Schwarzenegger is suddenly everywhere. What's next?
Arnold Schwarzenegger is in full legacy mode.
It's been twenty years since the weightlifting champion turned Hollywood action hero sent shock waves through California politics by winning the governorship. Now he has a new memoir out, a three-part Netflix documentary and laments that he can't run for president.
What's the aim of all the hubbub? Some California politicos are wondering if he will announce a run for Senate. He hasn't been shy about saying say he'd make a good president, despite being barred by the Constitution because he was born in Austria.
“The only thing I would have been interested in running for is president, but I can't do that . ... I'm not going to complain about it. But I will always be ready to help,” he said Friday to members of the Sacramento press corps at an election anniversary event.
He insisted he has no plans to run for office. What's clear is that Schwarzenegger, now 76, seems intent on refreshing the image of a man who has remade himself many times over.
In between waxing nostalgic about his time in Sacramento, the Republican admonished former President Donald Trump for his violent rhetoric and called for more policy ambition from California's Democratic legislative supermajority.
“We have to be careful not to go after the lowhanging fruits,” he said about the state's environmental agenda, pointing to several ways it could go further in reducing carbon emissions to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.
By kickstarting investment in solar energy and signing a landmark law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Schwarzenegger launched California's now
well-established pattern of setting ambitious environmental standards that get adopted nationwide.
“We have so much solar and so much renewable energy that sometimes it's too much. So we need to store it . ... I don't see anyone moving forward on a million batteries.”
He called for expansion of independent redistricting to keep elected officials
from redrawing their own electoral boundaries, an issue that the former governor has continued to work on in and outside California.
With his synergistic relationship to the media and unique bipartisanship fostered often inside his infamous Capitol cigar-smoking tent, Schwarzenegger said governing the state was “the best seven years of my life without any doubt.”
Twenty years, he took the oath of office following the recall of Gov. Gray Davis in a victory that transformed California politics.
He promised to rescue California from Democratic excess, riding a wave of populist angst that he has compared to Donald Trump's election in 2016. Facing a significant deficit, the new governor passed Propositions 57 and 58 to help balance the budget long term.
“He laid down the foundation for what became the rainy day fund. That is now one of the strongest insurance policies California has against dramatic economic downturn,” said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the Department of Finance.
Schwarzenegger ended his tenure with a 27% approval rating, plagued by personal scandal that ended his marriage to Maria Shriver. And it was marked by misogyny and sexual harassment accusations, behavior he apologized for in the Netflix documentary `Arnold.'
Yet since leaving office, he has not shied away from public political life. He occasionally appears in the news, whether it's for filling potholes, comparing the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to Kristallnacht or calling Trump “the worst president ever.”
And behind the scenes, he has defended and promoted his core policy accomplishments, said Joe Mathews, author of “The People's Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy.”
“The stuff that matters the most to him, the children's after-school programs, climate change, redistricting he never let those go. He still pursues them,” said Mathews, whether nationally or in other states. “At some level, he's still behaving as a governor.”