Arnold Schwarzenegger

Schwarzenegger's early victories included repealing an unpopular increase in the vehicle registration fee as well as preventing driver's licenses being given out to illegal immigrants, but later began to feel the backlash when powerful state unions began to oppose his various initiatives. Key among his reckoning with political realities was a special election he called in November 2005, in which four ballot measures he sponsored were defeated. Schwarzenegger accepted personal responsibility for the defeats and vowed to continue to seek consensus for the people California. He would later comment that "no one could win if the opposition raised 160 million dollars to defeat you".
Schwarzenegger then went against the advice fellow Republican strategists and appointed a Democrat, Susan Kennedy, as his Chief Staff. Schwarzenegger gradually moved towards a more politically moderate position, determined to build a winning legacy with only a short time to go until the next gubernatorial election.
He has appeared alongside his fellow actor from Around the World in 80 Days, Jackie Chan, in a government advertisement to combat copyright infringement.
Schwarzenegger ran for re-election against Democrat Phil Angelides, the California State Treasurer, in the 2006 elections, held on November 7, 2006. Despite a poor year nationally for the Republican party, Schwarzenegger won re-election with 56.0% the vote compared with 38.9% for Angelides, a margin well over one million votes. In recent years, many commentators have seen Schwarzenegger as moving away from the right and towards the center the political spectrum. After hearing a speech by Schwarzenegger at the 2006 Martin Luther King, Jr. breakfast, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom said that, "He's becoming a Democrat... He's running back, not even to the center. I would say center-left".