Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a pitch, in this NWN video,
for his expansive agenda at a Bay Area town hall meeting.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is back this week to the town halls he’s done intermittently during his relatively brief but spectacular political career. Yesterday he conducted one in San Diego. On Tuesday, he was in the Bay Area town of Concord. It’s a way, in this week of swirling state budget numbers and inside-the Capitol calculations, to tell a broader swath of California that he has an expansive agenda for the state.
It’s an interesting time to be with Schwarzenegger outside the confines of the often very insular insider state political culture. With 200 attendees, high-propensity middle class voters, and a dozen TV camera crews on hand, there wasn’t much talk of the insider thrust-and-parry that dominated Sacramento the day after he unveiled the annual “May revise” of his proposed state budget.
Instead, Schwarzenegger, with much of his Cabinet in tow, talks of much of what he wants to do in the remaining 44 months of his governorship.
“We still have a lot of challenges ahead of us. There were a lot of things that were swept under the rug the past 10, 15 years and we want to now go and take those things out from under the rug and take those challenges on.” He cited infrastructure, a big first round of which was passed last year, and more of which he wants in his second term as governor, and the imperfect but significant prisons deal.
“We will also tackle a lot of other big problems, such as health care,” he said, noting that Teddy Roosevelt promised universal health care a hundred years ago and still nothing near it has been achieved.
“Environmental challenges” and “more water storage” and “new energy initiatives” were also cited by the former action movie superstar, noting that the Sierra snow pack is already dangerously low this year in this, an early stage of climate change. “Next year,” he says, will be “the Year of Education.” He didn’t mention redistricting reform and a few other things on his agenda, but there’s only so much time to talk.
“I’m a governor,” he said, “that always looks way ahead. I don’t look just two years ahead or three years ahead. My responsibility is to say, what is California going to look like in the year 2050? Do we have an economy, do we have a transportation system for the year 2050? Do we have enough clean water for the year 2050? Do we have a clean environment for the year 2050? All of those things are extremely important and decisions have to be made today.”
“This is why I wanted to go out and talk to the people. To just show that, yes, the state has been doing great but there are a lot of great challenges that are still ahead of us and we all have to work together to make this happen.”
State government has become, in many respects, a zero sum game, with most of the entrenched players heavily invested in what is essentially trench warfare over existing formulas and funding patterns. Much of the system — governmental, political, media — has become invested in particularist success and overall failure. In other words, particular interests are paramount and a pervasive cynicism reigns.
Schwarzenegger is not exactly a blushing idealist, but for a variety of reasons, including his own self-conception, he wants to get more accomplished than past governors since Pat Brown have accomplished.
From the reaction of the crowd, which is evident on the NWN video, his approach is appealing. Of course, as he pursues this expansive, future-oriented agenda, he has to deal with the overhang of the past. The state, in the midst of the unsustainable dot-com bubble, initiated big new spending and tax cut programs. It also took on major, and thus far, unfunded, benefit commitments to state workers and retirees.
These commitments, which then Governor Gray Davis vowed he would resist, but largely acceded to — under pressure from the Legislature, dominated by Democrats, with many Republicans joining in the party — have mortgaged the state’s future. Schwarzenegger is trying, with limited success, though the budget deficit now is a fraction of what it was projected to be when he took office, to work out the state’s finances even as he pushes for his future agenda.
This is why he is looking to things like the lease of the state Lottery, which could solve many problems, at least for the advance of his agenda. It’s a fascinating balancing act he has going.
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37 Comments
1. Jonas Blane:Schwarzenegger is like the last moderate Democrat.
May 18, 2007 - 5:57 am 2. Ann:It’s hard not to like the guy. He’s trying.
May 18, 2007 - 6:29 am 3. Bill Bradley:I wouldn’t say he’s a moderate Democrat. His politics don’t fall into that category, at least as I know the definition.
May 18, 2007 - 6:39 am 4. Capitol Boy:Schwarzenegger will get a lot of flack in The Building and the insular press corps, but he’ll end up with over half what he wants.
May 18, 2007 - 6:56 am 5. Kandy Kid:Solon — I like dessert wines, especially ice wine from Canada and Sauternes, of course. While most folks have little/no experience with dessert wines, dinner guests are pleasantly surprised when they try a good one paired with proper food items, especially fresh fruit. The best part is they keep forever, so with a good cork, you can take a small nip when appropriate, say when your Gran Marnier bottle is empty.
Off to the secret camping spot.
May 18, 2007 - 8:45 am 6. Jonathan Hemlock:California is lucky to have him.Imperfect though he is.
May 18, 2007 - 9:23 am 7. richard locicero:“Last Moderate Democrat?”
You’d get a strong argument in favor of that from the state GOP.
May 18, 2007 - 9:23 am 8. Bill Bradley:KK, what is the best wine for a town hall?
May 18, 2007 - 9:26 am 9. richard locicero:Bismark once said of the Italians that they had large appetites but poor teeth. Until we resolve the financial imbalance by raising taxes or cutting programs or both we’ll tetter along. Since the state is still growing (with anoth ten million or so arriving by 2020) it seems obvious that there are real needs that will have to be met in:
Transportation
Water
Sewers
Schools
Universities and Colleges
Electric power grid
And I bet others can add more. But we will continue to muddle along until we resolve our fiscal mess.
