Arnold Schwarzenegger - Total Recall - My Unbelievably True Life Story

But the real measure of success in 2010 came from the voters. I was more aware than ever that the key to real, permanent reform is being in sync with the hearts and minds of the people. In June, despite my low approval ratings, the voters passed the second piece of our political reform package: the open primary. The first piece, a landmark reform that broke a 200-year-old American tradition of rigging the boundaries of election districts, had passed in 2008. Combined with that reform, the open primary system would once and for all end the dominance of the far left and the far right special interests in our election system. The top two vote getters in each primary would square off in the general election regardless of political party. Independents and moderates of either party would be able to vote for any candidate they chose, ending the stranglehold that extremists had over both parties in a closed primary system. It passed with 54 percent of the vote.

The final test came in November. We had rattled so many cages on the left and the right with our reforms that we faced three ballot measures designed to repeal our victories. First was an effort to repeal the redistricting measure passed in 2008. Both parties funded the campaign to repeal the measure and return the districts safely into the hands of incumbents. They were also trying to defeat a new measure to expand fair districts to congressional races. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made her California members pony up millions of dollars to defeat this measure and repeal ours. The fight was on.

The second was a referendum placed on the ballot by labor unions to punish business for supporting my spending cuts and political reforms. The referendum would have repealed the business tax reforms we fought so hard to win in 2009 as part of the compromise. Unfortunately, this was a typical move: get historic bipartisan agreement on tax increases and tax reforms that lower costs for business, and then the labor unions try to repeal the business reforms after the tax increases are in place.

The third measure was the centerpiece. Proposition 23 was put on the ballot and funded mainly by Texas oil companies to repeal our historic global warming act. Their campaign preyed upon peoples’ fears about the economy and claimed that our climate change efforts would push unemployment even higher. They plastered the state with TV ads that said. “Jobs First—Yes on 23.” We answered with a stunningly powerful campaign cochaired by George Shultz, Jim Cameron, and venture fund leader Tom Steyer which raised $25 million. One of our most effective ads showed a kid reaching for an inhaler and struggling to catch his breath. We didn’t just beat Proposition 23. We pulverized it by 20 points. We terminated any hope the Texas oil industry had of rolling back California’s leadership on climate change.

In fact, the voters backed every one of our initiatives that year, over the passionate opposition of political parties, labor unions, and Texas oil companies. Historic political reform, business tax reform, the strongest possible endorsement of our climate change efforts: it felt good to be in the powerful center again, with the people standing behind us.

We were turning a corner. All across California, you could see a new energy economy taking hold. A decade that had begun with blackouts and despair ended with the state approving more renewable energy projects than the entire United States combined and leading with resolve. A state in love with freeways and automobiles was now leading the nation in the development of alternative fuels. A state mired in gridlock was now blowing up the partisan boxes that shielded political parties from the voters they are supposed to represent.

My schedule got busier as my term neared the end. On the final leg of a trade mission to Asia in September, I’m proud to say I found a way to cram thirty-six hours of work into a single day. On Wednesday, September 15, I started at eight in the morning in Seoul by meeting the American Chamber of Commerce at the Grand Hilton. Then I spent time with Special Olympics athletes, met the chairmen of Korean Air and Hyundai Motor, chatted up the mayor of Seoul, signed a business cooperation agreement between Korea and California, rode a high-speed train, visited a department store, and rallied the US troops based in Korea. When I learned about a massive gas-pipeline explosion in San Bruno, I cut my schedule short and flew directly to the Bay Area instead of going home, crossing the international date line so that it was again Wednesday afternoon when I arrived. In San Bruno, I visited the scene of the explosion, was briefed by emergency officials and talked with victims who were still in shock. I spoke to families who lost their homes, their loved ones, their community. Of all the things I’ve done in my life, nothing is seared in my memory more than looking into the eyes of a person who has just lost everything he loved in the world.

In December, after the voters chose Jerry Brown to succeed me and plans for the transfer of power were well under way, a reporter asked why I didn’t quietly coast out the door like most governors would after two hectic terms. I told him I believe in sprinting through to the finish line. “There’s a lot of work that still can be done,” I said. “So why would I stop in November or December? It wouldn’t make any sense.”

The state was still in the grip of the deepest national financial crisis in modern history, and regardless of all our efforts, the next governor would be staring down the barrel of a continued budget deficit, probably for the next two years. I could have just ignored the numbers through the fall, leaving the task to Jerry Brown. Democratic legislative leaders certainly wanted me to do that; they were sick and tired of me pushing them for more spending cuts. But it would have been irresponsible to let months go by without action. So I called yet another special session of the legislature. This time I knew in advance that the legislature would fail to act. They were out of gas, and they prayed that the new Democratic governor would come in on a white horse and raise taxes, saving them from having to make more cuts. There was no way in hell they were going to make more cuts no matter how hard I pushed them. The media wrote the obvious: “He started with budget problems, and he ended with budget problems.”

Yes, I did. But we made a hell of a lot of progress, and we made a lot of history: workers’ comp reforms, parole reforms, pension reforms, education reforms, welfare reforms, and budget reforms not once, not twice, but four times. (And I will be there campaigning in 2014 to make sure the budget reforms pass the voters.) We made our state an international leader in climate change and renewable energy; a national leader in health care reform and the fight against obesity; we launched the biggest infrastructure investment effort in generations; and tackled water, the thorniest issue in California politics. We put in place the most significant political reforms since Hiram Johnson was governor—and in June 2012, the first election in which California’s new open primary system was in effect, the upsurge in the number of moderate, pragmatic candidates drew national attention. And we accomplished all this while dealing with the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression.

I do not deny that being governor was more complex and challenging than I had imagined. One incident, in particular, stands out for the gap it shows between what people think you can do for them and the reality you face as governor. During the terrible drought of 2009, I went to talk to the farmers in Mendota in the Central Valley. I was with Alan Autry, the mayor of Fresno and a onetime pro football quarterback who did more than anyone to call my attention to the farmers. Mendota was one of the communities that had been hardest hit by the double wave of the economic crisis and devastating drought. Agricultural production was at a standstill, the fields had turned to dust, and there was 42 percent unemployment. We needed more water from the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. But environmentalists argued that diverting the water would threaten a little fish called the delta smelt, and a federal judge ordered the water kept off. The federal government thought that the delta smelt needed to be protected more than the farmers.