Governor's task: repairing image

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Sat, Sep. 17, 2005

Governor's task: repairing image

TO WIN, EXPERTS SAY, NEGATIVE CAMPAIGN LIKELY

By Laura Kurtzman

Mercury News Sacramento Bureau


SACRAMENTO - With Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger confirming Friday he will run for a second term, he must now confront a humbling challenge: how to rectify his badly tarnished image.

The celebrity candidate, who made his much-expected re-election announcement at a campaign event Friday in San Diego, sailed through the recall election offering voters the hope of a reprieve from partisan politics. But now he, too, is viewed as a partisan, disliked by many of the same Democrats and independents who supported him tentatively in 2003 and enthusiastically his first year in office.

To win in 2006, analysts say, Schwarzenegger will have to get those voters back, either through gentle persuasion or, more likely, with a negative campaign to discredit his opponent, the way his predecessors, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis, won re-election despite widespread voter disaffection.

``It's always more difficult to change somebody's mind once they have a negative impression of you,'' said Mark DiCamillo, director of the non-partisan Field Poll. ``But he can run against an opponent and try to bring him to the same level or even a lower level than where his negatives are.''
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http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/12671175.htm
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[Child_Of_Isis]

1. more likely, with a negative campaign to discredit his opponent

There is going to come a time when the people will tire of this.

[calimary]

2. Hopefully. Never underestimate the stupidity and short-term memory

of the electorate, though.

But if he does go negative to try to bring his opponent's negatives uo to a level matching his own, he's gonna have to work AWFULLY hard. His negatives are rawther large.

[barb162]

3. the Democrats should show photos of him in his hummers

with captions like "gas-eating hog" and things like that. He is beyond creepy