L.A.’s new mayor was sworn in yesterday — but the most glaring news was one more sign of how the once wildly popular Governor and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger is getting almost as many boos as some of his movies:
When he introduced Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at Friday’s inauguration, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa set off a sustained wave of boos from those gathered at City Hall.
“Angelenos, excuse me,” Villaraigosa scolded the governor’s detractors. “There will be civility today.”
That unscripted moment at the start of Villaraigosa’s inaugural address put the Democratic mayor in the unlikely position of defending a Republican governor whose popularity is sagging. It also captured Villaraigosa’s effort to define himself as a centrist uniter with an ambitious agenda to improve public schools, reduce crime and ease traffic jams.
The sagging polls only tell one part of the story. This isn’t the first time Schwarznegger has been loudly booed in recent months. The bottom line seems to be: Arnold’s political style and even his playful references to his flicks aren’t playing — or wearing — well with Californians anymore.
There have been governors re-elected with worse numbers than “Ahnold,” but his problem here in California is that he has shifted in image from being a different kind of politician, possessing a nifty celebrity glamor, to standard pol who is becoming much too overexposed.
If he jumps up on a sofa on Oprah, watch out…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.