THE BUZZ: RECALL REDUX: He’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaack. The Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger is returning to Sacramento to mark two decades since his recall election earthquake shook California — and the political universe writ large. Schwarzenegger will sit down for a lunchtime Press Club interview with California Playbooker Emerita Carla Marinucci. In the evening, the former governor and box-office juggernaut will celebrate the 20-year anniversary with alums at a reception. Schwarzenegger’s 60-day recall sprint was captured in vivid form by the journalist Joe Mathews. He writes in a new retrospective and short audiobook narrated by Edoardo Ballerini that one poll at the time showed the race was followed by a whopping 99 percent of Californians. POLITICO caught up with Schwarzenegger over FaceTime to commemorate his return to California’s Capitol, including the moment when the recall officially started on NBC's “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” We wanted to know if Schwarzenegger was indeed totally undecided about running all the way up until the moment Leno asked him on the show. “It could have been either one,” Schwarzenegger deadpanned. “It could have been fiction. It could have been real.” A cigar hung from his mouth as his pet pig, Schnelly, wandered around by his feet. “I don’t rehearse those things,” he continued. “I just don’t know. I make — a lot of times — decisions like that. So, it was kind of like, I would say most likely that I would go for it. But I was really watching the responses of the audience when I talked. It was fun to do it that way.” Read more on what Schwarzenegger told POLITICO about Ron DeSantis’ rubber boots and how he views the likely rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Once elected, it took him some time to find his footing, but Schwarzenegger said he wouldn’t change a thing about his first run for office. “My campaign,” he said, “was flawless.” “But, at the same time, you’re not going to step in there with all the experience in the world. I mean, put someone up there on the Mr. Olympia stage for the first time that has never trained. He’s gonna fumble around, too, a little bit.” Schwarzenegger suffered some big losses at the ballot in 2005, but eventually got with the program as he likes to say and implemented his vision, winning majority Democrats’ buy-in on infrastructure spending and an ambitious agenda to address climate change. For Schwarzenegger, his seven years in Sacramento were “the most important years of my life,” he said. California’s last Republican governor, Schwarzenegger left the office in 2011. He warned California Republicans at the time that the party’s rightward shift would spell doom in the blue state. He said he’s still not particularly optimistic about another Republican breaking with their party dogma, connecting with a wider swath of the left-leaning electorate, and winning a statewide election again as he did. But he stressed that something needs to happen to restore a sense of political balance in the state. “I see the frustration, but you can’t blame the Democrats for it that much because that’s what happens when you have a one-party system. People start only seeing their point of view. It makes it very, very difficult,” Schwarzenegger said. “But we need more Republicans in there. We need to bring it back to the old days, no doubt.” GOOD MORNING. Happy Friday. Thanks for waking up with Playbook. PLAYBOOK TIP LINE — Are you going to the California Democratic Party Convention in downtown Sacramento this weekend? What hot gossip are you hearing about the convention? Give us a ring or drop us a line. Now you can text us at 916-562-0685 — save it as “CA Playbook” in your contacts now. Or drop us a line at lkorte@politico.com and dgardiner@politico.com, or on Twitter —@DustinGardiner and @Lara_Korte WHERE’S GAVIN? Back in Sacramento after several days at APEC in San Francisco. Nothing official has been announced, though Newsom will surely be working the state Democratic Party convention circuit.
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