humiliating defeats on a series of ballot initiatives in 2005, Schwarzenegger has adopted a less confrontational and more cooperative style of governing, something he calls "post-partisan politics." His style has provoked criticism on the right, with radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh complaining that the governor is not a true conservative. That prompted Schwarzenegger to tell NBC News last week: "Rush Limbaugh is irrelevant. I'm not his servant."