Angry California women's groups have launched a TV ad and organised state-wide protests aimed at stopping Arnold Schwarzenegger's march toward the California governor's office, saying, "If Arnold wins, the women of California lose."
Representatives of half a dozen women's rights groups poured scorn on Schwarzenegger's blanket apology for his "playful" behaviour toward women over three decades, denouncing his conduct as criminal sexual harassment.
"That was no apology. The 'boys will be boys' line is not acceptable. Women are seeing through this," Katherine Spillar of the Feminist Majority Political Action Committee told a news conference.
The Internet-based public interest group MoveOn.org unveiled a provocative TV ad that will air across California on Sunday and Monday containing a now famous remark about burying a woman's face in a toilet bowl that was made by Schwarzenegger in July while promoting his latest movie "Terminator 3."
"If you're a woman, or your mother is a woman, or your wife, or your sister, or your daughter, or there's a woman where you work, you cannot vote for this man," the ad says.
Schwarzenegger, responding to graphic and detailed allegations in the Los Angeles Times from six women who said they had been groped by the actor, on Thursday acknowledged he had behaved badly in the past and apologised for offending women.
At least three other women, including nationally syndicated radio host Joy Browne, have since come forward with similar accounts of incidents in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Businesswoman Colette Brooks told Friday's news conference that in 1981, while she was working as an intern at CNN, Schwarzenegger remarked on her "nice ass" and groped her buttocks. Brooks did not report the incident at the time because she feared for her job.
"How can we support someone who puts more value on my ass than the assets I have to contribute to the state of California?," Brooks said.
Jodie Evans, co-founder of CodePink Women for Peace, denounced what she called a "pattern of abusive and humiliating behaviour has spanned three decades .... He is not qualified to represent the large percentage of women in California, specifically if he does not know the difference between 'playful' antics and sexual battery."
Several speakers said Schwarzenegger's history posed a potential threat to women's rights in the state if he is elected governor next week.
Spillar questioned whether Schwarzenegger as governor could be trusted to uphold women's rights in the workplace and on sexual harassment and other issues "that hang in the balance on a day to day basis."