This Time, Schwarzenegger May Not Get a Hollywood Ending

By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: November 7, 2005
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 6 -

A startling change has come over California's larger-than-life governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, as voters prepare to head to the polls on Tuesday for an unpopular statewide election. His television advertisements have taken on an uncharacteristic tone of humility. And ordinary people, no longer awed by his Olympian persona, are openly challenging him in public

The four ballot measures Mr. Schwarzenegger supports are trailing in the polls, and his re-election prospects next year appear, for now, to be dimming. His approval ratings are in a tailspin, and his stage presence has been drained of much of its bombast and bluster.

At a televised forum here last week, with audience members picked to represent a cross-section of voters, several questioners interrupted Mr. Schwarzenegger and accused him of distorting facts to sell the four ballot measures, which are among eight up for a vote in an election ordered specially by the governor.

Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, was explaining Proposition 75, a measure he favors that would require public-employee unions to receive the written permission of members before their dues could be used for political campaigns.

Democrats and union leaders who oppose the proposition have called it a naked attempt to silence the unions' political voice. The governor says the proposition is about protecting workers' paychecks.

An audience member who gave his name as Chris Robeson and said he was a health care worker from Camarillo angrily cut the governor off. "That's just Rovian spin," Mr. Robeson said, referring to Karl Rove, the White House political guru. "That's fraudulent."

Such bald impertinence would have been unthinkable a year ago, when Mr. Schwarzenegger was riding high in the polls and rolling over the opposition. But political missteps and unending battles with Democrats in the California Legislature and the public-employee unions have taken their toll. The governor seems chastened for the first time in his public life.>>>cont

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