Schwarzenegger Aims to Lift California's Clout
State Seeks Influence Befitting Its Size in '08 Race and Beyond

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 24, 2007

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."

The governor shared his views over a lunch of salmon salad on the patio of a restaurant a few blocks from the state Capitol. He had just come from an appearance at a conference on the primary, during which he lamented California's role as a cash register for fickle presidential candidates.

"Candidates only came here to California to cash in," he told the audience. "They went from fundraiser to fundraiser. Made millions and millions of dollars, and before the fundraiser was over, they were already on the plane leaving for New Hampshire and Iowa to spend the millions of dollars they had cashed in California. . . . This drives me nuts."

The early primary will cost the state an additional $60 million, but the governor believes that it could return billions of dollars in dividends to the state in the form of new federal money if he and the state's voters can force the candidates to make commitments. "This is the greatest investment we can make in our future," Schwarzenegger said in the interview.

Schwarzenegger said he has no plans to endorse a candidate in the Republican primary but, unlike many in his party, he had kind words for the field, particularly Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. "I might, but I might not," he said of an endorsement. "Right now I don't think I will. But, like I said, that could change. Maybe it becomes very clear on who ought to be the candidate."

He said he believes it is possible for a Republican to win the state in 2008 if the nominee offers strong leadership, a pro-environment platform and is positioned in the center. GOP nominees have fared poorly with the state's socially liberal electorate (Bush drew just 44 percent of the vote here in 2004, and 42 percent four years earlier).

Giuliani supports abortion rights, but McCain does not. Asked whether McCain's courtship of religious conservatives over the past year would make it more difficult for him to win California in a general election, Schwarzenegger replied: "I don't want to run his campaign. All I'm interested in is that he does the things that would work for California."

Many strategists believe that the effect of having so many big states such as California voting on or around Feb. 5 may be to enhance the power of states voting earlier in the process, such as Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Asked about that possibility, Schwarzenegger replied with customary confidence. Pausing for effect, he said with a big smile: "They will know who to thank."