MAD AS HELL

DON'T get me wrong, we've had our share of political lulus in our time.

Remember the 7ft monkey called H'Angus who became Mayor of Hartlepool last year? Or Chris "Screwy" Driver, who tried to unseat Tony Blair at the last General Election on a platform of free sex and beer?

Honest-to-goodness screwballs, I grant you. But they've got nothing on the unlikely crew who are bidding to become the new State Governor when Californians go to the polls on Tuesday.

For instance, there's a 4ft 8in former child actor who still claims to be a virgin at the age of 35, a blonde porn star with a 36DD bust who campaigns in a stars and stripes bikini and wants to legalise the ownership of ferrets, and a comedian whose trademark is smashing soft fruit with a mallet and showering his audience with pips. These, believe it or not, are some of the saner contenders. And then, of course, there's Arnold Schwarzenegger, the front runner in the race to control the fifth largest economy in the world. When he made the announcement he was standing, he said it was "the toughest decision I have made since deciding to get a bikini wax in 1978".

That tells you how seriously he's taking it. And how seriously the voters are taking it - in fact, a day after allegations of sexual impropriety and an admiration for Hitler became public, he not only raced into a 10-point lead in the polls but was given the blessing of LA's top law officers.

Women turned out in numbers to support him. One raised a banner saying, "Arnold only groped six women, Davis screwed California" - a reference to the current governor, Gray Davis.

Now Arnie hopes to blow away his opponents just as decisively, though less bloodily, as the 289 people he has so far eliminated in his films, many with the Terminator's rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

Currently there are 134 candidates on the ballot paper - about the same number of words Arnie spoke in most of his movies.

Anyone who could afford a pounds 2,170 cash deposit and rustle up 65 nominees could run. No problem for Arnie, worth an estimated pounds 80million. Big problem, however, for one candidate, who goes around in a Terminator mask throwing $20 bills in the air and is believed to be fast approaching bankruptcy.

But it's Arnie they all have to beat. The 56-year-old star is tear- arsing round the state like a mad thing.

This week he was swamped by allegations that he's a serial groper.

Six women, including a British TV presenter, told how he touched them up on film sets and in offices and hotels. Then he has had to deny allegations that he once praised Adolf Hitler.

Despite all this he's still way ahead of Gray Davis, whose charisma makes Iain Duncan Smith look like Mick Jagger. If energy could get Arnie to the governor's mansion, he'd have his feet under the desk already.

I've spent days on the road with him as the race approaches its end, and he is absolutely tireless. His campaign bus, with a 10ft picture of his face on its side, is called the California Comeback Express, but such is the almost religious way that he works the crowds, holding out his arms to be grasped, that it really ought to be called the Popemobile. Or perhaps, in view of recent events, the Gropemobile.

He is, however, far better at shaking hands than he is at speaking. Whenever he opens his mouth, it's as if his tonsils are having a fight to the death.

The Austrian-born actor may have lived in America for 35 years, but he still sounds like he should be fronting an oompah band in Salzburg. "Ve are mad as hell and ve are nut going to tek it enny more," he says. "If I didden like a character in vun of my movies I viped him out. Is time ve terminate Gray Davis."

Just like the Terminator, he promises instant solutions. People buy into that, but they buy into his celebrity even more. As he makes his way along the crush barriers, his face lightly tanned as if made- up, his hair absurdly young for a man of 56 with no hint of grey, his square jaw jutting like a giant Oxo cube, people hurl themselves forward to reach him. "What you've got to remember," one woman told me, "is in California we love our climate and our cars. Then we love actors."

She looked up to where Arnie was moving through the throng crushing palms, wearing a smile that seemed to be stapled to his face. "Even bad actors."

Not everyone is impressed, however. Arnie tends to be a little hazy on policy.

Except to assure people that absolutely everything you can think of will be better if he gets elected. On specific issues, his solution is not to say too much. When he does, he tends to try and please everyone. For instance, although he's basically in favour of gun control, especially those big suckers that turn his foes into tomato puree in his films, he does see a case for people being allowed to keep small handguns for "home defence". The same small handguns, incidentally, that were involved in two-thirds of

America's 30,000 fatal shootings last year. Likewise, in a bid to appease the environmental lobby, Arnie has let it be known that he has had his gas-guzzling 6.5 litre Humvee diesel turbo jeep converted. It still does only 10 miles to the gallon, but now it does it on unleaded.

