Run, Arnold, Run

It is late February in the San Fernando Valley, on a morning that feels like springtime. As the sun beams, a small brown-gray ribbon of smog embroiders the horizon, the only thing marring an otherwise motion-picture perfect day. Inside the auditorium of Hart Street Elementary School, two dozen boys and girls in matching T-shirts are sitting, shrieking. “Let’s join Arnold!” they shout, over and over, past the rattle and clomp of camera operators arriving and setting up their clanking equipment.

Outside hovers a retinue of earnest men and women, their brows uniformly creased as they chatter into cell phones and busy themselves with clipboards and stacks of glossy white press kits. “One minute out,” comes a warning, and 60 seconds later a black GMC Yukon sails to the front of the school auditorium. Out steps Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He has come to Hart Street elementary, a cheery oasis in this tatty corner of Canoga Park, to debut his newest starring role, as impresario and chief sponsor of a statewide ballot measure promoting after-school programs. His massive frame is stuffed inside a royal blue blazer, blue dress shirt and white jeans; a striped rep tie and thick-soled alligator lace-ups finish off the well-turned-out preppy look. Schwarzenegger disembarks from the Yukon and briefly stops by the school office before proceeding to the computer lab.

Awaiting him there are seven television cameras, four still photographers, two radio reporters, a handful of newspaper writers and Schwarzenegger’s personal photographer and camera crew, a swarm that easily outnumbers the 10 students seated in front of monitors, oversized headphones clamped to their tiny heads. After some brief, stilted small talk, Schwarzenegger proceeds to the school library (more kids in T-shirts, more awkward small talk), then finally arrives back at the auditorium, where he enters to a chorus of, “Let’s join Arnold!”

After a brief laudatory introduction, Schwarzenegger steps before a bouquet of microphones and speaks. He is not here to discuss building muscles, says the world’s most famous muscleman-turned-movie-Goliath, but “something much, much more important.” He then proceeds to lay out the details of his proposed ballot initiative, offering a fluent discourse on after-school care in California and the problems of at-risk youth, footnoted with references to academic studies and his lengthy involvement helping underprivileged kids. Afterward, fielding questions from reporters, he deftly discusses the state’s budget crunch--the initiative would not take effect before 2004, and only then if fiscal conditions allow--and smoothly deflects queries about his oft-stated political ambitions. “I only see one thing right now,” he says. “That is every school has after-school programs.”

In all, it is a fairly lackluster performance. Much of the presentation, such as the talk of teen pregnancy, is clearly not intended for this fidgety young audience, which serves, really, as little more than a prop for the TV cameras. Schwarzenegger finishes by tossing off a halfhearted “I’ll be back,” delivering one of his cinematic signature lines with all the verve of a mumbled aside.

But that night, on the local evening news, a transformation takes place. A report on the ballot measure portrays the actor not as Hollywood’s smash-’em-up hero, not as one of the most lethal attractions in movie history, but rather as a serious policy thinker, an authority even in the area of families and children. “Arnold Schwarzenegger,” reads the on-screen identifier. “Education Activist.”

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“I believe very strongly in the philosophy of staying hungry. If you have a dream and it becomes a reality, don’t stay satisfied too long. Make up a new dream and hunt after that one and turn it into a reality.” --Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1980 book “American Dreams, Lost and Found.”

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Arnold Schwarzenegger would like to be California governor someday. Or perhaps a United States senator. He makes little secret of his political aspirations, which he has harbored for a long time. He thought of running for governor this year, backing out of the Republican primary only after weeks of deliberation. During that period, in the winter and early spring of 2001, he met several times with the brain trust that guided former GOP Gov. Pete Wilson’s political career. He received quiet encouragement from the Bush White House. He also got a small taste of the difference between the cushioned world of Hollywood celebrity and the two-by-four treatment he could face as a celebrity office-seeker. Ultimately, Schwarzenegger bowed out of the contest, citing irrevocable business obligations, including a contract to start filming “Terminator 3.” But it was just a matter of time, he suggested, until he ran for office. “I have to keep up my end of the deal,” he said ruefully of his work commitments. “It’s not like it could have gone this way or that.”

Those professional obligations aside, his team of veteran campaign advisors warned Schwarzenegger against a precipitous plunge into politics. Of all the folklore surrounding Ronald Reagan, one of the most fanciful notions is the idea that the B-movie actor stepped right off the screen into a successful race for governor. In truth, Reagan spent well over a decade preparing for his 1966 campaign against incumbent Democrat Pat Brown, including several years giving speeches around the country as a free-enterprise ambassador for General Electric.

