Celebrity status gave Schwarzenegger options
James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Santa Monica -- Arnold Schwarzenegger's dramatic announcement on "The Tonight Show" Aug. 6 that he was running for governor of California was, to all appearances, a bolt out of the blue. Jay Leno gasped and the Tonight Show audience erupted in applause. Schwarzenegger's advisers insisted he had made the decision at the last minute.
But, campaign officials now concede, preparations for his candidacy and especially for the remarkably successful strategy he would follow -- avoiding the traditional press and going straight to the entertainment media with vague messages and movie-style sound bites -- were laid as early as June, when they conducted a series of highly revealing focus groups.
The groups, put together in liberal San Francisco and the conservative San Fernando Valley, almost unanimously described Gov. Gray Davis as indecisive, remote and beholden to special interests. Schwarzenegger was seen in a much more positive light; the participants were generally aware of the actor's involvement with the Special Olympics and after school programs in California. They also expressed less interest in policies and more in "leadership" when asked what it took to govern.
The focus group findings gave birth to one of the most audacious media campaigns ever waged, in which the candidate made an end run around the establishment media -- newspapers and the more serious television news shows -- and used talk radio, entertainment shows and televised daily events to sell himself to "viewers" (as voters became known to some inside the Schwarzenegger campaign). He presented himself as an outsider who, though light on detailed policies, was decisive, optimistic and forward-looking.
THE 'REAL MASS MEDIA'
"We ran away from the established media," said Sean Walsh, co-director of communications for the campaign. "We went to the real mass media. We make no apologies for doing lots of radio or TV. It gave us 5, 7, 8 minutes of unfiltered opportunities to get out our message every day.
"We did it," he added, "because we could."
It worked. In fact, media analysts and campaign consultants say, Schwarzenegger's strategy may be remembered as the first in contemporary times that rendered newspapers in particular, but also the more serious television correspondents, all but irrelevant to the way the campaign was managed, and also to the choices many voters ultimately made. That approach, noted campaign experts, turned the media order on its head, since television had generally followed the agenda set by the print media.
"They didn't create something brand new but something brand new happened," said Phil Trounstine, a former media specialist for Davis and now director of the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University.
Jay Leno and Oprah Winfrey replaced somber questioning from editorial boards. Howard Stern had more resonance than the opinions of California's newspaper columnists. The often enthusiastic embrace of conservative talk radio hosts and warm exchanges with Larry King supplanted for most voters the often testy daily assessments issued by the state's print and broadcast political correspondents about the candidate's inexperience and lack of detailed policy positions.
"The entertainment media played a disproportionate role in this campaign from beginning to end," said Ed Rollins, a veteran Republican consultant who helped manage Bill Simon's unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign last year. "It was like a coronation. Print just followed."
Perhaps the starkest example of the strategy's success came when the Los Angeles Times published a series of articles, based on weeks of investigative reporting, detailing instances in which Schwarzenegger was alleged to have groped and humiliated 16 women on movie sets and elsewhere.
Schwarzenegger, while denying some of the accounts, acknowledged generally that he had behaved badly toward women in the past and he even apologized. The result? An outpouring of anger from many quarters at the newspaper, at least 1, 000 canceled L.A. Times subscriptions, accusations of "puke politics" from Schwarzenegger supporters on cable television and radio talk shows, and an even greater margin of victory for Schwarzenegger than many of the polls had predicted.
"The campaign raised the question of whether the serious media mattered," said Orville Schell, dean of the journalism school at UC Berkeley. "It looked in retrospect like it was all irrelevant."
Trounstine noted Schwarzenegger's ability to create the image of a serious campaign even as it offered little of the policy programs the establishment media usually demands and then assesses.
'IT WAS A MASQUERADE'
"They used all the elements of traditional campaigns but in their own way and on their own terms," he said. "It was a masquerade. It was more like the controlled access around an incumbent president, not a governor."
Schwarzenegger's campaign, bankrolled by roughly $10 million of his own money, did not always go smoothly. But most of the rocky moments -- as when an adviser, the billionaire Warren Buffett, suggested an increase in property taxes, and when Schwarzenegger hinted he might shut down the state's environmental protection agency -- were deftly managed by the actor, who proved nimble, appeared confident and always looked like he was having fun.
It did not hurt that Schwarzenegger's movie career, which had been in a slump for years, was revived this summer with the release of "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," just in time for him to leverage his friendship with Jay Leno into the dazzling appearance on "The Tonight Show."
In his distinctive English, Schwarzenegger offered the kind of action hero pronouncements that, at least initially, were the hallmark of his campaign.
"I can promise you that when I go to Sacramento I will pump up Sacramento," declared the former bodybuilder.
Schwarzenegger also became the envy of the other candidates in the recall race when he appeared shortly afterward on the "Today" show. But most felt that he came across as evasive and uninformed when he was asked specific questions about issues like the family leave law and workers' compensation.
Shriver steps in
At that point, according to a number of people involved in the campaign, his wife, Maria Shriver, an NBC correspondent, put her foot down. She demanded that the campaign focus less on celebrity and more on the hope Schwarzenegger was offering in contrast to the grim problems under Davis. New consultants were hired.
Shriver also engineered another media coup, Schwarzenegger's appearance on Oprah Winfrey's daytime talk show.
His new aides, meanwhile, provided policies on the economy, the budget, the environment and business regulation, delivered up by Schwarzenegger mainly as sunny one-line prescriptions.
"The most important element to me was striking the balance between policy Arnold and celebrity Arnold," said Dan Schnur, a Republican consultant who worked on Peter Ueberroth's short-lived campaign. "Schwarzenegger made people comfortable with the idea that he could govern. The lesson is that substance matters, or at least the appearance of substance."
In fact, Schwarzenegger sat down for more lengthy interviews with print journalists than critics believe, said Walsh -- 13 in 9 weeks.
But many of the articles that appeared seemed to have been influenced by the television coverage, a number of experts said, with much of the emphasis placed on Schwarzenegger's appearance and manner, rather than his comments on policy matters.
"What we were witnessing was a highly evolved version of a tendency already in place," said Schell. "The power of the entertainment media eclipsed the serious media. Nobody seemed to notice."
But whether Schwarzenegger's achievement can be replicated by others is debatable, say political consultants.
"Most candidates have to meet the media on its terms," said Schnur. "Schwarzenegger had much more influence over the process than a candidate can ever have."
Walsh, while acknowledging that "the old formula was turned on its head," cited the unique appeal of Schwarzenegger. "I can't imagine any other candidates pulling this off," he said.
Garry South, a longtime adviser to Davis who is known for his own hardball media tactics, expressed more concern about the implications of Schwarzenegger's success.
"You guys have to come up with a new matrix for how you cover these candidates," he said.
It was too late, but on Friday night, the defeated Davis took a page from Schwarzenegger's playbook and appeared on David Letterman's late night show, reading a "Top 10" list of advice for his successor.
Number 3: "If things are bad, just yell: 'Save us, Superman!' "