Comment Central: Your Schwarzenegger reader

Arnold Schwarzenegger was facing up to the ruin of his political legacy last night after a dismal defeat at the hands of the Californian electorate.

The Governor’s proposed package to balance the budget in the economically stricken state was resoundingly rejected, marking a new low for the former bodybuilder and action movie hero.

Mr Schwarzenegger, 61, is facing a growing budget shortfall, currently put at $21.3 billion (£14 billion), and a system that he has been unable to reform since taking office six years ago. California’s collapsing economy has caused the budget deficit to balloon. Personal income has shrunk for the first time since 1938 amid the recession and double-digit unemployment, dragging the tax income down.

Mr Schwarzenegger, for whom the dream of running for the White House — if a constitutional ban on foreign-born candidates could be overturned — once seemed plausible, now looks set to abandon mainstream politics once he leaves office in January 2011.

“Arnold’s governorship was supposed to be an action movie. Now it’s a disaster movie,” John Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College, told the Christian Science Monitor.

Voters said that they disliked the specifics in the measures — including a spending cap, some tax increases and borrowing against lottery revenues — and they punished Mr Schwarzenegger for making them go to the polls again so soon after the presidential election.

Results for Tuesday’s special election showed more than 60 per cent of voters rejected five budget proposals on the ballot. A sixth measure barring pay increases for state officials amid deficits was approved by about 74 per cent of the voters.

“I have been working to accomplish this kind of reform since I was elected in 2003 and I will keep working toward it because we cannot allow this harmful and out-of-control budget process to continue,” he said in a concession statement.

That means Californians can expect some brutal spending cuts. Tens of thousands of teachers and other state workers face the prospect of redundancy. Mr Schwarzenegger had warned that a failure to pass the measures could lead to a reduction in firefighters and prisoners being released from jails.

“The public is under the delusion that they can have everything — potholes filled, new freeways, a good education system — but they aren’t willing to pay for it,” said Jim Hawley, of the Elfenworks Centre for the Study of Fiduciary Capitalism at St Mary’s College of California.

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