Arnie in final poll scramble
The scramble to determine who will lead California went to the wire today with actor-turned-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger denying last-minute sexual harassment allegations and Governor Gray Davis pleading with citizens to give him another chance.
Voters are being asked to choose whether or not to replace Davis and if so, who replaces him.
Recent polls suggested that a majority of voters favoured dumping the governor - who was elected to office less than a year ago – while Schwarzenegger emerged as the leading replacement candidate.
The unpopular governor was blamed for myriad problems and a movie action hero grabbed much of the spotlight from candidates that included a porn marketer, a sumo wrestler, a stripper and two experienced politicians.
Schwarzenegger’s campaign has been dogged by allegations that he had groped and sexually harassed as many as 16 women over the last three decades.
But Schwarzenegger yesterday marshalled the support of his wife, Maria Shriver, and mother-in-law, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and surrounded himself with women-friendly messages.
Scores of female supporters stood behind him at events, holding signs proclaiming “Remarkable Women Join Arnold.” As he took the stage at one event, the actor smiled broadly and said: “To all the incredible women, thank you.”
Lt Gov Cruz Bustamante, the only prominent Democrat on the ballot, and Republican Sen Tom McClintock remained the only other candidates polling in double digits.
Davis reached out to his core of labour support, marching in San Francisco with hundreds of firefighters, mostly clad in blue “No Recall” T-shirts.
“If you give me the chance to finish my term, I will do it with all the passion, all the humanity I can muster because my goal is to make your life better,” Davis told the crowd chanting “No recall! No Recall!”
Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Firefighters, roused the crowd with a throaty plea to keep California from electing “a musclebound knucklehead who doesn’t know a thing about running a state.”
At a campaign appearance in East Los Angeles, Bustamante, who once led among replacement candidates in independent polls, said his internal polls showed him closing on Schwarzenegger. “Frankly, there’s a lot of people who feel he’s not fit to be the governor,” Bustamante said.
Looming over the day’s events were the allegations, including more from a woman who came forward yesterday, that Schwarzenegger groped the women and sometimes made crude comments during encounters dating from 1970 to 2000.
Schwarzenegger released a statement denying the latest accusation, while McClintock and Bustamante said the allegations were helping their campaigns.
Schwarzenegger continued to hammer away at Davis, telling supporters in San Jose that he falls among a class of politicians who only know how to “spend, spend, spend” and “tax, tax tax.”
The latest woman to come forward, Rhonda Miller of Los Angeles, said Schwarzenegger lifted her shirt to photograph her breasts and groped her twice, when she worked as a stunt double on the film Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991 and in 1994 on the set of True Lies.
Schwarzenegger did not mention the allegations at campaign stops, but in a statement, he denied Miller’s claims.
“If my crude comments offended anyone, I apologize. And as I have stated a number of times in this campaign, I have occasionally engaged in rowdy behavior. With regards to all of the other comments that were made by Ms. Miller, they did not occur,” the statement said.
