Putting out the fires

S.J. CAHN

The firebrands who have been trying to torch the Daily Pilot’s big

sister, the Los Angeles Times, for its articles on governor-elect

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s alleged gropings and goings-on with women are

certain to be pleased today, if not cooled off.

The stories seem to have done little harm to Schwarzenegger’s

campaign, especially here in Orange County, where the new governor

took 63.5% of the vote to Sacramento.

Schwarzenegger (it’s somehow harder to call him Arnold now that

he’s our state’s leader, although trust me, his name is causing copy

editors all over to tear their hair out as they try to figure out how

to squeeze it into headlines), as has been well reported, fairly

quickly acknowledged some misdeeds and then fairly quickly began

attacking the media for its “puke politics.”

I wonder, however, how Schwarzenegger felt in his private moments.

Certainly he must have suspected stories like that would come. Before

he decided to run, reports were that a main question with his family

was whether they wanted to expose him to the kind of scrutiny he came

under.

An example of what it might have been like was provided on

election day by County Treasurer John Moorlach, in a talk to the

Newport Beach Sunrise Rotary (for coverage of the talk, see the story

in Wednesday’s Pilot “Moorlach: Challenge awaits new governor”).

Moorlach talked about his decision to apply for the chief

executive position with the county. Supervisor Chris Norby approached

him about it, and Moorlach took several days to make a decision.

The names of applicants are supposed to be confidential, but soon

after he applied, he got a call from a reporter asking him about it.

He tried to dissuade the reporter, unsuccessfully (imagine that).

Moorlach, knowing the story was going to appear, had to scramble

to send notes to his staff letting them know what was going on and

reassuring them that he was happy in his job and working with them.

“It was emotionally traumatic,” Moorlach said.

And that was just because his name got attached to a job.

A Democrat in Republican’s clothes

Like Joe Bell, I was struck by the crowd Schwarzenegger was

keeping on election night. As Bell writes in his column today, there

certainly was a bunch of Kennedys on stage with our new governor.

I thought less about a left-wing takeover of the state than how

conservative Republicans, the ones who supported state Sen. Tom

McClintock, were probably thinking: “Arnold’s a Democrat! We knew

it!”

More interesting is what the election of a moderate, somewhat

Libertarian Republican to the state’s highest office means for the

party.

Here in Orange County, we tend to hear a lot from the socially

conservative wing of the party who argue that the only way for

Republicans to get back in power is to get back to their conservative

roots.

But aside from Orange County, those roots aren’t terribly deep or

profound in California. Instead, it was the libertarian wing of the

party that blossomed here, flowering during Ronald Reagan’s

governorship, and again with the passage of Proposition 13.

Then, Republicanism from the South, with its focus on moral issues

and a base in more conservative Christianity, swept through the party

nationally and in California (admittedly, a condensed version of

events). Under this Republicanism, we had a proposition on Tuesday’s

ballot about race-based identification, a far cry from the anti-tax

and anti-government Prop. 13.

Schwarzenegger, in the meantime, was campaigning against the “car

tax.” Could he really be Reagan and the leader of the old-school

California Republican Party?

Perhaps Sargent Shriver could tell us.

* S.J. CAHN is the managing editor. He can be reached at (949)

574-4233 or by e-mail at [email protected].