The late U.S. Sen. George Murphy, a song-and-dance man who preceded Reagan moving from stage to stump (and who later served as a political confidant) also spent years as a political apprentice. Like Reagan, he fought Communists in Hollywood as head of the Screen Actors Guild, then grew more active in Republican politics, serving as chairman of the state GOP and as a high-profile supporter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Similarly, Schwarzenegger was told, he needed to start building a political profile if he hoped to be taken seriously as a candidate for office. “There are steps you need to do to steep yourself in state politics and state issues and to introduce yourself in an intelligent way, as opposed to a flash in the pan,” says Sean Walsh, a member of the Wilson team who spent the early part of last year on standby in the event of a Schwarzenegger candidacy. The team advised the aging action hero “to take a slow and steady approach, as opposed to just bursting onto the scene,” Walsh says.

Schwarzenegger and his political counselors discussed various ways and means of launching his political career. Standing up for campaign finance reform was one possibility. The state’s erupting electricity crisis also presented an opportunity to weigh in. But education reform seemed to make the most sense; it had the virtues of saliency--the subject perennially tops the list of voter concerns--and it meshed with Schwarzenegger’s long involvement in youth issues. It would also soften the image of an actor responsible, by one count, for more than 275 on-screen murders.

Thus was born the After School Education and Safety Program Act of 2002, destined for a vote on Nov. 5 and millions of dollars in advertising before then--much of it likely featuring Schwarzenegger.

The ballot initiative process is one of California’s proud legacies of the Progressive Era. The intention was to break the stranglehold of special interests, embodied by the hated Southern Pacific Railroad, and to give private citizens a greater role in their governance by letting voters enact the laws they live by. It still works that way, in an idealized sense. But the system has also been exploited by special interests and used more than once as a vehicle for personal ambition.

The 54-year-old Schwarzenegger declined to be interviewed for this article. Others associated with the initiative also would not speak or, in some instances, were forbidden from speaking. “There will be a lot of speculation about his political aspirations,” acknowledges Don Sipple, the media consultant who worked for Wilson and was tapped to produce the advertising for Schwarzenegger’s initiative campaign. “Partly because of the lack of Republican success in California in recent years. Part of it has to do with his political views stated over a period of years. The only thing for certain is that he is the leading force behind a very mainstream initiative. While the speculation may be wild or rampant, one needs to just look at the efforts he’s making this year.”

During a brief, cordial conversation after a March appearance at the Reagan presidential library, Schwarzenegger explained his concerns about openly discussing his political future. The actor came to Simi Valley to unveil a bust of the former president he commissioned, presenting the likeness before a doting audience of Republican dignitaries, including ex-Gov. Wilson. Schwarzenegger said he was sincere about improving the state of after-school programs in California, even recruiting Democratic co-sponsors to boost prospects for passage of his ballot measure. (Among them, Democratic Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, a likely contestant for governor in 2006.) Anything that suggested partisan motives or, worse, self-dealing would only muddy the issue and complicate efforts to pass the proposal, Schwarzenegger explained.

It was a rationale both savvy and somewhat naive. Savvy to the extent that it recognizes the political appeal of a ballot measure with a bipartisan gloss and a sponsor acting out of pure altruistic intent. But naive, as well, in that it supposes Schwarzenegger can step into the political realm and avoid talking about his obvious political ambitions. Indeed, one of the first questions from reporters at the Reagan library--as at Hart Street elementary school--is about Schwarzenegger’s eventual plans to seek office. Again, he turns the question back to a discussion of his ballot measure. “After we cross that bridge,” he says, “we can talk about the next step.”

But privately, several people who have discussed politics with Schwarzenegger say the initiative campaign is a “trial balloon,” as one put it, for an eventual run for office. It would most likely be a bid for governor in 2006, should GOP nominee Bill Simon Jr. lose in November--as many of those around Schwarzenegger are supposing. Or perhaps he may run for the U.S. Senate in 2004, when Democrat Barbara Boxer faces reelection. “A ballot initiative needs a candidate,” said Chad Griffin, a campaign strategist who helped actor-director Rob Reiner pass a 1998 measure slapping a tax on tobacco products to pay for child development programs. “Arnold will in essence be the candidate.”

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“If you want to be a champion, you cannot have any kind of negative force coming in affect(ing) you. I’ve trained myself to be totally cold and not have these things go into my mind.”--Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1976 film “Pumping Iron.”

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Arnold Schwarzenegger has faced all kinds of nemeses in his movie career. He has been shot, stabbed, run over, burned, crushed, melted and had his memory erased by Martian forces. He has even been impregnated. But Schwarzenegger has never encountered anything like Garry South.

