Cal. gov candidates make asses of themselves

The Guardian Los Angeles dispatch
Who's behind in the polls?
Tuesday September 2, 2003

Some of the candidates in the race to become governor of California have made asses of themselves, says Duncan Campbell

The recall election in California inevitably brings to mind that wise Tanzanian proverb: "The higher the monkey climbs, the more he shows his bottom."

Over the last couple of weeks, we have been lucky enough to watch 135 candidates climbing up the slippery palm tree towards the high office of the California governorship. And many of them have, true to the saying, been showing us their bottoms.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the highest-profile candidate, has interpreted the proverb almost literally.

In an ancient interview, with the now defunct Oui magazine, he talked about group sex in a Venice gym when he and a number of other bodybuilders engaged in physical activity with a willing woman on the premises.

As it happens, I live just round the corner from said gym, and my neighbour is a regular visitor. I hardly dare catch her eye now - although I am sure things have changed since the incident Arnold reported so breezily from his bachelor days in the 1970s.

He also talked about smoking marijuana. Indeed you can now buy a T-shirt depicting him joint in hand, in an adapted image from the documentary, Pumping Iron, which first brought him to prominence.

To be fair to Schwarzenegger, he has now come out in favour of medical marijuana and in doing so has put himself in direct opposition to the US attorney general. John Ashcroft has of course been expending countless FBI man hours and resources in pursuit of a few medical marijuana providers in California, whom he clearly regards as a far greater threat to the nation than al-Qaida.

The Democrat lieutenant governor, Cruz Bustamante, who currently looks to be the only person who could beat AS at the polls on October 7, has also been the subject of a bit of exposure. His youthful membership of the radical Chicano group, Mecha, has been made much of by conservative commentators who see the organisation as anti-US.

For both men, the "revelations" may have the opposite effect to what was intended. The majority of Californians favour legalised medical marijuana and object to Ashcroft's interventions at a time when one might imagine an attorney general had other priorities.

Equally, many of the young Latinos in the state are more radical than their parents and may be more encouraged to get to the polls by the knowledge that Bustamante had a bit of a radical past, even if looks more like Hercule Poirot than the Terminator.

Bustamante, derided by an LA Times columnist and then by Schwarzenegger as "[current governor] Gray Davis with a receding hairline", has wisely made a move for this large and largely misunderstood constituency.

"All you receding men in California, unite," he said on television, when challenged with the description. "I'm your candidate."

Some of the other candidates have, of course, made the showing of their bottoms, literally or metaphorically, part of their appeal.

The porn star, Mary Carey, has used the race to publicise her films and the "pornographer who cares", Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler, is still flagging up what he would do, although his highest ratings have been 1% of the poll.

Tom McClintock, the conservative Republican who has definitely not taken part in group sex in a gym, nor had a joint on film, nor sought to have California returned to Mexico, nor starred in a raunchy video, was saying this week that he is in the race to the end.

One wonders if he can resist the pressure being mounted from his fellow-Republicans to give Arnold a straight climb up the greasy poll. I doubt it. After all, in any race the only jockey who does not have to look at other jockey's bottoms is the winner