Schwarzenegger blinked: California's movie star governor has taken a bipartisan tack that has surprised both parties.

Arnold Schwarzenegger faced a crucial turning point early in his young administration as governor of California. It was the first Friday in December, three weeks after the world-famous actor had taken office, and the Legislature had just rejected his call for a strict new constitutional limit on future government spending. The rookie governor dearly wanted the spending limit as a companion to a $15 billion bond measure he was pushing to stabilize the state's shaky finances. And he had vowed to take his agenda directly to the people, via an initiative, if the Legislature wouldn't place his measures on the ballot for him.

BACK TO THE TABLE

But rather than follow through with his bold threat, Schwarzenegger blinked. After a weekend of deliberation with his closest advisers, including his wife, Maria Shriver, the Republican governor returned to the negotiating table. Within days he agreed to a modified proposal drafted by Democrats that did not limit spending, but created a budget reserve and some modest new limits on borrowing. He called it his "balanced budget amendment" and cheerily declared victory, not only for himself but for the spirit of bipartisanship that had long been absent from the California Capitol.

The turnaround left Republican lawmakers grumbling. Hoping that Schwarzenegger would ride the momentum of the historic recall election into a fundamental realignment of California politics, many thought he had lost that opportunity by agreeing so readily with the legislative majority he had just spent the entire campaign attacking.

"If he had gone to the ballot he would have got the spending limit, and the Democrats wouldn't have been happy," said Assemblyman Ray Haynes, a Republican from Riverside County who is generally a fan of the governor. "Politics is not about loving each other. The essence of politics is win or lose. It's not business, where in order to make a deal both sides have to win."

But it was exactly that winner-take-all mentality that had led California government into a deeply partisan, ideological standoff. And it was that attitude that Schwarzenegger decided he wanted to change.

BIPARTISAN BUDGETING

With his newfound allies from the other side of the aisle, Schwarzenegger launched a bipartisan campaign for voter approval of the two pieces of what he called his economic recovery plan: the balanced budget amendment and the far more important bond measure that would pay off the state's existing debt and provide a cushion to help close the budget shortfall in the summer of 2004. He scheduled rallies throughout the state, appearing with Democratic legislators in their districts and with state Controller Steve Westly and U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein. Although the bond measure started out with the support of barely more than one-third of the voters, both pieces of the package passed on March 2 with more than 60 percent of the vote.

Thus began what has become a familiar pattern in Schwarzenegger's first year as governor of the nation's most populous state. While he has threatened and at times berated legislators, at crunch time he has sought compromise more often than confrontation. For every time Schwarzenegger dropped the idea of demoting the Legislature to part-time status or called his foes "girlie men," there were 10 times when he lavished public praise on individual lawmakers or gave in quietly to their policy demands.

So while Schwarzenegger has used his considerable marketing skills to create the image of a governor running roughshod over the legislative branch--an image that seems to grow the farther you get from Sacramento--the reality is far more complex. Democrats often leave the negotiating table more pleased than the governor's Republican allies.

THE TERMINATOR EFFECT

None of this is by accident. Schwarzenegger has shrewdly used his celebrity appeal and personal charm to woo members of the Legislature from both parties. Having followed a governor--Democrat Gray Davis-who was known as a loner and had few, if any, friends in the Legislature, Schwarzenegger did not have a very high standard to meet. But he took to the task with gusto, dining with lawmakers, ushering their families into his inner office for photo sessions and sitting down for frequent policy talks with leadership, small groups of lawmakers and individual members. Many Democrats say they spent more time with Schwarzenegger in his first five months in office than they had with Davis in five years.

The most obvious--and important--example of the Schwarzenegger magic was his relationship with Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, the profane, irritable, Democrat from San Francisco who was serving his final year in office before being forced out by term limits. The two hit it off the first time they met, during Schwarzenegger's transition, and the political romance hardly ever cooled. Burton spent so much time in the governor's suite of offices that Schwarzenegger aides said they would often look over their shoulder before saying something sensitive for fear that the senator might be lurking there. The two men share a love for espresso coffee drinks, and Burton before long was shuttling stainless steel carafes of foamed milk into the governor's office so he could top off Schwarzenegger's drinks with a frothy flourish.

Burton acknowledged that the small gestures Schwarzenegger extended his way--including personal visits to his office--had helped cement the relationship.

"I don't remember the last time a governor would come to the second floor to talk to the leader of another party," he said.

Assemblyman Herb Wesson, a Los Angeles County Democrat who was speaker when Schwarzenegger took office, also took a liking to the governor. The two had a running gag about Schwarzenegger's height (which was originally overstated as 6 feet, 2 inches by his publicists), and the diminutive Wesson at one point tried to confirm this with a tape measure. Schwarzenegger retaliated by placing a pillow as a booster seat on Wesson's chair before a negotiating session in his office.

