Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

“Yeah, I’m serious.”

And she said, “No, no, come on, please tell me that you’re not serious.”

Then she added, “Don’t do this to me.”

I said, “Look, I was just … I haven’t made a commitment. I’m just thinking about it. Obviously if you say no, I’m not going to run. But I was just thinking it’s a perfect opportunity. It’s a recall, and there is only a two-month campaign; it wouldn’t be that much. I think we can work our way through these two months. And then I’m governor! And, Maria, I can see it. I can feel it. This can really be done!” I felt a surge of enthusiasm just talking about it.

“I’m tired of this acting stuff,” I went on. “I need a new challenge. I’ve had that urge to do something different for some time. This is a chance to do the kind of public service your father talks about. And I think I could do a much, much better job than Gray Davis.”

As I rattled on, I was astonished to see my wife start to tremble and cry. I just couldn’t believe it. I guess instead I expected a Eunice to emerge and say, “All right, now, if that’s what you want to do, let’s sit down right away and make some decisions. Let’s get the experts and start the briefings.” I expected that kind of Kennedy-esque response. I wanted her to say, “This is unbelievable. We inspired you, and now you’re joining the family business. You’ve grown so much since I’ve known you. Here you’re willing to give up millions to become a public servant. I’m so proud of you!”

But I was dreaming.

“Why are you crying?” I asked. Maria began to talk about the pain of growing up in a political family. I knew that she hated being dragged around to events, always being part of the photo op, and then on Sunday nights having the house invaded by advisors and operatives, and having to get dressed up for that. She’d hated her father’s campaigns, having to be out there at five in the morning in front of the factory, telling people, “Vote for my daddy, vote for my daddy.”

But the part that never registered with me was the trauma she’d felt as a kid. We had been together twenty-six years and married for seventeen, and it was a shock to me that her childhood as a Kennedy—with its intrusions, its humiliations, and its two assassinations—had shaken her to the core. Sure, her father lost his campaigns for vice president and president. I put those in the category of experiences that make you stronger. I didn’t understand the public embarrassment she felt. In politics, everybody knows everything. You’re totally exposed. All your girlfriends in school talk about your stuff. Maria had suffered tremendously: not only her father’s losing two campaigns but also the tragic deaths of her uncles Jack and Bobby. Then there was her uncle Teddy’s accident at Chappaquiddick, with horrible stories in the press. And then tauntings in school and on the sports field and anywhere she went in public. Kids would make cruel remarks: “Your dad lost. What does it feel like to be a loser?” Every time it was like being stabbed.

Given all that, my telling her that I wanted to be governor was like an accident where she saw her whole life flashing before her. All of those upsets and fears came flooding back, which was why she was trembling and crying.

I held her and tried to calm her down. All kinds of thoughts were racing through my mind. Total shock, first of all, to see her in such pain. I knew she had been through a lot of drama, but I thought it was in the past. When I met Maria, she was full of life, excitement, and hunger for the world. She wanted to be a rebel, not have a job on Capitol Hill. That was why she wanted to be a news producer and be in front of the camera and be really good at it. She didn’t want to be lumped in with the Kennedys; she wanted to be Maria Shriver—the woman who interviewed Castro, Gorbachev, Ted Turner, Richard Branson. At the time, I thought, “That’s just the way I am; we really have this in common! We both want to be really good and unique and stand out.” Later on, as we got more serious, I felt like whatever I wanted to do, whatever the goal was, she was a woman who could help me achieve it. And I felt like whatever she wanted to do, I would help her get there.

But, to be fair, politics had never been part of the deal. Just the opposite. When Maria met me, she was twenty-one years old and she felt very strongly that she wanted a man who had absolutely nothing to do with politics. There I was, this Austrian country boy with big muscles who was a bodybuilding champion and wanted to go to Hollywood and be a movie star and get rich in real estate. She thought, “Great! That will take us as far away from politics and Washington as possible.” But now, almost thirty years later, the whole thing was coming full circle, and I was saying, “What do you think about the idea of me running for governor?” No wonder she was upset. I realized she’d shared some of this with me before, but it had gone right over my head.

Later that night, I lay in bed thinking, “Man, this is not going to work. If Maria doesn’t buy into the idea, then it is impossible to go out and campaign.” I never intended to cause her that kind of pain.

What I hadn’t told Maria was that I’d already committed to appear on Jay Leno. The day the recall election was confirmed, I’d bumped into The Tonight Show’s producer at the hairstylist. “Whether you’re running or not running, I’d like to be the first show where you talk about it,” he said. I thought, “If I really run, this would be a cool way to announce it.” So I’d said yes, and we’d agreed on a date of Wednesday, August 6, three days before the filing deadline.

It was not a pretty night. All the tears, all the questions, very little sleep. “If she doesn’t want me to do it, then we just don’t do it,” I thought. This meant I would have to unwind my vision, which would be very difficult because it was now fixed in my mind. I’d have to turn off the automatic pilot and manually fly the plane back to the airport.

The next morning I told Maria, “Running is not the most important thing to me. The family is the most important thing. You are the most important thing, and if this is a tremendous burden for you, then we don’t do it. I just want to tell you that there’s a great opportunity here, and I think that if you want California to do better —”

“No,” she said. “It would be terrible. I don’t want you to do it.”

“Okay, it’s over. I’m not going to do it.”

That evening at the dinner table, she announced to the kids, “You should all thank Daddy because he made a decision that was good for our family: not to run for governor. Because Daddy wanted to run for governor.” Of course, the kids all started talking and having their reactions. “Thank you, Daddy,” said one. And then another one said, “That would be really cool, running for governor, wow.”

Several things unfolded over the next few days. First, Jay Leno called to check in, and I felt obliged to tell him that I was likely not to run. He said, “No problem.” There had been so much speculation about me running that he knew he would get a big audience either way. “You’ll be the first guest,” he said.

Meanwhile, Maria talked to her mother, and Eunice wasn’t happy. She and Sarge were big believers in me and were always encouraging me to serve the public. In fact, after I’d told reporters in June that I was thinking about joining the race, Sarge had sent me a note that read, “You’re making me very happy. I can’t think of any person today that I would rather have in office. If I were a resident of California, I hope you realize that I’d be voting Republican for the first time ever!” As for Eunice, she’d always had the drive to be in public life and the will to move past defeats and tragedies. Maria always joked, “I married my mother.” So now, when Maria told her mother that she didn’t want me to run, Eunice told her to snap out of it. “What happened to you?” she said. “We women in our family always support the men when they want to do something!” I wasn’t there for the conversation, of course, but Maria told me later on. “And by the way,” her mother added, “when a man gets that ambition to run, you can’t put it out. And if you stop him, he’ll be angry for the rest of his life. So don’t complain. Get out there and help him.”

During that time, we were having almost daily talks with my friend Dick Riordan, the former mayor of Los Angeles. He and his wife, Nancy, lived just a mile away. Dick was a moderate Republican like me, who had lost the gubernatorial primary the previous year. Most people expected him to run in the recall, and he had a very good chance to win. He had a terrific campaign manager named Mike Murphy, whom he had already called back in. But then word went around that Dick had taken to skipping political meetings and playing golf instead.

I called to find out what was going on. “I’m not likely to run,” I told him, “and if I’m not running, I want to say I’m endorsing you.”

He thanked me and later invited us to join him and Nancy for dinner at their new beach house in Malibu. We spent the whole meal talking about the Riordans running and us not running. That’s when I noticed a little softening in Maria’s stance.

“Arnold almost decided to run, and then he decided not to because we really didn’t like the idea,” she told them.