Arnie set to terminate

As you might expect from any blockbuster production starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, the ending of the California recall election was always going to be predictable. There has been a bitter final duel between the two main rivals, with Gray Davis calling on the former Mr Universe to face criminal investigation following allegations made by 11 different women, including British TV presenter Anna Richardson, that they had been sexually "groped" by the movie actor. Schwarzenegger has hit back, accusing his rival of running a "puke campaign", before issuing a carefully worded apology for "inappropriate" behaviour.

Still, Arnie is expected to terminate the incumbent Governor by a considerable margin. The sexual harassment charges are seamlessly turned against his accusers in his campaign rhetoric: "They try to tear down your character and all you stand for - but I stay focused because the fight continues," he told one weekend rally.

This election is really about money, rather than sex. It was caused by Democrat Governor Davis's inability to handle California's vast budget. And Arnie, besides having fame on his side, is known to be good at money. He has made a huge fortune from buying up great chunks of Santa Monica and turning them into public car parks, among other lucrative schemes.

He reveres the Economist magazine and has been writing editorial page articles for the Wall Street Journal, in which he notes that the "two people who have most impacted my thinking on economics" are Milton Friedman and Adam Smith.

Not bad for a young Austrian musclebuilder who arrived in Los Angeles in the Seventies as a penniless immigrant with a "pretty rough time of it speaking English", but for whom California was "the promised land for anyone who wanted to work hard to get ahead".

Campaigning in this promised land, Arnie has wisely stuck to doing what he does best: turning politics into an arena of popular entertainment.

During a weekend rally in Modesto, a typical Californian suburban town, I was standing near the front in order to get a close-up view of Arnold when several woman heaved forward, thrusting themselves behind me so hard that I was pushed into Arnie himself and found him suddenly reaching out for my hand. Arnie seems to have mastered the art of shaking two people's hands at the same time - his arms reach into the crowds like tentacles.

There is certainly a strangely eerie quality about him, with his slightly orange skin, dyed chestnut hair, forced glare, brilliant white teeth and eager smile. But there is also a magnetism that is easy to translate into votes. His black bomber jacket (his wife, Maria Shriver, a Kennedy by birth, was sexily dressed in a tight-fitting black leather jacket) looked as if it came from the souvenir shop at Planet Hollywood. I tried to ask him if he identified with the monetarist politics of Margaret Thatcher - he replied with a Jaws-like grin.

He has certainly injected some badlyneeded energy and glamour back into politics, and not just in California. The "Governator" vote tomorrow is of remarkable historic significance.

Arnie's last big journey before the vote is through the rural and industrial heartland of California, a state that, like so much of the American Mid-West, is fundamentally conservative, but was seized under Clinton by the Democrats.

It is precisely this "independent Republican" constituency - Arnold is easy-going on abortion, gay rights and admits to having smoked cannabis - that Bush is desperate to capture in order to re-invigorate the political health of the right in America.

Certainly, there is a buzz in the air wherever he goes. Shortly after noon yesterday, for example, I watched a cheering army of 5,000 Schwarzenegger supporters marching across Sacramento's Tower Bridge towards the Capital Building - the heart of California's dysfunctional and near-bankrupt government. They didn't care how many women Arnie has "played" with on set, they were not that bothered about what Arnie may or may not have admired about Hitler's rhetorical skills - one of the charges raised against him was that he was too frank an admirer of the tyrant's speeches.

All they and many Californians want is change, preferably delivered by an "independent" politician who can stand up to special interest groups that have pillaged the state's coffers.

It is wrong to dismiss the California recall campaign as being a mere circus. Sure, there have been moments that have bordered on farce - the original line-up of candidates ranged from a porn star to a man wanted for murder. Not since the Sixties, when the populist Ronald Reagan was Governor, has California seen a bus trip anything like it.

Just take the names of the four clapped-out old orange buses, named Predator 1,2,3,4 respectively, that have been trailing behind Arnie's giant blue bus as the campaign crosses the state. They have trouble keeping up with Arnie. It is all joyously spontaneous and a bit chaotic. Schwarzenegger's "California Come-Back" bus is followed by a gaggle of media trucks, and a clutch of fans freewheeling down the freeway.

