SAN DIEGO — In a celebrity standoff, actor Warren Beatty and his wife, Annette Bening, tried to crash Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign rally at an airplane hangar here and were barred from going inside after a confrontation with the governor's aides.
The appearance by the movie-star couple upstaged the beginning of the governor's four-city campaign bus tour, as Beatty publicly argued with aides who refused to let him inside to watch the governor speak.
An outspoken opponent of the governor's agenda, Beatty refused to leave when Schwarzenegger's campaign team made it clear he was not welcome at the invitation-only event and accused Beatty of being a force for the political status quo.
Beatty has appeared in a radio ad urging voters to defeat the governor's four ballot measures, which are up for a vote Tuesday.
The clash began about an hour before Schwarzenegger's arrival. Nurses, teachers and other opponents of the governor's special election had planned to shadow him throughout the day on a bus of their own. Beatty and Bening were the celebrity demonstrators on board.
As the couple and their supporters approached the entrance, they were intercepted by Schwarzenegger aide Darrel Ng, who blocked their path. Standing with Beatty and Bening were officials from the teachers and nurses unions, among the governor's most dogged opponents.
Ng, 27, asked if he could help. Beatty replied that they were there to hear the governor speak. Ng said he would have to check whether they were on the list of invited guests and ran off, while other aides huddled nervously nearby.
Ng returned a few minutes later and asked Beatty and Bening to spell their names. Checking a list, he told them that they were not on it. Todd Harris, another Schwarzenegger aide, came over.
"Here's the problem," Harris said. "If your people had shown a modicum of respect when you came to our events, if you hadn't come with bullhorns and been screaming, I wouldn't really have a problem with it."
Beatty promised to listen quietly, but Harris refused. "If that guarantee had been made a year ago, it would have been great," Harris said, referring broadly to the governor's opponents.
Security guards and Ng were letting only people with designated wristbands inside.
"Do we need a wristband to listen to our governor?" Bening asked. "He represents all of us."
"We have to ask you to go back out," Ng said.
