Gov.’s Staff Could Be Shuffled

SACRAMENTO —  Who stays and who goes?

The consuming question after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decisive defeat in the Nov. 8 special election is whether a purge of the governor’s staff is coming. In a postmortem two days after the vote, Schwarzenegger said that he alone was to blame for the 0-for-4 initiative shellacking dealt by his “partners,” the California voters, and that he would not fault aides for the loss.

Still, as the governor tours China this week, the capital he left behind is buzzing with speculation that at least some of Schwarzenegger’s top aides could be leaving. One state official who spoke to Schwarzenegger after the election debacle said the governor confided that he indeed planned to reshuffle the staff.

Handicapping the future of gubernatorial aides has been a Capitol pastime since long before Schwarzenegger took office. But it has special resonance now because Schwarzenegger, with no rigid approach to governing, is heavily influenced by the advisors who have his ear.

The governor carved a centrist path in his first year in office, then veered right in year two. What happens in 2006 may depend on whether conservative or liberal voices in his government are ascendant.

“It’s the top of the charts in the Capitol rumor mill,” Steve Maviglio, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles), said of Schwarzenegger’s staff.

Even someone as determinedly optimistic as Schwarzenegger can’t ignore the obvious. His approval ratings have been cut in half over the last year, and he has nothing to show for the tens of millions of dollars he plowed into a ballot campaign that was supposed to crown 2005 as the “year of reform.”

So it seems inevitable that certain senior aides won’t be back. Most members of Schwarzenegger’s staff and political team would speak only on the condition of anonymity, because of the sensitivity of the issue.

One outside political consultant seems safe. Mike Murphy advised Schwarzenegger throughout the campaign and the 2003 recall. Even before the election, disenchanted Republicans questioned why Murphy was slow to have the governor rebut a slew of TV ads that turned public opinion against Schwarzenegger’s agenda. Murphy has also faced criticism for a campaign that seemed to emphasize Schwarzenegger as a personality, rather than one devoted to the merits of particular ballot measures.

But Murphy has been talking to Schwarzenegger steadily since the election, met with the governor at his home in Brentwood the weekend after the election and is not likely to be displaced, according to administration officials. Murphy has been in Sacramento this week helping the staff prepare an agenda for next year.

Others seem poised to leave. In various ways, Schwarzenegger has signaled at least some measure of impatience with staff. Over the summer, he was immersed in sensitive discussions with Democratic leaders to see if they could avert the divisive campaign that ultimately played out.

He hoped to forge a compromise in which the two sides could go to the ballot together with a set of initiatives that both endorsed.

As the deadline for an agreement neared, Schwarzenegger decided to tap former Democratic Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg, from Los Angeles, to play a lead role in negotiations.

No deal came together in time. But Hertzberg’s arrival seemed to suggest the governor feared that the more conservative members of his staff were either hostile to a deal with Democrats or incapable of getting one done.

“It was very difficult,” one administration official said of Hertzberg’s appearance on the scene.

Schwarzenegger’s top aide is Patricia Clarey, a deputy to former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. State officials involved in the summer talks say that Clarey opposed a compromise with legislators, a position that appeared to nudge the governor toward the destructive special election.

But senior administrative aides firmly dispute that. They contend that Clarey had hoped to avoid an election this year, preferring that Schwarzenegger make governing a focus.

Once he insisted on the election, they said, Clarey worked diligently toward a compromise but in the end concluded that what the Democrats offered would have protected state labor unions at the expense of the broader public interest. Clarey wanted no part of that, they added, and so the election was the only option left.

With the election over, people close to the administration wonder how much longer Clarey will stay. Many are predicting that she will leave after the annual State of the State speech in January.

“People are tired and there is a high burnout,” said one administration official, who did not dispute that Clarey may depart in January. “You’ve got to suck it up and be on top of your game if you’re going to stay, because it [2006] is an election year.”

If Clarey were to move, it could have a domino effect.

Conservatives could remain dominant if Clarey leaves and her successor is, say, Fred Aguiar, a Republican member of Schwarzenegger’s cabinet who is said to be a candidate.

But Hertzberg is also considered to be in the mix. So is Susan Kennedy, a top aide to former Gov. Gray Davis. If a Democrat comes in, it could spur an exodus among Republicans who owe their jobs to Clarey.

That, in turn, could elevate Team Arnold’s liberal faction: cabinet secretary Terry Tamminen and senior advisor Bonnie Reiss. By many accounts, Reiss and Tamminen have been marginalized, outmaneuvered by the superior numbers and bureaucratic savvy of the conservatives, led by Clarey.

Although political setbacks are common in Sacramento, wholesale staff shake-ups are not. Even when they’re flailing, recent governors have shown great loyalty to staff. In a 1992 election, Wilson, as it happens, also gambled on four political efforts, including a ballot measure that would have cut welfare benefits. He lost all four and it marked a low point for his administration. But no one got fired. Instead, Wilson hired a new Cabinet secretary, a former Reagan White House aide with a specialty in opposition research: Joseph Rodota.

Davis, too, held onto his senior staff, though his poll numbers nose-dived amid the electricity crisis and rolling blackouts of 2000.

Here, though, there is another dynamic: First Lady Maria Shriver is an honorary member of the governor’s staff’s liberal wing. She stayed far from Schwarzenegger’s special election, never campaigning for any of the measures.

Some people close to Shriver said she’s been unhappy with the administration’s direction and has been trying to recruit people for senior-level positions. But her top aide said Thursday that Shriver, whose father, R. Sargent Shriver, was part of the 1972 Democratic presidential ticket trounced by Richard Nixon, is not insisting on a purge.

“Maria Shriver has lived through enough campaign setbacks to know they don’t mean those involved are any less able or dedicated,” said Shriver’s chief of staff, Daniel Zingale, a veteran of the Davis administration. “If she thought being on the losing end of one campaign disqualified anyone for public service, she wouldn’t have hired me.”