Arnold Schwarzenegger - Total Recall - My Unbelievably True Life Story

Very quickly the exchanges became “feisty” and “spirited,” as reporters described it later. Bustamante wasted no time attacking my lack of experience, prefacing just about every remark he made to me with “I know you may not know this, but …” Being condescending backfired because it made people dislike him and gave me a chance to show people that I did know the issues. That made an impression, and so did my humor. When things got especially intense, with everyone shouting over everyone else, I’d say something outrageous that would make the audience laugh.

Arianna and I got into it a couple of times. At one point, she was blaming the state’s budget crisis on tax loopholes and the immorality of Republicans and corporations. I said, “What are you talking about, Arianna? You are using tax loopholes so big that I could drive my Hummer through.” The next day’s polls put me on top. My numbers jumped from 28 to 38, while Bustamante’s fell from 32 to 26.

But even though Bustamante and I had been the main contenders, the media coverage afterward focused on the sparring between Arianna and me. At one point during the debate, as the candidates discussed the state budget, she complained that I was interrupting her and accused me of being sexist. “This is the way you treat women,” she said. “We know that. But not now.”

I responded jokingly, “I just realized that I have a perfect part for you in Terminator 4 .” I meant that she could play the part of the ferocious female Terminator. But she took it as an insult and told a reporter the next day that women were outraged by my remark. “I thought it really hurt him with women, which was already his vulnerability,” she said.

She was drawing attention to the allegations of bad behavior on my part, which had surfaced at various times over the years. The following week, with just five days left before the election, such accusations were the focus of an exposé in the Los Angeles Times : “Women Say Schwarzenegger Groped, Humiliated Them.” My staff went nuts: apparently there is some unwritten rule in politics that you don’t run exposés on candidates in the final week of a campaign. But I hadn’t jumped into this race without expecting to face some heat. As I’d told Jay Leno on TV the night I announced, “They’re going to say that I have no experience and that I’m a womanizer and that I’m a terrible guy, and all these kinds of things are going to come my way … but I want to clean up Sacramento.” I wasn’t campaigning as a social conservative with a values agenda. As soon as I declared, the LA Times had assigned a team of reporters to produce a series of investigative pieces on me. Several articles had run already, including a story on my father’s Nazi past and one on my use of steroids as a bodybuilder. My rule of thumb about damaging accusations was that if the accusation was false, fight vigorously to have it withdrawn; if the accusation was true, acknowledge it and, when appropriate, apologize. So as the earlier stories appeared, I’d acknowledged my early steroid use, just as I had in the past, and I’d worked with the Simon Wiesenthal Center to track down newly available documents about my father’s war record.

None of the groping accusations was true. Even so, I had sometimes acted inappropriately and did have reason to apologize for my past behavior. In my first speech the next day, I told a crowd in San Diego, “A lot of those stories are not true. But at the same time, I always say wherever there is smoke, there is fire. And so, yes, I have behaved badly sometimes. Yes, it is true that I was on rowdy movie sets, and I have done things that were not right, which I thought then was playful, but now I recognize that I have offended people. And those people that I have offended, I want to say to them, I am deeply sorry about that, and I apologize.”

Now, as in the past, many people came to my defense, and my most important ally was Maria. Speaking to a Republican women’s organization that day, she said she deplored gutter politics and gutter journalism. “You can listen to all the negativity, and you can listen to people who have never met Arnold, or who met him for five seconds thirty years ago. Or you can listen to me,” she said, and she praised me for having the guts to apologize.

As our polling had suggested all along, California voters were far more concerned about other issues, like the economy. My speech in San Diego was to kick off a final bus tour to rallies across the state. Three thousand people showed up that morning, and we had six thousand people at the next event in the Inland Empire area east of LA, and then eight thousand people in Fresno Saturday morning. When we finally pulled into Sacramento on Sunday, almost twenty thousand people were massed in front of the capitol to cheer, celebrate, and enjoy the hoopla. I stood on the steps and gave a five-minute speech. Then the band played—a hip band, one that the kids could relate to—and I took out a broom, and that was the photo op: Schwarzenegger is here to clean house. You could feel the momentum. This was it! We were ready to clinch the deal.

The night of the election, I was getting dressed to go to the party. I didn’t know the outcome yet because it was too early, but I felt my chance of winning was really high. As I walked into the bedroom to put on my shoes, I heard an announcer on CNN say, “We can call the election now. The new governor will be Arnold Schwarzenegger.” I had tears streaming down my face. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been counting on it, but actually hearing the news on CNN—the official acknowledgment from an international cable network—was overwhelming. I never thought I’d walk by a TV set and hear “Schwarzenegger is the new governor of California.”

I sat there a little while. Katherine walked in and said, “Daddy, what do you think of this dress?” I wiped away the tears. I didn’t want her to see. Maria, who had been dressing in a separate bathroom, joined me upon hearing the news, and she too was overjoyed: not only did she like the idea of becoming California’s First Lady, but here was a political victory that could help her forget past family defeats.

The people had voted to recall Gray Davis by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent, and a large plurality had chosen me over Cruz Bustamante and the other contenders. The breakdown of the vote was 49 percent for me, 31 percent for Cruz, 13 percent for McClintock, 3 percent for Camejo, and 4 percent spread among the rest of the pack.

One of the sweet moments of victory came a week later, when President George W. Bush stopped off to see me on his way to a diplomatic mission in Asia. We met at the Mission Inn, a historic hotel in Riverside, California, where ten presidents have stayed. Karl Rove was there with the president when I was shown into the suite, and after we all exchanged greetings, Rove said, “I’m going to leave so the two of you can talk alone.”

President Bush, who knew that his political architect had told me not to run, tried to mend fences. “Don’t be mad at Rove for what he said to you in Washington. Karl is Karl. He’s a good guy. We have to work together.”

I said I’d never let personality conflicts get in the way of what we needed to achieve for America and California. “It will be a pleasure to work with him in the future,” I added. “I know he’s doing a good job.”

Bush then called Rove back in and said, “He likes you.” Karl shook my hand and smiled. “I’m looking forward to working with you,” I said.

They probably guessed what I would say next. After the debate, I’d complained to the media about how much in taxes Californians pay the federal government and how little California gets back compared to other states like Texas. I’d told CNN, “I am not only the Terminator but the Collectinator,” and vowed to get our fair share out of Washington as governor.