"He laughs, he jokes, he talks about his family and your family," Wesson said. "He is the kind of person you could sit around a kitchen table with and just chat."

HIS SERIOUS SIDE

But it has not been all fun and games. Although Democrats helped him pass his ballot measures in March, Schwarzenegger soon tried to use the perception of his populist prowess to squeeze concessions out of them. He began gathering signatures for a business-backed measure to overhaul the state's troubled workers' compensation system, set a deadline for the Legislature to act and said if lawmakers didn't produce a bill that met his demands, he would submit the signatures to force a November election on the issue. Then he started campaigning for his ideas in shopping malls across the state, accusing the Democrats of being beholden to "special interests" who wanted to preserve the status quo.

Just before that deadline, lawmakers did respond, with a bipartisan agreement that had the support of the insurance industry and big business, while organized labor, usually opposed to workers' compensation reform, was neutral. Only the trial lawyers among the major players were opposed. Again, though, the final deal fell far short of what Schwarzenegger originally proposed. His public browbeating of the Legislature and declaration of victory at the end, however, left voters with the impression that the governor had won another major battle.

Next Schwarzenegger turned his attention to the budget. The bond measure, although a big help, gave him only some breathing room. It did not solve the long-term problem. He still was facing a $14 billion gap between projected revenues and spending. And he wanted to erase that shortfall without raising taxes.

To get there, the governor started cutting private deals with interest groups with a stake in the budget.

The teachers' unions and other education groups agreed to a $2 billion reduction from the minimum guarantee for schools in the state constitution. That move required suspending the constitutional provision, an idea that other governors had considered but had never been willing to pursue, given the high political price they presumed they would pay. But Schwarzenegger, by wooing the education interests directly, was given a pass.

Local government leaders, meanwhile, agreed to $2.6 billion in cuts over two years in exchange for Schwarzenegger's support for a constitutional amendment that would protect cities and counties from state raids on their tax base in the future.

Higher education officials, not wanting to be left out, agreed to accept more than $600 million in reductions. Schwarzenegger promised to give them enough money in future years to keep pace with enrollment and the cost of living, plus more for new programs if the state's revenues caught up with expenses.

BACK ROOM DEAL MAKING

The side deals angered some lawmakers.

"He has no respect for the process," Senator Martha Escutia, a Los Angeles Democrat, said in an interview. "He cuts his deals with the major stakeholders and tries to ram it down our throats. For the man who ran against back room deals, he has been the poster boy for it. I think in terms of the idea of the Legislature being a deliberative body, he is thumbing his nose at us and our role."

But Escutia's criticism of the process, while shared by many of her fellow Democrats, obscured the result: a compromise budget that let Schwarzenegger crow about avoiding new taxes, but in fact relied on billions in borrowing and left many of the underlying problems to be solved another day. The governor, in the course of the negotiations, gave up on hundreds of millions of dollars in spending cuts, mostly in health and welfare programs, that the Democrats opposed, and used borrowed money or budget tricks to fill the hole. In the end, Democrats were much more enthusiastic about the product than the governor's fellow Republicans.

"If it was up to the Republicans, his program would still be sitting in the toilet somewhere," said the always colorful Burton. "He had to drag them into the [workers'] comp thing. He had to drag them into the budget. They have a different point of view."

Assemblyman Rick Keene, who is a member of the Republican leadership team in the Assembly. concedes that there has been tension between legislative Republicans and their governor. But Keene adds that, given the Democrats' majority in both houses (48-32 in the Assembly and 25-15 in the Senate), Schwarzenegger had little choice but to reach out to them.

"Given the fact that he is working with a Democratic Legislature, a calcified structure here, he has done very well," Keene said. "I think you have the same tension every time you have someone who is an executive Republican dealing with a legislative group of allies. You are always going to have this give and take."

ZIGGING TO THE RIGHT

In fact, as the budget season wound down and the fall elections loomed, Schwarzenegger zigged rightward again. Democrats sent him a series of bills on party-line votes dealing with the state minimum wage, energy policy, prescription drugs and outsourcing. Schwarzenegger vetoed those bills and many more, while complaining in a radio interview that Democrats were simply trying to make him look bad.

"I am trying to do good things for the people," the governor said, "but they try to jam me so they can go back and say to their district, they say, 'Look what this Republican governor did,' and so they can go and get their votes in November."

Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, raised millions of dollars for his party's coffers and endorsed Republicans in key races around the state. Some of the same Democrats who had voted for his proposals and mugged for the cameras with the celebrity governor in his office now found themselves the subject of recorded telephone calls to their constituents, with the governor's famous voice urging voters to defeat their representative.

With Schwarzenegger, it seems, nothing is personal. And everything is.

Daniel Weintraub is public affairs columnist for the Sacramento Bee. He has covered California politics for 17 years.