US: Ronald Reagan used to have an election slogan "Win one for the gipper". Now Californians are being asked to "win one for the groper", as the headline on Maureen Dowd's scathing column in The New York Times put it on Sunday. Conor O'Clery, North America Editor reports on the California recall election, which takes place today.
On the east coast, there is amazement that California may elect as governor not just a narcissistic muscle man who made a career out of getting people to admire his body but someone with an apparent history of abusing and humiliating women.
It's not the way Californians see it, however. They are angry with Democratic governor Gray Davis and they are not going to take it any more. They want him out, and they want an outsider to come in and clean house.
At least that's what Republicans behind today's recall vote in California are hoping. The anger of the electorate at California's woes - huge deficit and jobs going out of state - was heightened by the charge that Mr Davis got re-elected in November on hyped economic figures. Within weeks of his narrow victory the state's deficit soared to an unprecedented $39 billion.
Many white, conservative Californians in particular were incensed by Mr Davis's pandering to the Latino vote by giving undocumented immigrants the right to hold California driving licences. Ordinary people were infuriated by a tripling of the car tax in a state where everyone owns a car, something Mr Schwarzenegger says he will repeal on his first day in office.
The allegations against Mr Schwarzenegger in the Los Angeles Times that he groped or fondled 15 women over 30 years have damaged the Terminator's chances, Republicans concede, but they still see him as a winner.
"It will still be a blast for Arnold," Mr Shawn Steel, the immediate past chairman of the California Republican Party and an instigator of the recall, told The Irish Times. It would have been a "superblast" with a 20 per cent victory margin if it had not been for the sex allegations, he said. Now he predicts a 10 per cent margin for the recall and for Mr Schwarzenegger in the second part of the ballot, where voters are asked to select one of 135 prospective replacements.
The Davis camp says that it is much closer and that the character doubts about the former Mr Universe have made many voters think again about recalling the governor.
The latest poll in Knight Ridder newspapers, which publishes 31 daily newspapers across the US, found the percentage of people saying they would definitely vote to oust Mr Davis - a cold, machine politician backed by the unions - had dropped from 52 per cent on Wednesday, when the first claims by women were published, to 44 per cent on Saturday.
But for every moderate turned off by the accusations, a conservative outraged by the LA Times will step in, said Mr Steel.
Despite his liberal views, Mr Schwarzenegger is supported by conservatives for his fiscal conservatism and because they had the same enemies, from "feminazis to the LA Times", he said.
The campaign has exposed double standards in US politics. Many Democrats who defended President Bill Clinton's infidelities, such as former Texas governor Ms Ann Richards, have taken part in pro-Davis rallies where Mr Schwarzenegger was savaged for his attitude to women. Likewise, many high-minded Republicans who excoriated Mr Clinton are silent or dismissive of Mr Schwarzenegger's flaws.
The actor has veered from apologising for behaving badly to denying some claims as flatly untrue. "No one ever came to me in my life and said to me that I did anything, that said: 'I don't want you to do that. You went over the line, Arnold.'"
Mr Schwarzenegger blamed the allegations on "puke politics" and dirty campaigning. "Isn't it odd that, three days and four days before the campaign, all of a sudden, all these women want to have an apology?"
If he wins, he is unlikely to be troubled by law suits as there is a one-year statute of limitations on sexual harassment claims in California. Mr Schwarzenegger's leading Republican opponent, Mr Tom McClintock, called the allegations "very, very serious" but said they need to be treated "with a certain degree of scepticism because it's been brought up so late".
Two of the women who claimed Mr Schwarzenegger harassed them said they were upset by the denials. "That incensed me," said Ms Colette Brooks, who said Mr Schwarzenegger grabbed her buttocks when she was an intern at CNN in the early 1980s.
One third of votes have been cast in absentee ballots, making it less likely that the allegations against Mr Schwarzenegger will have enough impact to defeat the recall.