SHORTLY after winning election as governor of California in 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger watched leaders from the state legislature stage a spittle-flecked, chair-toppling fight in his office. “I don’t know if the drama was meant for me because I was new,” he recalls in an interview, miming open-mouthed astonishment. A bigger shock came hours later. Two of the combatants, one a Republican, the other a Democrat, telephoned him from a bar. Sure, we fight about things in the daytime, the pair told the governor, a Republican who won as an action-man outsider in a Democratic state. But with night falling the party bosses wanted Mr Schwarzenegger to know their shared view of his proposal to have electoral districts drawn by an independent panel, rather than by politicians. A “horrible” idea that would cost incumbent members their seats, they growled. “Just kill this,” he remembers hearing.
It took Mr Schwarzenegger and allies several attempts to outwit California’s political...Continue reading
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