Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

“These are the decisions you make,” I added. “I feel good that I made the decision not to run.”

Maria turned to me. “Well, I know this must be really hard on you. But in the end you make the decision that you want to make, and you should do whatever you want to do.”

This threw me. Was she now saying, “I freaked out when I heard about you running, but now I feel a little better about it?”

After dinner, Dick casually took me outside to the terrace. He punched me lightly in the stomach and said bluntly, “You should run.”

“What do you mean?”

“To be honest with you, I don’t have that fire in the belly like you have.” Dick was seventy-three years old. He said, “You should run. Why don’t I endorse you?”

While driving home, I said to Maria, “You won’t believe what just happened,” and I told her about the conversation.

“I thought that there was something off about him during dinner!” she said. “Well, what did you tell him?”

“I told him the story about you, that you are totally against—”

“Look,” she interrupted, “I don’t want to be a spoiler here. I don’t want that responsibility. Maybe you should run.”

And then I said, “Maria, we’ve got to make up our mind by next week.”

It went back and forth like that for days. I could now see her dilemma. One side of Maria was ballsy and brave and wanted to be a strong partner, and the other side was telling her, “This is the same roller coaster you’ve ridden before. Chances are he’ll lose, and that’ll make you a loser too. You’ll be a fifty-fifty partner in an embarrassing mess you didn’t cause.” She would tell me to make my own decision, but every time I sounded like I was getting serious about running, she would get upset again.

I was off my stride too. Up to now, making a career decision had always been an incredible high. Like when I went into acting, and I said I wasn’t going to compete as a bodybuilder anymore. The vision became clear, I made the leap, and that was that. But making a career decision as a husband and a father was a whole different deal.

Normally, I would have called my friends to talk this through. But declaring a candidacy was so loaded that I couldn’t go to anybody. I emphasized to Maria, “This is just between us. We will figure it out.”

In the middle of all this, Danny DeVito asked me over to his house. He had three movie projects he wanted to pitch, including Twins II and one that he’d written himself that he wanted to direct. I said, “That’s a great idea, Danny, I’d love to work with you again.”

Then I added, “But, Danny, you know, California is in terrible shape.”

“Well, yes, probably. But what’s that got to do with my movies?”

“Well it could be that if my wife agrees, I may run for governor.”

“What! Are you crazy? Let’s do a movie together!”

“Danny, this is more important. California is more important than your career, my career, everyone’s career. I’ve got to run if my wife lets me.” He said okay, figuring that it wasn’t going to happen anyway.

_

Suddenly it was Wednesday, August 6, the day I was supposed to go on TV. I still didn’t know what I would announce. I was in the bathroom that morning, and I heard Maria call from outside the door, “I’m leaving now. I’m going over to NBC. I wrote up something for you that will help you at The Tonight Show.” And she pushed two pieces of paper under the door.

One was a set of talking points that essentially said, “Yes, Jay, you’re absolutely correct, California is in a disastrous situation, and we need new leadership. There are no two ways about it. That’s why I’m here to announce that I’m going to endorse Dick Riordan to be governor, and I’m going to work with him, but I’m not going to run.” Dick still hadn’t jumped in, but she was figuring he would.

The other piece of paper said essentially, “Yes, Jay, you’re absolutely correct, California is in a disastrous situation, and we need new leadership. This is why I’m announcing today that I am going to run for governor of the state of California. I will make sure that we are going to terminate the problems.” And so on.

By the time I finished reading, Maria was already out the door. “Okay,” I said to myself, “she is leaving this to me. We’ve had this conversation for a week. I am not going to think about it again until I’m on the show. Whatever comes out of my mouth, that is how it will be.” Of course I was leaning toward declaring I would run.

No political advisor would ever tell you to announce a serious candidacy on The Tonight Show, but I’d been a guest dozens of times and felt comfortable there. Jay was a good friend. I knew he’d cover me and ask interesting questions and get the audience involved. You don’t hear the roar of the crowd at a press conference.

Leno had announced countless times that I’d be there to make a very important announcement. Everyone from my close friends to the driver taking me to the studio was asking, “What are you going to say?” In the green room, Leno came in and asked the same question. But everything leaks in the political world, where everybody owes a journalist and every journalist wants a scoop. The only way I could truly make news was to answer no one. I never said anything until we were on camera.

By sunset it was done: I was in the race. The Tonight Show airs at eleven but tapes at five thirty in the afternoon California time. After I made my announcement, I answered questions for a hundred reporters and TV crews gathered outside.

The crazy California recall suddenly had a face! Within days, I was on the cover of Time, wearing a big smile over a one-word headline: “Ahhnold!?”

The next day, my Santa Monica office became Schwarzenegger for Governor central. When you launch a campaign, you’re supposed to already have a thousand ingredients in place: themes, messages, a fund-raising plan, a staff, a website. But because I’d kept everybody in the dark, there was none of that. Even a fund-raising team would have been a giveaway. So all I had was my Prop 49 team. We were organizing on the fly.

This was bound to result in ragged moments. On Friday, I got up at three in the morning for interviews with the Today show, Good Morning America, and CBS This Morning. We started with Matt Lauer from Today. As he pressed me for specifics on how I would bring back the California economy and when I would release my tax returns, I realized I was unprepared. Unable to answer, I finally had to resort to the old Groucho Marx stunt of pretending the connection was bad. “Say again?” I put a hand to my earpiece. “I didn’t hear you.”

Lauer ended the interview by remarking sarcastically, “Apparently we are losing audio with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Los Angeles.” It was my lamest performance ever.

Maria had kept her distance up to now, adjusting to this new drama in our lives. But seeing me stumble on TV roused the sleeping Kennedy lioness. Later that morning, she joined a meeting of the consultants who were scrambling to put together the campaign.

“What is your plan?” Maria asked quietly. “Where is the staff? What is the message? What was the point of these TV appearances? What direction is the campaign going in?” Without raising her voice, she was bringing generations of authority and expertise to bear.

Afterward, she decided, “We need more people and soon. And we need someone to come in on top and stabilize this thing.” She called Bob White in Sacramento, who had helped launch the after-school campaign and who had recommended most of the guys I was working with. “You’ve got to come down here,” she told him. “You’ve got to help.” So Bob opened his Rolodex and guided us to a campaign manager, a strategist, a policy director, and a communications chief. He also stayed on himself, informally overseeing it all. Ex-governor Pete Wilson pitched in as well. Not only did he endorse me but he also volunteered to hold a fund-raiser at the Regency Club and joined me in lining up big donors over the phone.

_

One of my very first moves as a candidate was to seek out Teddy Kennedy. There was no chance of getting an endorsement; in fact, Teddy put out a written statement that said, “I like and respect Arnold … but I’m a Democrat. And I don’t support the recall effort.” Still, on Eunice’s advice, I went to see him. When she heard that I had to fly to New York for an After-School All-Stars event in Harlem right after I announced—a commitment I’d agreed to months before—she urged me to stop at Hyannis Port and talk to her brother. “You’re not up his alley politically,” Eunice said, “but he has run many campaigns and won all of them except the presidential election, so I