SACRAMENTO — After five years as governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger came full circle on Friday: The film star who promised to rescue California from its fiscal wreckage without raising taxes signed into law $12.5 billion in tax hikes.
With that, the Republican governor broke one of the few bonds left between his shrunken party and California's mainstream voters, marring its hard-won image as a guardian against higher taxes.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, February 24, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 81 words Type of Material: Correction
Tax increases: A chart with an article in Saturday's Section A about tax changes in the California state budget said a single mother with two children, earning $15,000 a year, would see her taxes rise by an estimated $498 a year. In fact, depending on her actual taxable income, she might be unaffected by the loss of $410 in the value of her two dependent exemptions because her income might be too low for her to owe any state income tax.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday, April 09, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 2 inches; 97 words Type of Material: Correction
Tobacco tax: A Feb. 21 Section A about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's rift with the GOP over spending included an information box with an incomplete description of the fiscal effect of Prop. 1D. The measure on the May 19 ballot, which would redirect tobacco tax funds from preschool programs to other services for children and families, was described as temporarily shifting $608 million. That is the amount that would be spent in the 2009-10 fiscal year. The measure would also redirect $268 million in each of the four years after that, according to the secretary of state's office.
"Their last gasp has been taken from them," said Larry N. Gerston, a political scientist at San Jose State, citing the unpopularity among most California voters of the party's conservative stands on abortion, illegal immigration and other touchstone issues. "It puts them in a very precarious position."
By repudiating the thrust of his candidacy in the 2003 recall -- "I will not raise taxes," Schwarzenegger stated flatly the day after he won -- the governor has also enraged the conservatives who dominate the party.
For Republicans convening at a state party convention this weekend in Sacramento, it is a wrenching moment. Schwarzenegger is skipping the event to attend a governors' conference in Washington. But his turnaround on taxes has darkened the mood of the hundreds of party loyalists venting their frustration in a hotel where the governor often stays in a penthouse suite.
To be sure, none of the GOP lawmakers who demanded that the state close its $42-billion shortfall without raising taxes detailed the doomsday cuts that approach would entail, nor did the activists who lobbied against the tax increases. If the state had laid off its entire workforce of 238,000 -- every prison guard, firefighter and clerk -- it still would have fallen billions shy of a balanced budget.
Still, in a nod to the GOP's internal realities, two of the party's top contenders for Schwarzenegger's job in the June 2010 primary have split with the governor over the tax hikes.
One, former EBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman, said they will "kill jobs, hurt families and make future deficits even worse." The other, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, called the budget a "fiasco." The heavier tax burden, he warned, will increase unemployment.
The party's lone gubernatorial contender defending the tax hikes is Tom Campbell. A former Silicon Valley congressman and state finance director under Schwarzenegger, he all but guaranteed himself pariah status among the party's rank and file by saying the governor and Legislature did the right thing.