In Modesto on Saturday, the convoy pulled up to a stop outside the local cinema, where an enterprising manager had changed the movie-billboard outside to welcome the "Terminator" of Davis's governorship to town. Arnie has two identical coaches, just in case one breaks down and - we're discreetly told - to confuse would-be terrorists.

Here, $5 dollar badges already proclaim that Arnie is Governor, but there are hostile placards, too. George Rox, 52, who works in the local courts, held up a sign saying "Sorry is Fine. But Would You Vote for Someone who Sexually Humiliated Your Daughter?". On the reverse was another slogan: "Vote 'no" to the Grab Ass".

"I think it's amazing that people just shrug and say, it happened a long time ago, and that that is what actors do on set" said Rox. "I don't think we have to accept that in our elected officials".

During the rally, a fight broke out between a group of women protesters and female Arnie supporters. The number of women who won't vote for him because of the sexual allegations (one, in a bar in Santa Monica he owns, decribed him to me as "a pig") may, nonetheless, be outweighed by others who vote for him simply because they are impressed by his celebrity and verve.

Having spent the past three days with Arnie on his bizarre campaign road trip across California's Central Valley, it's not hard to see why he has emerged as the most popular candidate. Although his poll ratings temporarily slipped a few points when the sexual allegations surfaced in the Los Angeles Times a week ago, they remain at around 55 per cent of voters, some five per cent ahead of Davis and at least 17 per cent ahead of Cruz Bustamante, the "fallback" Hispanic Democratic candidate. The other glamorous figure, Arianna Huffington, has dropped out after making no impact whatsoever.

Arnie may act and speak like a robot, and be as stiff on the campaign stage as an arthritic Action Man, but judging from what I saw, people do genuinely like him. In contrast to the arid Davis, Arnie has an exuberant physical force of character that is a well-timed throwback to the Reagan era.

Indeed, the carefully choreographed road show that I followed was very much a deliberate attempt at revivalist Republican nostalgia - with the Stars and Stripes being sung before Arnie takes the stage and more red, white and blue confetti being fired out into the sky than at the Superbowl.

One thing that has struck me about Arnie has been his visceral, almost physical, use of language. However comical Arnie's vowel-challenged pronunciation of the English language may be, he knows how to get people invigorated and pumped up by what he has to say, however simplistic his vocabulary.

In his final open rally on Saturday afternoon, in front of a crowd of 5,000 in the old state fairground near Pleasanton in the Bay Area, Arnold went on the attack, saying that that the style of low-spending government he wants in California will mean that special interest groups will try to push him around. "But," he added, "I vill push back." The crowd roared their approval. And again, after gesturing fiercely to the crowd with an almost demonic glare: "I can go out there and kick some serious butt!".

Now that is a political language that anybody - in particular, the politically disillusioned - can understand. Again, every time he borrowed a line from one of his films, such as "Hasta La Vista Davis", or "Now is the time to terminate him", the crowd went crazy. California is a big country and likes its leaders to be larger-than-life characters. Like Reagan before him, Arnie has the charisma and star quality that Californians crave. The bestselling "Arnie for Governor" T-shirt at the moment reads: "My Governor Can Beat Up Your Governor".

Politically experienced he might not be, but nobody has questioned his discipline in pumping his own body iron to become Mr Universe, or his ability to lead by example. From the start, this election has been about the lack of leadership of Governor Davis, a career Democrat politician who has somehow managed to bungle the finances of the Californian state - which has the fifth largest GNP in the world - from a $12billion surplus to a $38billion budget deficit.

Arnie, on the other hand, has proved himself as a highly successful businessman. He has invented himself from nothing - and, being a product of the California dream, argues that he is well positioned to bring that dream to others.

Possibly. Certainly, he understands money. In America, being self-made and wealthy is seen as a highly desirable quality for a politician. "It may seem kind of crude, but I like him because he has money," said Daniel Villeges, a 21-year-old at the Modesto rally. "I'm voting for him because Arnie is a Californian success story. He came here with nothing and made it - and I respect him for that."