His aides hope that his past has now been laid to rest. It's not the first time his private life has been called into question. There was that interview from his body-building days 26 years ago, when he confessed to orgies and smoking drugs. Californians, however, are too laid back to worry about that. Some even think it did him good. "You notice, when he was asked, he didn't say he had a big c*ck. I like modesty in a politician," one supporter told me seriously.

Arnie seeks to stress his status as a happily married man with four young children. His wife, Maria,Shriver, is the niece of the late president John F Kennedy - an association which never did an aspiring American politician any harm. Not all the Kennedys are totally won over however. "Arnold is a brilliant actor," Senator Ted Kennedy said. "But what makes Republicans think that he could do well in politics? Mind you it's hard to argue with Arnold when you're hanging upside down by the ankles." Needless to say, there has been a glut of Arnie gags on the airwaves. "President Bush has been silent on Schwarzenegger," says chat show host David Letterman.

"Of course, he can't pronounce Schwarzenegger."Arnie has not been the only candidate on the road. Mary Carey, the 22- year-old star of Dirty Girlz, New Wave Hookers and other adult delights, has been campaigning furiously, although mostly in lap-dancing clubs. You don't forget a face to...er...face meeting with Candidate Carey in a hurry. "Feel them, they are real," she tells questioners disarmingly. You don't get that kind of greeting from Ann Widdecombe.

But Mary knows a lot of boobs in California aren't what they appear to be - and she intends to slap a tax on them. "Taxing breast implants could be a huge money-spinner," she contends. "In Beverly Hills alone we could bring in millions in tax revenue." Like Arnie, Mary has a policy on gun control. "When elected," she says, "I will create a Porn For Pistols programme." The planseems to work like this: Your hardened criminal arrives with his Uzi or AK47, turns it in, walks off with a video like Double D Dolls 2 and - bingo - everybody's happy.

Mary, as you can see, is unafraid of dealing with some of the most pressing issues affecting us all. She even has a policy on reducingthe effects of global warming. "Wear fewer clothes." Almost as high-profile as Mary is a Hollywood legend called Angelyne, who has achieved that status aspired to by all Big Brother hopefuls, that of being famous just for being famous. She drives around in a pink Corvette and spends her money on getting pictures of herself on billboards. One of her policies is better roads, mainly because the potholes are playing havoc with her car's suspension.

It's easy to dismiss Angelyne as an also-ran until you learn that in a recent poll by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, she camefourth, well ahead of the sumo wrestler, or Larry Flynt, the wheelchair- bound porn magnate, the guy who only entered the race because, he figured, "it's a good way to impress women", or the mystery man who greets potential voters through the tinted windows of his limousine. Another mainly invisible cand- idate is Gary Coleman, who reached hisshowbiz heights as a child star in the 1980s TV sitcom Diff'rent Strokes and has been trying to recapture his former glory since realising he was destined to remain 4ft 8in.

He has hit upon a novel way of campaigning - don't. Instead, he broadcasts his views on the net, and what he lacks in stature he more than makes up for in fire and brimstone. Here for example are his thoughts on drug addicts: "Kick them to the curb and let 'em drown in their own vomit." With opinions like that, Margaret Thatcher would have had him in her Cabinet quicker than you can say Norman Tebbit.

How refreshing, by contrast, to come across a candidate who epitomises the easygoing, laid- back California as we Brits expect them to be. Not that you'd want to get too close especially when the comedian called Gallagher is laying into melons, pears and mangoes with a 20lb mallet as the climax of his stage act. For all that, Gallagher is a gentle soul. He wears hats with toy trains running round them and campaigns under the slogan "At last - a governor you can get drunk with".

Not that any of this is likely to get Arnie quaking in his boots. Polls have moved his way despite his sexual misdemeanors, and there's a scent of victory in those majestic nostrils. Others think so too. The Hollywood Wax Museum has taken Arnie's dummy out of its Conan The Barbarian costume, given it a haircut and fitted it for a suit.

Copyright 2003 MGN LTD
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