Schwarzenegger says he would not have been able to win a Republican primary
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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, fresh from his victory with the passage of Proposition 14, spent Thursday hopping from one Washington, D.C., media outlet to another touting his success and his final year’s agenda.
The governor played coy with multiple media outlets about whether he would endorse GOP standard-bearer Meg Whitman to succeed him. He told the Washington Post that the person he will support ‘most likely will be Republican but not necessarily.’
In an interview with NPR, Schwarzenegger spoke about the importance of the new two-top primary, which, like the recall election that vaulted him into the governorship, has all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, lumped into one electoral pool.
‘That’s how I got elected, because I appealed to Democrats and Republicans, independents ... everybody,’ Schwarzenegger said. ‘If there would have been no recall election, I wouldn’t have been able to win, because I would not have been able to win a Republican primary because I’m too much in the center and I’m not that far to the right.’
He smoked a cigar with Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic. Asked about keeping fit while aging, Schwarzenegger replied: “It sucks.”
Some other highlights:
On the BP oil spill and President Obama’s response: ‘What’s the public relations disaster versus what’s the reality? Two different things altogether. I think that he’s doing everything that he can in order to deal with the crisis. But public relations-wise ... the people in America are saying that he hasn’t responded quickly enough or he isn’t responding strong enough, or he’s not in charge of the situation.’ – ABC News interview with Terry Moran, which aired Wednesday but was filmed earlier
On what’s next for him: ‘I don’t allow myself, even if I sometimes wander off, I come right back to this year. I don’t allow myself to have no meetings, and nothing about next year or about my future because this time, right now it’s about now, and getting things done, serving California. That’s my job.’ – ABC News
On the Arizona immigration law: ‘I made it very clear that we in California have no use for this kind of a law. I have also made it very clear for years already that you need to have more border patrol. We need to secure our borders. Our borders are not secure. That is the bottom line.” – ABC News
-- Shane Goldmacher in Sacramento