Schwarzenegger: Shriver changed tune on recall run

In this Feb 11, 2009 file photo, for­mer Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger and a bust of Abra­ham Lin­coln are seen in pro­file dur­ing a cel­e­bra­tion of Lincoln’s 200 birth­day held at the Cal­i­for­nia Museum of His­tory, Women and the Arts in Sacra­mento, Calif. Schwarzeneg­ger, who came to office dur­ing California’s his­toric 2003 recall elec­tion, will soon be releas­ing his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Total Recall: My Unbe­liev­ably True Life Story. (AP Photo/Rich Pedron­celli, file)

JULIET WILLIAMS, MICHAEL R. BLOOD

Asso­ci­ated Press

LOS ANGELES — Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger says his wife, Maria Shriver, was told to “snap out of it” by her mother for her attempts to per­suade him against run­ning for Cal­i­for­nia gov­er­nor in 2003, a con­ver­sa­tion that ulti­mately opened the door to his suc­cess­ful candidacy.

Eunice Shriver told her daugh­ter that her hus­band would be “angry for the rest of his life” if she stopped his ambi­tions, Schwarzeneg­ger writes in his new auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “Total Recall: My Unbe­liev­ably True Life Story.”

The for­mer gov­er­nor says in the book that he had decided against run­ning to recall Gov. Gray Davis after his wife implored him not to for the sake of their fam­ily. Maria Shriver announced his deci­sion to their four children.

But he writes that when Maria Shriver told her mother about her efforts to thwart Schwarzenegger’s polit­i­cal ambi­tions, Eunice told her daugh­ter that women in their fam­ily “always sup­port the men when they want to do some­thing.” Schwarzeneg­ger says he didn’t know about the con­ver­sa­tion at the time, but learned of it later.

Maria Shriver then soft­ened her stance, paving the way for Schwarzeneg­ger to announce his can­di­dacy on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” where he says he felt most comfortable.

The announce­ment came after a week of waver­ing. Schwarzeneg­ger says before he headed to the TV appear­ance, his wife handed him two pieces of paper with talk­ing points she had writ­ten: one in case he decided to run, another in case he decided not to.

He writes that Shriver went on to become a key ally and adviser to his cam­paign and even­tual governorship.

Schwarzeneg­ger has often said that Maria’s mother and her father, Sar­gent Shriver, were essen­tial to his even­tual deci­sion to seek pub­lic office, and the most “extra­or­di­nary human beings I’ve ever met.” But he also writes in the book that he often teased his wife that the close-knit Demo­c­ra­tic Kennedy clan was “like a bunch of clones” because there was such con­for­mity among them.

A spokesman for Shriver, Matthew DiGiro­lamo, declined to com­ment on the con­tents of the book.

“Total Recall” will offi­cially be pub­lished next week. The Asso­ci­ated Press pur­chased an early copy.

The book is part of an effort by the one­time “Mr. Uni­verse” and Hol­ly­wood action star to rebrand him­self after leav­ing office with a mixed record and sub­se­quent embar­rass­ing rev­e­la­tions about a fling he had with the family’s house­keeper. Schwarzeneg­ger, who fathered a son with the house­keeper, says he also let boy down.

Schwarzeneg­ger, 65, said he avoided telling his wife for years about the boy, who is now a teenager, even when Shriver asked him, partly because of his long­time pen­chant for secrecy, and his fear that the news would become pub­lic and under­mine his polit­i­cal career. He told his wife in Jan­u­ary 2011, when she con­fronted him the day after he left office.

In an inter­view with “60 Min­utes” sched­uled to air Sun­day, Schwarzeneg­ger said hav­ing sex with his house­keeper was “the stu­pid­est thing” he ever did to his now-estranged wife and caused great pain to her and their four chil­dren. CBS aired excerpts of the inter­view Friday.

“I think it was the stu­pid­est thing I’ve done in the whole rela­tion­ship. It was ter­ri­ble. I inflicted tremen­dous pain on Maria and unbe­liev­able pain on the kids,” Schwarzeneg­ger tells “60 Minutes.”

Schwarzeneg­ger says he also let down the son he fathered with the housekeeper.

Shriver filed for divorce in July.

In his book, the usu­ally ebul­lient Schwarzeneg­ger admits to some lone­li­ness, even though he packed his sched­ule with speeches, projects and movie-making after Shriver and the chil­dren moved out of the house. He said his career had been fun for 30 years because he shared it with Maria.

They had done every­thing together, he writes.

The for­mer GOP gov­er­nor also writes about a 2003 White House meet­ing with Karl Rove in which the top GOP strate­gist told him the recall would not hap­pen and instead intro­duced the actor to then-national secu­rity adviser Con­doleezza Rice as his pick to run for Cal­i­for­nia gov­er­nor in 2006.

Schwarzeneg­ger felt snubbed.

He asks, “How could Rove have been so wrong?”

Rove’s office said he was trav­el­ing Fri­day and could not be reached for comment.

Rice’s chief of staff at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, Geor­gia God­frey, said Rice can­not recall “any con­ver­sa­tion on this subject.”

“She has stated many times in the past that she has no desire to run for pub­lic office and those sen­ti­ments have still not changed,” God­frey said in a state­ment emailed to The Asso­ci­ated Press.

Posted by AP News on Sep 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.