Last year, when Schwarzenegger was contemplating a campaign for governor, South faxed a series of smart-mouthed statements to political reporters across the country, calling attention to articles in the National Enquirer and Premiere magazine that described the married actor as a serial groper, a boor and habitual womanizer. There were angry denials from Schwarzenegger and his Hollywood supporters, denunciations from Republican quarters and dark threats of legal action. South, the chief election strategist for Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, was delighted. “The response indicated to me the exact answer I was trying to find out,” South says. “He had a very thin skin. He overreacted to things like this.” South is sitting in a hotel coffee shop in San Diego, gesticulating wildly, the way he often does whenever words seem insufficient to explain his thoughts. “This wasn’t a TV spot, for God sake, this was a fax that was sent out to maybe a couple hundred reporters. This was nothing.”

Hollywood is a confection factory, spinning fantasy and then using its massive machinery to perpetuate its myths. In the process, celebrities are often coddled by reporters who glorify their subjects and pay ransom for the privilege-- trading favorable coverage and preferred story placement in exchange for access.

If Schwarzenegger makes the leap into politics, he will enter a whole other world, a place where enemies stoke an adversarial press corps, where reporters wear their skepticism proudly, and where character is not a role but the measure of a person to be publicly, minutely scrutinized. Andy Spahn, a senior executive at DreamWorks studio, spent 20 years in politics, working for Davis and former presidential hopeful Gary Hart, among others. On more than one occasion he has sat down with a celebrity having political ambitions and told them, essentially, the following: “Before you go too far in your thought process, take a good look at yourself, your lifestyle, and understand that if you enter this arena, everything you’ve done becomes fair game. You may think as a celebrity you’ve given up a great deal of your privacy, but you ain’t seen nothing yet. Every aspect of your life may be called into question. Look at the positions and statement you’ve made over the years. Imagine what could be done with them in the political arena. Look at your life through a microscope. Are you prepared to have all of this laid bare?”

Of course, in Schwarzenegger’s case there is much in his life story that could have been scripted by Hollywood’s merchants of make-believe.

After growing up poor in Austria, he arrived in America in 1968 with scarcely more than a gym bag and his dreams. They were, as he told one early patron, “to be the greatest bodybuilder in the world, the greatest bodybuilder of all time, and the richest bodybuilder in the world. I want to live in the United States and own an apartment block and be a film star. Ultimately, I want to be a producer.”

He accomplished those goals and more--more perhaps than even he dared imagine.

Schwarzenegger won 13 world bodybuilding titles, becoming the youngest Mr. Universe in history at age 20. He became a celebrity thanks to “Pumping Iron,” a cult film that introduced the world to a charming conniver and self-promotional genius with, literally, muscles on top of muscles. From there he graduated to a series of movie roles demanding more brawn than brainpower, achieving international superstardom in 1984 with “The Terminator,” a role with only 17 spoken lines. Within a decade, Schwarzenegger had become Hollywood’s biggest box-office draw and the world’s highest-paid actor; even now, after a series of flops, Schwarzenegger will command $30 million for reprising his cyborg role in “Terminator 3.”

Along the way, he made a fortune in real estate, putting a University of Wisconsin correspondence degree in business and economics to brilliant use; at one time or another, Schwarzenegger has owned or co-owned virtually every building along Santa Monica’s fashionably funky Main Street. On top of all that, he completed his ascendancy to America’s A-list in 1986 when he joined the nation’s royal family, marrying Kennedy cousin Maria Shriver. The couple live with their four children in a sprawling home in Pacific Palisades, near Sunset Boulevard.

But Schwarzenegger has not only done well, he has done good. He plays a prominent role in the Special Olympics, founded by Shriver’s mother, Eunice. In 1991, he launched the Inner City Games, an enrichment program for disadvantaged kids that started in Los Angeles and has spread to more than a dozen American cities. As chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness in the first Bush administration (“Conan the Republican,” Bush called him), Schwarzenegger personally financed a private jet and entourage of experts that toured all 50 states. He has committed $1 million to his state ballot initiative and fronted hundreds of thousands more to launch Arnold’s All-Stars, an after-school program for middle-school children in Los Angeles.

“He’s a great success story,” says David Foster, who produced “Collateral Damage,” Schwarzenegger’s latest film. “A guy comes to the United States, becomes a humongous international star, marries into Camelot. It has all the elements.”

