Schwarzenegger rebuffed: voters soundly defeated the California governor's ballot measures, and the Legislature may be stronger as a result.

• Author: Weintraub, Daniel
• Position: Arnold Schwarzenegger

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's yearlong battle to wrest control of the state budget from the Legislature, move redistricting to an independent commission, and hem in California's powerful public employee unions fell flat on Election Day when four ballot measures he was backing were defeated, most by very wide margins.

Although many observers--including the governor himself--said the results were a message to legislators and the governor to solve the state's problems in the Capitol, not at the ballot box, the unambiguous vote seems more likely to empower the Legislature's Democratic majority to rebuff even more of Schwarzenegger's policy proposals. Unless the governor relents, the result would be a statehouse more gridlocked than the one Schwarzenegger was trying to blast past by going directly to the voters.

Still, with the former action movie star facing what looks to be a tough re-election fight in 2006, Schwarzenegger can be expected to be less confrontational this year than he was in 2005. He could hardly be more so.

A chastened but unapologetic Schwarzenegger said after the vote that he should have listened to his wife, Maria Shriver, who, he said, advised him not to press for the special election. But the governor said that even though he lost, the big gamble was in keeping with his style.

"I think that I operate with a different mentality than most people do, which is that I am very forceful and impatient," he said. "And I always have mapped out, my entire life, a program and a work schedule, and also a schedule of when I want to accomplish things. I always was successful with that, and with tremendous determination and with a tremendous amount of will."

A year ago, he said, he figured he could enact his concept of reform by proposing an agenda, inviting lawmakers to meet him halfway, and taking it to the voters if they refused. But now he sees that in politics, it doesn't always pay to move quickly.

"Here in this Capitol, and on the job as governor--or I think any politician--I think you have to be more patient."

LESSONS LEARNED

Reaction among the governor's opponents was mixed.

"We won, they lost," said Gale Kaufman, a key strategist for the California Teachers Association, which spent more than $50 million on the campaign--even mortgaging its headquarters building--to defeat Schwarzenegger's agenda. The CTA and its labor partners in the newly formed Alliance for a Better California are expected to seek to defeat Schwarzenegger...