For Schwarzenegger, direct appeals to voters flow naturally from his celebrity and from a campaign in which he promised to be the people's governor.
They are especially potent with the deeply unpopular Legislature set up as his foil, analysts say. "That's where he does so well," said USC political science professor Sherry Bebitch Jeffe. "He's treating the voters as fans. And the voters are not fans of the Legislature."
Gale Kaufman, a campaign strategist for Democrats in the Legislature, said it was a clever approach for Schwarzenegger to tell legislators, in essence, that he would rev up their voters if they did not bend to his will.
The Legislature's top Democrat, state Senate President Pro Tem John Burton of San Francisco, said he would look at Schwarzenegger's initial ballot measure, but raised doubts about the political strategy.
"If they want to go to the ballot with everything, they can be my guest, because there are certain things that nobody can go to the ballot on," he said. "You cannot go to the ballot to pass the budget."
But Burton's remarks at a news conference in the main Capitol press room were undoubtedly heard by a small fraction of the voters who watched Schwarzenegger.
That room -- as Schwarzenegger pointed out -- was too small to accommodate roughly three dozen television news crews and scores of reporters and photographers who swarmed to the governor's first news conference.
Indeed, as he tries to outmaneuver the Legislature, Schwarzenegger derives a substantial amount of power from the sheer volume of media attention he commands.
"It accrues all to his benefit at the moment," a Schwarzenegger advisor said. "There are new dynamics at play here. You can't prejudge anything by past tradition."
Still, some Democrats viewed Schwarzenegger's opening budget move as a stalling tactic to postpone an inevitable tax increase. Strategist Bill Carrick questioned Schwarzenegger's ability -- if the matter makes the ballot -- to win voter approval for up to $15 billion in borrowing to balance the budget.
"Arnold Schwarzenegger urges California to go to the pawnshop is what it sounds like to me," Carrick said. "Arnold Schwarzenegger urges California to go the loan shark."
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Times staff writers Gregg Jones and Peter Nicholas contributed to this report.
