30 United States The EconomistJuly 22nd 2017
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HORTLY after winning election as governor of California in
2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger watched leaders from the state
legislature stage a spittle-flecked, chair-toppling fight in his office.
“I don’t know if the drama was meant for me because I was new,”
he recalls in an interview, miming open-mouthed astonishment.
A bigger shock came hourslater. Two of the combatants, one a Re-
publican, the other a Democrat, telephoned him from a bar. Sure,
we fight about things in the daytime, the pair told the governor, a
Republican who won as an action-man outsiderin a Democratic
state. But with night falling the party bosseswanted Mr Schwarz-
enegger to know their shared view of his proposal to have elec-
toral districts drawn by an independent panel, rather than by pol-
iticians. A “horrible” idea that would cost incumbent members
their seats, they growled. “Just kill this,” he remembers hearing.
It took Mr Schwarzenegger and allies several attempts to out-
wit California’s political establishment, but in 2008 and 2010 vot-
ers passed ballot propositions that handed the power to draw dis-
tricts for the state legislature and for Congress to an independent
body with no partisan majority, and including such folk as farm-
ers and business-owners. In 2010 Californians also approved a
“top-two primary” system, under which all voters—rather than
party stalwarts—may pick candidates for state and federal dis-
tricts, with the highest-scoring pair proceeding to the general elec-
tion, even if they are from the same party. The explicit aim is to
give candidates an incentive to woo broad coalitions that cross
party lines, rather than merely fire up hard-core partisans.
Six years after leaving the governorship Mr Schwarzenegger
could be forgiven for shunning politics. His offices in Santa Moni-
ca, a few blocks from the gym where he maintains his hewn-oak
physique, would make a cosy retreat: there are film posters and
body-building awards, framed photographs of him with Pope
Francis and sundry presidents, works ofart by Andy Warhol and
others, and many movie props, including a life-sized crocodile
beneath his pool table. He cut a lonely figure in the 2016 election,
as an environmentally conscious, socially liberal, pro-immigra-
tion Republican. He backed Governor John Kasich of Ohio, the
lone moderate in the Republican presidential primary. He has
publicly chided President Donald Trump over climate change.
Instead of hiding, Mr Schwarzenegger is in the thick of a na-tionwide campaign against gerrymandering—when parties draw
electoral districts to give their side an unfair advantage. The cause
has momentum behind it. There are campaigns to put redistrict-
ing reform on the ballot in Michigan, Missouri and Ohio, and law-
suits are in progress from North Carolina to Maryland (where
Democrats are accused of outrageous gerrymandering). Mr
Schwarzenegger hascommitted to match donations to a fund
that will help Common Cause, an open-government group, par-
ticipate in a case at the Supreme Court challenging maps drawn
by Wisconsin Republicans. The Wisconsin case will see reform-
ers citing a new tool, the “efficiency gap”, intended to give courts
an objective way to spot gerrymandering. To simplify, the mea-
sure counts wasted votes cast for each party, in hopelessly hostile
or inefficiently super-safe districts, and identifies states where
one party receives many more such votes (as in Wisconsin).
Mr Schwarzenegger has recorded a short video explaining
what he concedes isthe “very dry” subject of gerrymandering. In
it, the actor compares the respective popularity of Congress, cock-
roaches and herpes, while noting that “the former Soviet Politbu-
ro had more turnover” than pre-reform California, which be-
tween 2002 and 2010 held 265 congressional races, of which just
one saw a seat change its party control. His arguments are rein-
forced by film clips in which he variously looks startled, resolute
or blows things up. The video has been viewed 25m times.
Political professionals can be a bit sniffy about gerrymander-
ing’s importance as an explanation for government dysfunction.
They note the way that Americans of like mind increasingly flock
together, with the result that even when districts are drawn to re-
spect county or community boundaries, Democrats will be
packed into cities, while Republicans dominate rural areas. In
states which have adopted non-partisan districting, such as Cali-
fornia and Arizona, seats still rarely change hands.
The former Terminator can hold his own with wonkish scep-
tics. The Schwarzenegger Institute at the University of Southern
California, founded to promote “post-partisanship”, commis-
sioned studies that found that after the 2012 election California’s
state legislators had more moderate voting records, while its can-
didates are unusually responsive to supporters of a rival party.Time for a workout
Mr Schwarzenegger does not deny self-sorting effects: of course
Californian districts become more liberal near the ocean, he says.
But they are still home to some conservatives, justas some liber-
als live inland, and previously such voters were not counted.
Strikingly, his main concern is not Democrats or Republicans “get-
ting the shaft” in this or that state. His interest is in boosting politi-
cal performance everywhere. Uncompetitive districts make leg-
islators less effective, he says: to be precise, he compares
politicians in gerrymandered seats to “overweight” people who
should “go to the fucking gym”. As a governor he saw ultra-safe
legislators in thrall to activists who controlled their re-selection
as candidates, longbefore they faced general elections. He be-
came convinced that if districts held just 10-15% more voters from
the opposing party, incumbents’ calculations would change.
Gerrymandering is a 200-year-old “screw-up”, notes Mr
Schwarzenegger, and mustbe fixed patiently, state-by-state. He re-
members when bodybuilders were thought stupid or narcissis-
tic, or to be “suffering from some complex”. Now hotels on every
continent have gyms with weights. Make the right case for com-
petition, fitness and performance, and minds can be changed. 7Gerrymander v Terminator
Arnold Schwarzenegger lends some muscle to a campaign for more competitive politicsLexington