Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: Relationship with California GOP

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger addressing the California Republican Party in September.

Timm Herdt of the Ventura County Star has State GOP is weighing its ties to the governor

Encourage Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for re-election as an independent. Rescind the Republican Party’s endorsement. Draft actor Mel Gibson to run for governor.

All of these ideas — the first two seriously, the last whimsically — and more have been raised by various Republican activists over the past two weeks in response to Schwarzenegger’s selection of former state Democratic Party operative Susan Kennedy as his new chief of staff.

The selection of a Democrat Chief of Staff, Susan Kennedy, is not the major problem with the Governor – it is HIS ELECTABILITY.

People in and out of the GOP view him as an empty suit – like Jesse Ventura, the failed former Governor of Minnesota.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has already JUMPED THE SHARK and the GOP better start recruiting new, competent, candidates and better messages to win back voters.

Since the selection, Schwarzenegger has taken several actions that would appear to calm conservatives’ fear that it signaled a political turn to the left. He named a respected Republican jurist to the state Supreme Court, appointed a former Republican legislator to replace a Democrat as his Cabinet secretary, and denied the clemency appeal of condemned murderer Stanley “Tookie” Williams.

Still, the Kennedy imbroglio hasn’t been silenced.

“This is affecting the relationship between the governor and the party base. The people who actually do the work are not interested in helping the governor get re-elected,” said Steve Frank, a conservative political strategist from Simi Valley who worked on Schwarzenegger’s special-election ballot initiative campaign.

The GOP in-fighting is turning-off the Republican electorate.

The real election for California Governor in 2006 will be in the Democrat primary.

Previously:

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: California Republican Assembly Sponsoring an Online Petition Asking Governor to Rescind Susan Kennedy Appointment

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: Governor Names Partisan Democrat Chief of Staff – THE FLAP

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: Pat Clarey, Arnold’s Chief of Staff Resigns

Technorati Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Susan Kennedy