SACRAMENTO — He has staked his governorship on bipartisan agreements, but recordings of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger bantering with aides in closed-door meetings reveal him complaining about lawmakers from both parties, casting some as obstructionist and two-faced.
The recordings, newly obtained by The Times, also feature him chatting about American resentment of illegal immigrants, about his taste for gas-hungry Hummers and about his wife's habit of tinkering with his speeches.
Made by Schwarzenegger's staff last year, the recordings offer a rare window onto the governor's operation and a more complex portrait of Schwarzenegger than typically emerges in public, where his appearances are carefully stage-managed.
In the latest recordings, the Republican governor describes Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) as a "very sick man" and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) as "a political operator coming from the union background" who evinces no real "passion" about issues. And he worries that a federal plan to build a fence along the Mexican border will send a troubling message.
"Are we looking at Mexico now as the enemy?" he says in the recording. "No, it's not. This is our trading partner."
Married for two decades, Schwarzenegger still seems amused by some of his wife's habits. When Maria Shriver reviews one of his speeches, he says, "she is relentless. I can only talk about things for so many times because then I like to lock it in, even if it's not perfect.... But she goes until the last day.... I said, 'Maria, it's over. It's in the teleprompter.' "
The recordings were made in the first half of 2006. The Times first published about a 6-minute excerpt from similar recordings in September and recently obtained about 3 1/2 hours more. In the excerpts published in September, Schwarzenegger referred to Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia (R-Cathedral City) as "hot," a reference to her ethnicity. He later apologized.
After The Times on Sunday asked the Schwarzenegger administration for comment about the latest recordings, communications director Adam Mendelsohn said he was going to release the tapes to other news media. The Schwarzenegger administration had previously turned down public records requests for the tapes.
In a prepared statement, Mendelsohn said the recordings show the governor to be "thoughtful, concerned and focused on solving some of California's most serious problems."
