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Posted on 10/04/2003 10:43:10 PM PDT by Recourse
Davis says Schwarzenegger may have committed crimes against women
By James P. Sweeney and Philip J. Lavelle COPLEY NEWS SERVICE 8:04 p.m. October 4, 2003
OAKLAND – Escalating a controversy that could decide Tuesday's recall election, Gov. Gray Davis said Saturday that actor Arnold Schwarzenegger may have committed crimes against women, while Schwarzenegger launched a spirited counterattack. Sensing an opening in his uphill fight for survival, the governor said voters should carefully assess developments of recent days, reports that former body builder allegedly fondled and groped numerous women and made positive comments about Adolph Hitler.
"There have been some disturbing news stories about disrespect toward women, touching them in inappropriate places," Davis told a women's forum. "Mr. Schwarzenegger has acknowledged doing at least some of that.
"Some of those events are clearly a crime."
Davis said the incidents appear to constitute sexual battery and suggested some law enforcement agency ought to look into the allegations.
"The authorities should do their job," Davis said. "They should review all the facts. Upon the completion of that review, if they think a crime was committed, then they should follow their oath of office."
Eleven women have accused Schwarzenegger of groping, fondling or otherwise manhandling them in reports published last week in the Los Angeles Times. In response, Schwarzenegger conceded he "behaved badly" at times toward women and apologized.
But controversy trailed Schwarzenegger as his "California Comeback Express" rolled through the heart of the Central Valley and on into Pleasanton in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In Pleasanton, protesters from the group Code Pink positioned themselves among thousands of Schwarzenegger supporters at the Alameda County Fairgrounds. One group, wearing pink T-shirts, chanted "No groper for governor!" throughout Schwarzenegger's speech.
Another Code Pink protester sat on an iron gate, occasionally yelling, "You're obscene, Arnold." Her pink T-shirt had handprints over the breasts and said, "Arnold Hands Off California." The woman was shouted down by Schwarzenegger supporters, some of whom cursed her.
Schwarzenegger addressed the swirling controversies in an interview earlier in the day. He called the allegations in the Times report false and denounced as "puke politics" claims, published in The New York Times and aired by ABC News, that he had been a youthful admirer of Adolph Hitler's oratorical skills.
Schwarzenegger said he was shocked by what he read in Saturday's editions of the Los Angeles Times.
"People warned me, they said, 'Arnold, don't get into politics ... they're going to try to attack you, they're going to try to tear down your character.' "But, I'm not going to let them tear down my character. I'm going to move forward, because Davis is out there saying I'm unfit to govern this state. He has been unfit to run this state for the last five years."
Schwarzenegger campaign aides accused Times reporters and editors of being unethical for calling the campaign about the groping allegations made by three women at 9:20 p.m. Friday. That was too late, the aides said, to prepare a response. The first edition of the Times had no response from the Schwarzenegger camp; later editions did.
"We will not sit back and take gutter yellow journalism in the closing days of this campaign," campaign spokesman Rob Stutzman told reporters. "There is a bias (at the Times) that has never before been seen in a political campaign in this state."
Later in the day, Stutzman asked reporters to be cautious with allegations of groping, which continued to pop up with the election just days away. In Modesto, a woman who said she was a Mexican national drew reporters when she alleged that she had had sexual relations with Schwarzenegger.
"This is just outrageous," Stutzman told reporters after the Pleasanton rally. "Nobody knows anything about this woman ... this is the second time in three days that someone shows up at a campaign event to make allegations."
Asked during the Fresno interview to characterize his thoughts regarding Nazism, Schwarzenegger said:
"From the time I left Austria, from the time I was a youth, as a matter of fact, I despised everything – absolutely everything – that Hitler stood for, that the Nazi regime stood for, that the Third Reich stood for. It was an evil, evil empire."
In an interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune aboard his campaign bus, the actor was asked what he would do to assure Californians that allegations of unwanted groping of women would not surface during a Schwarzenegger administration.
"Well, first of all, the majority of stuff that they're throwing at me is not true," he said, "and those that I think that did happen in the past, it will be in the past. ... Where I did make mistakes and where maybe I did go overboard sometimes ... I regret that."
He said he will let people know "this is a different Arnold. I and Maria have a great marriage, I'm very happily married."
