Schwarzenegger swats away latest claims as sleaze

Arnold Schwarzenegger went on the attack, denouncing the latest sexual harassment allegations made against him and charging that all the 11th-hour accusations were intended to wreck his campaign for governor.

“The last accusations that I read today are absolutely untrue,” Schwarzenegger said today.

“They’re trying to torpedo my campaign. They’re trying to make me look bad out there so that people vote no.”

But Schwarzenegger, who has admitted that he treated some women badly in the past, also referred to past behaviour yesterday, saying he will work to convince voters that ”this is a different Arnold.”

The action star also said that “the environment in today’s politics is totally different on the subject of women, it is much more sensitive today.”

The harassment allegations earned Schwarzenegger criticism from his rivals in the final debate of the campaign, which the actor sat out.

Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante said if one of his three daughters had experienced the groping Schwarzenegger is alleged to have committed “it wouldn’t have taken a campaign to resolve it”.

Green Party candidate Peter Camejo suggested Schwarzenegger got away with harassing women all these years because he’s rich, white and famous.

“If he were a black man, he’d be in jail. If he was brown, he’d be in jail. If he were a poor white he’d be in jail,” said Camejo. “What does it tell us about our society that a rich white person can do the type of things that he’s alleged to have done?”

State Sen. Tom McClintock, Schwarzenegger’s main Republican rival, agreed that the accusations were serious and called for investigation. But he added extra caution was needed because the allegations surfaced so close to Tuesday’s election.

Davis, in San Diego yesterday, noted Schwarzenegger has acknowledged mistreatment of women.

“Electing a governor who might have committed a crime is going to distract the state from the work it has to do,” he said.

A poll released late yesterday indicated that the support for recalling Davis might be slipping, although it still showed most voters favoured removing him.

The Knight Ridder poll, conducted between Wednesday and Saturday, found that 54% of respondents supported the recall and 41% opposed it. The percentage of people saying they would definitely vote to oust Davis, however, declined among those surveyed Friday and Saturday.

The poll of 1,000 registered voters, was conducted by Elway/McGuire Research and posted on the San Jose Mercury News website. It also showed Schwarzenegger still leading among potential replacements for Davis, with 36% support compared with 29% for Bustamante.

The Davis campaign said its internal polling showed support and opposition to the recall vote was running even after word of the allegations. The Schwarzenegger camp said its polls showed a slight movement in favour of Schwarzenegger. Before the remarks, polls showed the recall passing and Schwarzenegger leading the candidates to replace Davis.

Davis flew around the state with several big-name Democrats in a final effort to persuade people to vote no on the recall. Recent polls showed more than 50% of likely voters want him removed from office. Bustamante and McClintock also made campaign appearances.

Much of the focus remained on the front-runner Schwarzenegger, however, after the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday that six women claimed he groped or sexually harassed them between 1975 and 2000.

After the story was published, five other women came forward to report similar incidents, including two who said on Friday the actor harassed them on the set of the 1988 film Twins.

Another woman said she was an intern at CNN in the early 1980s when Schwarzenegger groped her buttocks and made untoward remarks about her anatomy as she was escorting him to a set.

The actor’s campaign organised a news conference yesterday at which a Hollywood publicist and two “Twins” cast members denied sexual harassment allegations.

Campaign spokesman Sean Walsh accused the Times of “irresponsible journalism” and bias. The Times denied the accusation.

In Merced, California, where he was joined by his wife, Maria Shriver, Schwarzenegger joked briefly about the allegations, hugging a supporter at an In-N-Out burger but then pretending to resist, saying, “Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Otherwise it will be in the paper again”.

Schwarzenegger said he suspected the governor’s supporters were behind the allegations, but Davis has denied any connection. The Times has said none of the first six accusers were put in touch with the newspaper by any of Schwarzenegger’s opponents. The others came forward after the first story broke.

The Austrian-born candidate also has been accused late in the campaign of expressing admiration for Adolf Hitler nearly 30 years ago.

Transcripts from a book proposal by George Butler, who directed Pumping Iron, the 1977 bodybuilding documentary that brought Schwarzenegger to mainstream attention, quoted the actor as expressing admiration for Hitler not for what he did, but for rising to power with little formal education, and for his public speaking abilities.

The Democratic National Committee issued a resolution yesterday calling on Schwarzenegger to apologise for the alleged Hitler remarks. The actor – who has said repeatedly that he despises Hitler and cannot recall ever saying anything in favour of him – dismissed the move as ”sleaze politics”.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said that if Schwarzenegger did express admiration for Hitler he should apologise. But he added that the actor has worked on the centre’s behalf for years, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars and speaking out in favour of its pro-tolerance programmes.

“For the 20 years that I’ve known Arnold, I can say without reservations, he is not an anti-Semite, he is not a supporter of neo-Nazis or racists,” Hier said in Jerusalem last night.

Meanwhile, Austrian gym owner Kurt Marnul said yesterday that as a teenager Schwarzenegger helped break up neo-Nazi rallies at least twice.

“It’s absurd. It’s 100% wrong that he could have ever liked Hitler,” Marnul said at his gym, where the former world champion bodybuilder began training when he was 15.