But a rather less flattering portrait emerges in “Arnold,” a decidedly unauthorized 1990 biography. Among other unsavory details, the book recounts that Schwarzenegger’s late father, Gustav, was a member of the Nazi Party. The work, by journalist Wendy Leigh, also includes detailed allegations of womanizing, cruel practical jokes, extensive use of steroids in his bodybuilding days and suggestions that the actor made racist and anti-Semitic remarks as a young man. Schwarzenegger denounced the book as trash. But James Willwerth, a Time correspondent who profiled Schwarzenegger for the magazine, told the Columbia Journalism Review that he checked Leigh’s research, using her 34 pages of source notes as a guide, and considered her work “well reported. My nose told me that the book was on target.”

Wherever the truth lies, the response to Leigh’s dishy biography was instructive. At the 1990 Cannes film festival, reporters wishing to cover Schwarzenegger were asked to sign an agreement promising not to ask about the book. “That issue had been completely dealt with in various different outlets,” explains Charlotte Parker, a former Schwarzenegger publicist who imposed the reporting requirement as a condition for attending a breakfast buffet with the star. “I didn’t want every single person to reinvent the wheel.”

Leigh, who was shunned by Schwarzenegger and his intimates while writing the biography, claims she was further blackballed when she set out to publicize her work. Television appearances were canceled, interviews were scrubbed and newspaper articles were spiked, according to Leigh. “I found out through intermediaries that publicists were told if they put me on, Arnold wouldn’t do their show,” says the author, speaking by telephone from her home in London. “He made absolutely sure no one had anything to do with” the book. But Parker denies any involvement in Leigh’s promotional difficulties. “I don’t know where that came from,” Parker says. “I did not call anyone and request that.”

Regardless, the rules of engagement could not be more different in a political campaign. Handlers may limit access to a candidate. Office-seekers will often try to duck uncomfortable questions. But the time is long past when someone seeking high public office can shield their indiscretions from a none-too-inquisitive press corps, the way John F. Kennedy managed. One of California’s most practiced Republican strategists suggests that in this age of 24-hour news programming and post- Monica sensibilities, candidates have to assume that anything they try to conceal will eventually come out. “I’d give him the same speech I give every candidate that sits down for the first time” to talk about a potential campaign, the strategist says of Schwarzenegger. “I ask, ‘Is there anything about your life your wife doesn’t know and you never want her to find out?’ ”

The actor himself is the only one who can say. But even if he has nothing to hide, he may wonder: Who needs the aggravation? George Butler, who produced and directed “Pumping Iron” and has been friends with Schwarzenegger since, suggested, “He’s got to make a choice about what he’s willing to put out there . . . . If Arnold is going to run for public office, he’s got to realize there’s a tremendous amount of baggage.”

That said, Butler calls Schwarzenegger “one of the most adaptable” and single-minded individuals he has ever met. “He’s going to know the ground rules before he plays the game,” Butler says, and if Schwarzenegger decides to run for office, no amount of adversity will put him off. “He’ll keep coming back and coming back. If he can’t make it one way, he will figure out how to make it another way. He’s very, very smart and always has been.”

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“No, Jimmy Stewart for governor. Ronald Reagan for best friend.”--Studio mogul Jack Warner upon learning of Reagan’s plans to run for governor.

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On March 5, the rank-and-file Republicans of California delivered a thunderous rejection of Richard Riordan and his efforts to remake their struggling party. The former Los Angeles mayor said the GOP needed to abandon its hard-line stance on issues such as abortion, gun control and gay rights, which put the party out of step with most live-and-let-live Californians. Among Riordan’s most ardent supporters was Schwarzenegger, who argued that Bill Simon Jr., the landslide winner of the March primary, could not possibly be elected governor. “There is no two ways about it,” Schwarzenegger said in an interview that aired election day on CNN. “A conservative Republican will not win against Gray Davis.”

Events may prove him wrong, which would obviously complicate any plans to run for governor. But even if the field is wide open, a larger question is whether someone with Schwarzenegger’s left-of-center views could win a Republican primary, notwithstanding his celebrity candle power. “I don’t think he gets a bye,” says Michael Schroeder, an Orange County attorney and former state Republican Party chairman, who is already critical of Schwarzenegger for failing to reach out to conservatives in pushing his after-school initiative.

In many ways, Schwarzenegger’s political profile is identical to Riordan’s. A self-described fiscal conservative, the actor also calls himself “very liberal” on social programs. He favors legalized abortion, “sensible gun controls”--including a ban on so-called assault weapons--and adoption by gay parents. Last year, while weighing a bid for governor, Schwarzenegger met with Gerry Parsky, the Westside businessman who serves as President Bush’s political boss in California. The two talked at length “about the need for the Republican Party to reach out for groups that feel left out, particularly minority groups,” according to Parsky, who has said the California GOP must shed its image as “anti-education, anti-woman, anti-immigration” if Republicans hope to start winning statewide again.