May 18, 2007 - 9:28 am 10. Bill Bradley:Richard, it’s funny that the Republican Party has moved to the right in many respects as Schwarzenegger has shown the success of the centrist approach.
May 18, 2007 - 9:29 am 11. Jonas Blane:You can’t meet growing needs without investment. Why don’t conservatives get that?
May 18, 2007 - 9:56 am 12. Ann:I remember when Schwarzeneger was a joke.
May 18, 2007 - 10:09 am 13. Bill Bradley:Actually, Richard, a relatively small tax increase would do wonders for the state’s fiscal picture.
Regarding the needs you mention, you are exactly on target. A number of those, of course, are addressed by the big infrastructure bonds package that passed last November.
The power grid has not been addressed yet.
May 18, 2007 - 10:26 am 14. Bill Bradley:Ann, aside from a few hyperpartisans, I don’t think anybody thinks Schwarzenegger is a joke any more. But of course when I first started considering him as governor of California in 2002, the sheer brazenness of it caused me many a chuckle!
May 18, 2007 - 10:29 am 15. Paul Burton:Schwarzenegger may not be as much of a joke as he was when he got his butt kicked in 2005, but his ‘town hall meetings’ are. I doubt that they are open to the public or that he would allow a group of state workers wearing SEIU T-shirts to attend and ask questions abut his May revise that punishes welfare recipients and disabled people. Is Arnold more accessible now and willing to listen to critics any more so than in 2005 when he was shielded from the public protests against his misguided attacks on workers? I recall him being whisked to his SUV and escorted from Stanford University by the CHP rather than face protestors. You don’t have to be hyper-partisan to be skeptical and take Schwarzenegger’s budget balancing for what it is and always has been - a shell game.
May 18, 2007 - 10:53 am 16. Ann:Paul, who has shown many times he has no clue about reality, is always good for a laff.
May 18, 2007 - 11:14 am 17. Bill Bradley:Let’s play nice.
May 18, 2007 - 11:30 am 18. Bill Bradley:Incidentally, Paul, Phil Angelides simply would not answer or outright lied in response to questions he didn’t want to address on his budget “plan.”
May 18, 2007 - 11:32 am 19. richard locicero:I agree Bill and if the Legislative Republicans were not in thrall to their Taxaphobia they would realize that. It is no coincidence that the three most important Governors of the 20th Century - Hiram Johnson, Earl Warren, and Pat Brown all understood the importance of investment in the future.
May 18, 2007 - 12:14 pm 20. Bill Bradley:This is a $1.7 trillion dollar California economy. A tax increase, perhaps temporary, of a few billion dollars is hardly going to kill its vibrancy, especially when business is doing much better after the changes in workers comp.
May 18, 2007 - 12:19 pm 21. Ann:Remember when Jonny Flashman from the Flush Report would come here and NOT answer questions about what to cut to avoid taxes? lol
May 18, 2007 - 1:03 pm 22. Dana:Bill said “A number of those, of course, are addressed by the big infrastructure bonds package that passed last November.”
To an extent. We who supported it always tried to emphasize it was a down payment for addressing the years of neglect for these needs. The Governor has spoken of public/private partnerships and using design/build as stratagies to address the unmet needs beyond what the bonds deal with. And these are all economic issues, as our competitiveness depends on quality in education, infrastructure, etc.
May 18, 2007 - 1:10 pm 23. Bill Bradley:Right, Dana, it’s Phase One on infrastructure.
May 18, 2007 - 1:12 pm 24. Capitol Boy:Is Angelides the biggest weasel of a candidate you’re run across?
May 18, 2007 - 1:54 pm 25. Bill Bradley:You want me to answer that?
May 18, 2007 - 2:14 pm 26. Ann:When I worked with him in the early ’90s, he was actually quite fine. A shock for people who’ve worked with him since, including most of his staff, who want to place nasty stories with me.
Angerlides IS the biggest weasel. lol
May 18, 2007 - 2:31 pm 27. Sacramento Solon:KK,
You can add me to the list of folks who have little experience with dessert wines. However, I’m looking to become for familiar with all wines, I shall be giving them a try.
By the way, took your advice and picked up a French chardonnay. Give it a try and let you know.
May 18, 2007 - 3:43 pm 28. Bill Bradley:Dessert wines? Does this have anything to do with kegs?
May 18, 2007 - 3:57 pm 29. Sacramento Solon:Yes
May 18, 2007 - 4:00 pm 30. Bill Bradley:How so?
May 18, 2007 - 4:08 pm 31. Ann:Are you taking the nasty stories on Angerlides?
May 18, 2007 - 5:40 pm 32. Sacramento Solon:Rum…port wine…porter beer…bowling.
May 18, 2007 - 7:01 pm 33. Bill Bradley:Not really.
May 19, 2007 - 8:05 am 34. Sacramento Solon:Good morning…have a good Saturday and a wonderful weekend.
May 19, 2007 - 8:34 am 35. RM 'Auros' Harman:I’m a big fan of dessert wines, particularly Niagra icewines and Tokaji… I also brought home four bottles from Barossa when I visited Australia, though all of them are now gone…
May 20, 2007 - 10:35 am 36. Bill Bradley:I prefer champagne, myself.
May 20, 2007 - 5:41 pm 37. Bill Bradley:NWN, incidentally, hit the 30,000 comments mark last week.
May 21, 2007 - 10:39 am