Saturday – Day Three of his statewide bus tour – was the first in which the action-movie actor was joined by his wife, NBC correspondent Maria Shriver.
She introduced her husband to cheering supporters at rallies in Fresno and Modesto, and stood by his side in Pleasanton, where she stood silently as the Code Pink protesters jeered her husband. At the Fresno rally, Shriver introduced him as "the man I love and the man I believe in."
The quickening pace of the scandalous reports appeared to have no impact on the enthusiasm of his supporters. At Modesto, the buses were escorted into town by motorcycle police to a rally that had the feel of a presidential campaign.
Before rolling into Modesto, Schwarzenegger's bus – far from the press buses – stopped at a Merced In-and-Out burger for lunch, thrilling customers whose lunch suddenly became an international media event.
He walked through the crowded restaurant, where people thrust cell phones at him, asking him to talk to friends or relatives on the other end. Schwarzenegger urged the callers to vote Tuesday.
Debra Vargas, of Merced, hugged Schwarzenegger.
He joked to her: "Don't do it, don't do it ... It'll be in the paper again."
Ernie Mitchell, of Yuba City, talked bodybuilding with Schwarzenegger.
"I've been wanting to meet him my whole life," said Mitchell, an inspector with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. "I'm shaking. I've got all his books."
As Schwarzenegger walked out of the restaurant, he was asked about claims by the governor that he is dropping in overnight polls.
"That's what he thinks," Schwarzenegger said with a grin. "We will see next Tuesday ... our numbers are going up. I think the voters are disgusted with the dirty politics."
Davis is hoping the revelations will breathe new life into his bid to hang on and serve out the remaining three years of his second term.
He chose a cavernous Teamsters Union hall in Oakland for the start of a three-day campaign finale. Organized labor has been the bedrock of his political support, but Davis attracted a fairly small crowd.
The event, however, drew most of the state's most prominent Democratic figures, including U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.
Davis said the election has become a choice between himself and Schwarzenegger. He warned that the sexual harassment allegations virtually assure that Schwarzenegger will face a recall if elected.
"A recall will almost certainly breed another recall, particularly if some of these stories about Mr. Schwarzenegger turn out to be true," Davis said.
The governor and Democratic leaders urged disaffected democrats to "come home." Recent polls suggested one in four Democrats support the recall.
Pelosi said overnight tracking by Democratic pollsters showed the recall question may now have become a dead heat.
"The numbers are changing," Feinstein declared. "We have a chance to win ... but Democrats have to come home."
Feinstein was talking to Democrats like Errol Boutte, a 53-year-old union mason who twice voted for Davis but he admitted he has gradually become disenchanted with him. Boutte's electric bill has gone through the roof, and he holds Davis responsible for that.
"I don't know that I can say that I'm here in support of the governor," Boutte said. After some thought, he decided he probably would vote for him again, "because no one's perfect."
Gubernatorial candidate Tom McClintock called the sexual-assault allegations against Schwarzenegger "very serious" but said the charges should be treated with a "high degree of skepticism" until more is known.
"I'm very disturbed by these charges but I'm also disturbed they're coming at the last minute," he said outside a San Diego hotel.
Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the leading Democrat among candidates to replace the governor, greeted labor union members Saturday morning as they prepared to leaflet San Diego precincts with anti-recall literatures.
"You have to be on a mission the next four days," he told workers at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers hall in Hillcrest. "You've got to want it."
Tuesday's vote will close the wildest election in modern California history. It opened, perhaps appropriately, with celebrity candidate Schwarzenegger announcing his plans on Jay Leno's Tonight Show. Before filing closed, 135 candidates had joined the race.
If Davis loses, he will become the first California governor removed from office by voters and only the second in the nation. North Dakota recalled Gov. Lynn Frazier in 1921.
John Marelius and Alex Roth of the San Diego Union-Tribune contributed to this report.
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He's rat-s**t, and he's finished.
By November 2004, the dems will be known far and wide as the party of soiled-pants Pinocchio's.
DAVIS WANTS ARNIE IN JAIL !!!!!!!!!
This is Davis' death rattle. In Oakland, which (along with Berkeley) is the very heart of the most leftist county in California, huge and densely populated, only two frogs and a chicken show up to hear him in a "cavernous" union hall.
Dead man walking.
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