(The White House may be less pleased with a statement Schwarzenegger made last year, lavishing praise on the president but suggesting “it would have been better if he had really won, instead of through the courts.”)

Schwarzenegger, like any celebrity candidate, would start out with certain inherent advantages in a California contest, not the least his enormous name recognition. That alone would spare the cost of millions of dollars in statewide television advertising. But familiarity is just a starting point for any candidate, famous or not. “It gives you an opportunity to make your case,” says Darrell West, a Brown University professor and author of the forthcoming book “Celebrity Politics.” Voters “are not going to elect someone just because they saw them in a movie. You still have to have a platform and you still have to make the sale.” Or as Dan Schnur, a veteran GOP communications consultant put it, “Voters will take a much longer look at Arnold Schwarzenegger than they would at Arnold Smith. But the impetus would still be on Schwarzenegger to take advantage of that opportunity to tell them something about his agenda and his priorities.”

Having witnessed the Riordan crack-up and with coaching from Wilson’s campaign team--the last Republican crew to win a top-of-the-ticket California race, back in 1994--Schwarzenegger could presumably run a smarter campaign than the ill-fated ex-mayor. “It’s simply not rubbing conservative noses in his position on social issues, which Pete Wilson”--another abortion rights supporter--”knew how to do,” says GOP strategist Kevin Spillane, who helped coax Riordan into the governor’s race in hopes of pushing the California Republican Party closer to the center.

Who knows what kind of wreck the state GOP will be if Simon loses to Davis, as most analysts predict. The party was in similarly desperate shape when Ronald Reagan came to the rescue nearly 40 years ago, a parallel that invites further comparisons to Schwarzenegger as a potential savior.

But Reagan was riding a conservative wave--one he helped create--that carried him to the governorship and, ultimately, swept him all the way to the White House. A left-leaning Republican such as Schwarzenegger would be swimming against the proverbial tide, at least starting out, which would certainly be a lot tougher. “He’s out of sync with Republican primary voters,” says Tony Quinn, one of California’s most astute political demographers. “They’re older, whiter and much more nostalgic for a time when we didn’t talk about gay adoptions, we didn’t talk about abortion, we didn’t talk about gun control.”

Reagan was also helped immeasurably by his affable screen image, a fetching persona that carried over, with a crinkly-eyed smile and tilt of his head, to real life. Stuart Spencer, the consultant who guided Reagan’s political career from the start, still remembers how the neophyte candidate started with 90% name identification and 92% approval among women. It all went back to the nice-guy roles he played in Hollywood, Spencer says. “He wasn’t threatening.”

Although Schwarzenegger started branching out in the late 1980s to comedy and other more family-friendly fare (and even the Terminator became a good guy in the sequel), he made his movie reputation--and millions of dollars--starring in films that featured spectacular amounts of violence. That would undoubtedly be an issue if he runs for office.

“You don’t think that there would be objections raised from people saying, ‘He says he’s for children and yet has been involved in probably more violent movies than anyone in Hollywood at the moment?’ ” asks Democratic strategist Garry South. “That has an effect on kids, even if it’s a role, even if he’s acting pursuant to a script that’s handed to him. That’s one of the complications in this business.”

Skeptics--or at least those who see things through a political lens--are convinced Schwarzenegger’s after-school initiative is the first step in a refurbishment campaign aimed at positioning him for political office. “It’s kids, education, kinder, gentler,” says Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a USC political science professor who teaches a course on politics and the movies. “This is not the guy who goes and blows up people. This is the guy who cares about education and cares about policy. This is ‘Kindergarten Cop.’ ”

But for now, Schwarzenegger is sticking to his script, championing the cause of children and saying nothing about how that may play into any larger plans. In addition, he’s focused on something that surely no other candidate in history has ever worried about. As he told one interviewer earlier this year, the opening scene of “Terminator 3”--as in the first two installments--has his character appearing naked. After major heart surgery five years ago and a nasty motorcycle spill in December, Schwarzenegger is determined to show age and ailments have not taken any serious toll. “I want to be in as good a shape as possible,” he said. “I don’t want the character to be 12 years older than in the last movie, and I can do that.”

A man who believes he can fool nature obviously has no lack of self-confidence.

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Mark Z. Barabak is a Times staff writer who covers politics.