The article below appeared on the front page of the Sacramento Bee on 12/1/05. It can also be viewed on the SacBee.com web site (subscription required).

Governor stuns with aide choice
A topsy-turvy day: Gray Davis is pleased; some in GOP are aghast
Gary Delsohn, Sacramento Bee
December 1, 2005
 
Sacramento -- He insisted he wasn't changing direction or policy. But when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his new chief of staff Wednesday, he took a giant step toward trying to reinvent himself politically.
 
In naming Democrat Susan Kennedy, a former Cabinet secretary to ousted Gov. Gray Davis, Schwarzenegger hopes to convince skeptical voters in a heavily Democratic state that he's not the combative, partisan figure they saw during his ill-fated special election campaign.

Although a number of conservative Republicans were aghast at the appointment, Schwarzenegger's move won quick approval from one past foe.

 "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," Davis said of the Kennedy appointment. "It's a big plus for Arnold. It shows he understood the message from the November election."

While the move is a clear signal to Democrats in the Legislature that Schwarzenegger hopes to reach out rather than attack them as he did for much of the past year, Kennedy insisted there is very little that separates her from the governor politically. She said she voted for all four of his November ballot measures.

"I can't find a lot of differences in our philosophy," Kennedy said after Schwarzenegger introduced her at a Capitol news conference. "I don't think a moderate Democrat and a moderate Republican (that) there's a lot of light between us."

"I'm tired of the partisanship. I'm tired of the intolerance that has resulted in gridlock," said Kennedy, who acknowledged that some of her Democratic friends were unhappy about her decision. "I felt it was time for me as a Democrat to put up or shut up. ... If the governor is willing to risk his political legacy by taking a chance on me, I'm willing to risk my political career to do what I believe is right."

Even if there were differences, Schwarzenegger said, Kennedy is "willing to (put) her Democratic philosophy aside and to do the job and to fulfill my vision."

"This is not about drifting anywhere," he said of political experts who claim he's moving left as he positions himself for a re-election bid a year from now. "I have my agenda and I know exactly where I'm going."

He said he called 30 friends and supporters since choosing Kennedy, and that 95 percent of the response was positive.

"Five percent of the hard-core people just didn't get it," he said. "They still don't understand me enough, that I make decisions that are sometimes out of the ordinary, and I never got stuck in a mold."

Some Republicans, however, said they couldn't believe Schwarzenegger would name a high-ranking Davis official to replace Chief of Staff Pat Clarey, who had been a deputy to former GOP Gov. Pete Wilson.

"She was the wrong pick for chief of staff," said Irvine Republican Dick Ackerman, the minority leader in the state Senate. "First of all, she's a Democrat, and a Republican should have a Republican chief of staff. And second, she was Gray Davis' (Cabinet secretary). She was there when a lot of his policy was being developed that led to his recall. Those aren't the best credentials."

In a news release headlined, "Arnold's Left Turn," Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families, ripped the appointment of Kennedy, who is open about her homosexuality and once served as executive director of the California Abortion Rights Action League.

"By placing a leading homosexual, pro-abortion Democrat activist in charge of his entire administration, Arnold has taken a disastrous turn to the left," Thomasson said. "This is like George W. Bush appointing Hillary Clinton to be in charge of his administration."

Steve Merksamer, a Republican lawyer in Sacramento who was former Gov. George Deukmejian's chief of staff, said Kennedy is anathema to some Republicans more for her past record than for who she is today.

Twenty-five years ago, when she was 20, Kennedy worked with Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. She also served for a time as executive director of the California Democratic Party when Phil Angelides, now state treasurer and a constant Schwarzenegger critic who plans to run against him next year, was its chairman in the early 1990s.

"I think people are frightened because they look at what she did 20 years ago and said, 'Oh my God,' " Merksamer said, "without giving her the benefit of the doubt that maybe her thinking evolved and she has developed as a human being."

Since she's been on the Public Utilities Commission after Davis appointed her in 2003, Merksamer said, "she has taken very responsible and intelligent positions that would be viewed as being more consistently Republican than Democratic positions."

After Kennedy sided with the commission majority to suspend the Telecommunications Consumer Bill of Rights, The Utility Reform Network asked that Kennedy be removed from further consideration of the matter because she had "consistently displayed hostility and antipathy to the existing rules" and has "an unalterably closed mind" on the subject.

Rather than an ideological change, those who praised the move said Kennedy's appointment harkens to the more conciliatory governor voters saw during Schwarzenegger's first year in office, when his approval ratings hovered around 70 percent.

And it's consistent with other steps he's taken since his special election drubbing on Nov. 8, said Larry Gerston, a San Jose State University political science professor.

Those include admitting that the election was a mistake, dropping his administration's bitter court fight with nurses over mandatory staffing ratios and asking Democratic legislative leaders to help craft his State of the State message in January. A number of top-level staff members - who Schwarzenegger said are "burned out," want more time with their families, or want to make more money in the private sector - are moving on.

"He's changing horses in the inner circle as part of his grand makeover, and it's one that would make any Hollywood producer proud," Gerston said.

"I don't say this with contempt or disrespect. The governor got the message on November 8 and he got it so well he's acted on it ever since."

Whether it works, Gerston said, will be revealed in the coming months.