California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been re-gaining ground in the polls in California — and some members of his opponent’s camp have virtually now ensured his reelection:
The campaign of the Democratic candidate for governor, Phil Angelides, said Tuesday that it was the source of audio files containing impolitic remarks by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Those remarks were the subject of a front page article last week in The Los Angeles Times, which led to an apology by the governor.
Mr. Angelides’s campaign manager, Cathy Calfo, said at a news conference in Sacramento that the files had been culled from a Web site accessible by the public and that campaign staff members had not trespassed into a secure area of the governor’s office.
The California Highway Patrol, at the request of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s office, is investigating whether the files were obtained illegally. Mr. Schwarzenegger’s communications director, Adam Mendelsohn, said Tuesday that while the Web site with the audio files was not as secure as it ought to be, it was not publicly accessible.
“That area was password protected,� Mr. Mendelsohn said, “but the administration knows that with enough manipulation, it could be accessed.�
Why will this likely backfire?
Schwarzenegger came to power via the votes of Democrats, many independents and many Republicans (who felt he was too liberal but wanted to get a Republican in power anyway). He has been slowly rebuilding his original election-winning political base after his disastrous morphing into a more traditional Republican led to a humiliating debacle on his special measures put before voters last year.
News that the Democratic camp essentially got info off a website and gave it to a newspaper to get “Ahnold” will likely turn off many independent voters in California and merely reaffirm GOPers’ intention to hold their noses and vote for him, despite what many Republicans feel is his recent flirtation with Democrats. Schwarzenegger has had to try and stave off a near-rebellion among some Republicans and this latest development will likely draw them closer towards him.
Even though the Phil Angelides camp says it’s all legal, you can just see how the revelation reeks of political dirty tricks and looks awful when they defend it in print. Just read this AP report:
The campaign of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Democratic rival on Tuesday acknowledged it downloaded an embarrassing audio recording of the governor bantering with his staff and leaked it to the Los Angeles Times.
But Cathy Calfo, campaign manager for Democrat Phil Angelides, said that although she did not approve of the leak, the campaign had done nothing wrong because the file was available publicly on the governor’s Web site.
The governor apologized the day the Times published its story for saying in the recording that a Hispanic female legislator had a “very hot” temperament because she had “black blood” and “Latino blood.”
Calfo said her staff downloads information daily and used a computer to access the audio clip on Aug. 29. Staff members downloaded at least four hours of audio from the site, she said.
“It was provided on the Web site – no hacking, no password, no expertise required,” she said during an afternoon news conference.
Schwarzenegger campaign manager Steve Schmidt said the Angelides campaign had behaved badly, first in obtaining the audio and then in furnishing it to the newspaper.
“It’s wrong, it’s unethical, and it’s a very big deal,” he said.
On Monday, Schwarzenegger’s legal affairs secretary, Andrea Lynn Hoch, said the files were stored “in a password-protected area of the governor’s office network computer system.”
Hoch said she forwarded the Internet Protocol address used to download the file to the California Highway Patrol, which is investigating how the files became public.
The Sacramento Bee first reported that the Angelides campaign acknowledged downloading the audio file in an article Tuesday. The newspaper said Hoch provided what she said was the intruder’s Internet Protocol address. The Bee looked up the address on the Web site IP-lookup.net and found that it was linked to the Angelides campaign.
There will surely be future charges and counter charges in this mini-skirmish over details.
But the bottom line is: what’s going to play with voters more? Schwarzenegger talking like a macho Neanderthal or a member of the Angelides campaign leaping at a chance to get the comments in the L.A. Times that were culled from a website?
Which will turn off voters more? Arnold talking like many people assumed he might talk behind closed doors anyway — or his opponents scrambling to get information prominently displayed in the press to make him look bad? Unless something else happens, if you go to Vegas, place your money on a Schwarzenegger re-election now.
California Democrats have a lot of serious policy differences with Schwarzenegger. It might be wiser politically for them to focus on them, given the election base that Schwarzenegger is steadily rebuilding.
UPDATE: Schwarzenegger is pulling ahead according to the latest Rasmussen poll:
In California’s competitive gubernatorial race, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger now leads Democratic challenger Phil Angelides 47% to 39% ). He has thus added a couple points to what had been a six-point lead in August.
Governor Schwarzenegger has struggled all year. But he stayed afloat, and managed to recover a narrow lead that he has now sustained three months in a row.
The incumbent does better with his base than Angelides, and also enjoys an edge with unaffiliated votes and especially moderates. Schwarzenegger is more popular as well. But voters are more critical of the Governor’s job performance than of him personally, with about as many approving (50%) as disapproving (49%).
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.