Gov. Schwarzenegger, who spends inordinate amounts of time bleating about he’s not beholden to special interests, is being paid millions by a special interest, a body building magazine company.
Asked if the governor had any other outside deals, Stutzman said no. “He spends very little time on this,” the spokesman said. “It’s something he would essentially do in his spare time. These are magazines he’s had a relationship with throughout his entire career in bodybuilding and fitness.”
This makes it even more suspect. He gets 8 mil and says he does very little to earn the money. Uh huh. In the real world of politics that would be a very unusual ocurrence indeed.
The agreement holds that Schwarzenegger — referred to as “Mr. S” — must “further the business objectives” of Weider and make himself available to the company outside business hours, to avoid interfering with his job as California governor.
Under the governor’s agreement, he gets a fee based on 1% of the advertising revenue of various health and fitness magazines.
Much of that revenue comes from makers of nutritional supplements, and the governor vetoed legislation last year to impose restrictions on them.
A conflict of interest if there ever was one.
Update: 7/16
Gov. cancels magazine contract
The action comes amid complaints of a conflict of interest. An aide says Schwarzenegger won’t return money already received under the deal.
For a governor, Arnold is politically tone deaf. A more astute politician would have given back the money as a way to defuse criticism.
And he’s gotten himself into yet another mess too.
Schwarzenegger has gotten a special election called for November. One of the ballot initiatives concerns redistricting. Now the State AG is suing to block the measure – and for good reason too.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration knew about legal problems with the proposed redistricting ballot initiative at least a week before the secretary of state’s office was contacted and the matter was publicly disclosed.
[State Attorney General] Lockyer filed a lawsuit last week seeking to disqualify the measure because the document sent to the attorney general’s office to launch the petition drive was not identical to the one used to collect voter signatures.
Lockyer, through a spokesman, blasted the Governor’s Office and leaders of the initiative drive for untimely disclosure.
“If true, these new revelations are very disturbing,” said Tom Dresslar, Lockyer’s spokesman. “It’s particularly disturbing that the proponents and other parties knew about this problem and let the secretary of state certify this measure for the ballot. That’s outrageous.”