Terminator’s opposition not likely to terminate redistricting measure

Capitol Weekly welcomes Opinions on California public policy or politics. Click here for more information about submitting an Op-Ed.

OPINION – Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to come out of hiding to oppose the redistricting initiative that Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative Democrats are placing on the November ballot. He apparently wants to position himself as the Exterminator of the Democrats’ plan to counter the naked, Trump-instigated Republican scheme to steal Democratic seats in Texas for the 2026 mid-term elections.

Schwarzenegger is likely to claim that the existing method of drawing the lines of congressional districts after the last two census counts is his legacy, and that he has to protect it.

It is true that Proposition 20, approved by the voters in 2010, was on Schwarzenegger’s watch in his last year as governor, and passed with his support. That was now 15 years ago, however — the same amount of time that he has been out of office.

But let’s recall the circumstances under which he departed the governor’s office. After seven years of bragging, bullying and buffoonery, his job-approval rating at the end was exactly 22 percent — ironically, the exact same dirt-low rating that Gov. Gray Davis possessed the day he was recalled in 2003, to be replaced by Schwarzenegger.

One headline from National Public Radio pretty much said it all: “No Hollywood Ending To Schwarzenegger’s Term.” The story noted that he had been thoroughly repudiated by voters in his first term when he tried to pass a hodgepodge of rightwing ballot measures, all of them handily defeated, and that he also left behind in his second term a huge budget deficit and a tanked economy.

By the end of his tenure, voters were sick of his constant stream of cheesy stunts and tacky photo ops, treating the office as if it were a movie set for one of his over-the-top action-figure movies. In the end, his “governatorship” had bombed at the box office. The Los Angeles Times story about his time as governor was tellingly headlined, “The tragedy of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s governorship.” The Atlantic’s gubernatorial wrap-up was titled, “The Rise and Fall of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.” You get the drift.

And his departure in disrepute from the governor’s office was even before it was revealed that he had fathered an out-of-wedlock son in 1996 — with his and wife Maria Shriver’s own housekeeper, no less — that he had stashed away in Bakersfield, and hid from the voters during both of his campaigns for governor, and from Shriver herself. Predictably, she divorced him when she found out about his reckless infidelity with the household help.

So, I don’t know, if I were Arnold, I might think twice about using the November redistricting measure to try to resurrect himself and insert himself back into the political dialogue. The overwhelming majority of California voters couldn’t wait to get rid of him, shed no tears when he left, have no recollection of Proposition 20 or when it was passed, have no clue about the current boundaries of the congressional district in which they happen to live, or how they were created — and particularly Democratic and Democrat-leaning independent voters could care less about his opinion on any of it as an over-the-hill, discredited Republican ex-governor.

Plus, have you seen pictures of Schwarzenegger lately? Trying to be charitable, but he looks for all the world like a guy who’s been living in a cave for the past couple years, not quite the buff action hero people remember.

Arnold, you might be better advised to devote the waning days of your career to “Fubar,” instead of allying yourself with Donald Trump, who’s at 29 percent approval in California, and who massively lost the state all three times he ran for president, never cracking even 40 percent.

In other words, don’t be back.

Garry South is a veteran Democratic strategist and commentator who has managed four California gubernatorial campaigns, and served as chief strategist for numerous statewide ballot measures.