Primary Colours

In Schwarzenegger’s view, it has been decades since Californians played a decisive role in the primary process. ‘‘For years, way before I became governor, I was always mad about it,’’ he said. ‘‘I was always angry. Boiling. Because I think of California as so important and so big and so deserving and all this stuff. I’m kind of like, ‘I want to go fight for this thing’.’’

For all its size and importance as a national trendsetter, California suffers from an insecurity complex when it comes to presidential politics. The state has become so reliably Democratic over the past decade that presidential nominees from both parties spend little time or money there during the general election campaign. In the primaries and caucuses, Iowa and New Hampshire have dwarfed California in influencing who wins the party nominations.

Schwarzenegger is determined not just to change that situation but also to ensure that the next president will feel indebted to California and be committed to the issues that he and California voters care most about, including global climate change and the share of federal dollars the state receives.

It rankles Schwarzenegger that Washington returns to California just 79 cents of every dollar Californians send to the nation’s capital, and he thinks the state’s lack of influence in the nominating process may have contributed to that.

‘‘California was never part of it,’’ he said. ‘‘You say to yourself, ‘Maybe the reason why we don’t get more money and why we’re a donor state and why we don’t get the money for the incarceration of undocumented immigrants and money for all those things is because they (the candidates) don’t need California, they don’t need to promise us anything the way this is right now,’ if the primary was in June. I think that changes…’’

California is just one of the US’s more populous states—a group that includes New York, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois and Florida—that could end up with primaries on February 5. Florida legislators are engaged in an effort to move their contest up even further, to January 29. Schwarzenegger pushed the legislature to move the date of the state’s primary and signed the legislation into law on March 15.

Its early primary will not only put California into the limelight of presidential politics, it will inevitably also raise the national profile of the governor, who is constitutionally barred from ever becoming president because he was born outside the country, in Austria.

California’s prominence affords Schwarzenegger, who won a landslide reelection victory last fall, an opportunity to promote his style of Republican governance, one that stands in sharp contrast to the style of the party’s leader, President Bush.

Since suffering humiliating defeats on a series of ballot initiatives in 2005, Schwarzenegger has adopted a less confrontational and more cooperative style of governing.

The early primary will cost the state an additional $60 million, but the governor believes that it could return billions of dollars in dividends to the state in the form of new federal money if he and the state’s voters can force the candidates to make commitments. ‘‘This is the greatest investment we can make in our future,’’ Schwarzenegger said.

Schwarzenegger said he has no plans to endorse a candidate in the Republican primary but, unlike many in his party, he had kind words for the field, particularly Senator John McCain of Arizona and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. ‘‘I might, but I might not,’’ he said of an endorsement.

‘‘Right now I don’t think I will. But, like I said, that could change. Maybe it becomes very clear on who ought to be the candidate.’’

He said he believes it is possible for a Republican to win the state in 2008 if the nominee offers strong leadership, a pro-environment platform and is positioned in the centre. GOP nominees have fared poorly with the state’s socially liberal electorate (Bush drew just 44 per cent of the vote here in 2004, and 42 per cent four years earlier). Giuliani supports abortion rights, but McCain does not.

Many strategists believe that the effect of having so many big states such as California voting on or around February 5 may be to enhance the power of states voting earlier in the process, such as Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Asked about that possibility, Schwarzenegger replied with customary confidence. Pausing for effect, he said with a big smile: ‘‘They will know who to thank.’’

–Dan Balz