For those of you who don’t live in California, you’re missing an odd show. We’re having a special election next week – no candidates, but the Governator wanted to push through some special propositions to give him more control, to reduce the ability of others to criticize him, and to get a redistricting of the state between the usual redistricting periods, which is expected to be to his party’s advantage. And the battle over these things has been playing out, of course, in TV ads.
At first, the “pro” ads mostly starred the Governor, talking about why these things were needed. They were far outnumbered by the “anti” ads, run mostly by the very folks that the Governor sought to silence. And as time went on, the pro-folks were reminded of a very tough fact: Californians don’t like the Governor. Oh, we may have elected him by a large margin not that long ago, but that was the party. Since then, the hangover. The Governor’s proven weak at working with the legislature, actually getting things done. After taking on the previous incumbent as overly indebted to special interest, he’s taken insane amount of special interest money. And that’s turned off many folks who shared his stated values to begin with.
So they pulled the ads starring Arnold – just think of it, not long ago advertisers would’ve been glad to spend millions to get this guy to do ads for them, now he was giving the ads for free and getting rebuked for it.
But that didn’t mean that Arnie wasn’t in any of the ads. The anti folks took advantage of the dislike for Arnie, and put footage of him into many of their ads.
With a little over a week to go before the vote, Arnie’s started appearing in ads again, making some admission of personal imperfections (or at least to having a learning curve as governor). Perhas that will work.
But I’ve gotta admit, disliking the governor and his gang is so strong, I’ve been tempted to vote against even the one proposition that I agree with in principal.
In remotely tangential Ahnold-related TV news SciFiWire has this item posted…
Fox OKs Terminator Pilot
However, it’s not really too terribly Ahnold-relevant since the piece goes on to say…
“Linda Hamilton, who played Sarah Connor in the first two Terminator movies, is not expected to be involved in the show. And because the series will be focused on the Connor family, it’s not anticipated that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who played the title character in the films, would be a regular part of the series either.”
Hmmm, not a “regular part of the series.” But it doesn’t say he won’t pop in occasionally for a quick “I’ll be Bach.”
Just thought I’d mention/toss it in here for what it’s worth.