Governor's troubles slow local drive Governor's troubles slow local drive (August 03, 2005)

** Woodside resident heads effort to amend U.S. Constitution.

By David Boyce

Almanac Staff Writer

With Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent job approval ratings below 40 percent in polls, it's been one quiet week after another at the Menlo Park office of a campaign that uses the Austrian-born governor's name and image to advance the idea of amending the U.S. Constitution to allow foreign-born citizens to run for president.

"We're not kicking up any more dust while he's got problems," says Woodside resident Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones, president of the nonprofit group Amendus.org.

Last November, Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones appeared on TV talk shows, and the group ran ads on CNN and filled "hundreds of orders" per month for "Amend for Arnold" T-shirts and bumper stickers, she says.

Today at the Alameda de las Pulgas headquarters, orders are down to 10 a month, TV ads are gone, and they're not setting up card tables at political rallies or anywhere else, she says.

"We don't need to create an event that takes Arnold away from what he is doing" in Sacramento, she says. Besides, she adds, such occasions give photo opportunities to the governor's outspoken political opponents -- teachers and nurses rallying to protest his policies and proposals.

Amendus.org is keeping its powder dry in anticipation of a six-year effort to convince Congress to pass a constitutional amendment, and Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones says she's in for the duration. To be successful, an amendment requires approval by two-thirds majorities in each house, along with majorities in three-fourths of state legislatures.

Since the end of the Civil War, some 70 variations of this amendment have failed, says Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones, adding: "If we're lucky, we'll be the one that succeeds."
Amend for whom?

Congressional support has been scant, says Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones. Amendments introduced by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Representative Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, have not gotten out of committee, she says.

The association with Gov. Schwarzenegger lends the campaign prestige, but the amendment is intended to open up the presidency to all foreign-born citizens, she says.

For most of us, becoming president is a remote possibility, but apparently it doesn't take long for naturalized citizens to realize their status. Even 4-year-olds "find out very quickly that they're inferior ... that they're second-class citizens," says Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones.

Her efforts have attracted xenophobic detractors and some rude gestures in response to her "Amend for Arnold" bumper sticker, she says. But people don't get to choose where they're born, she says, echoing a statement by Canadian-born Jennifer Granholm, the governor of Michigan. "This (amendment) is not about your land of birth. It's about where your heart is."

Amendus.org has about 1,300 members from all 50 states, with about 300 members in California, she says. The group has received about $10,000 in unsolicited donations.
A misunderstood man?

Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones says she talks with the governor periodically, and first met him while working on state Proposition 49, which voters approved in 2002 to increase funding for after-school programs. "It was five minutes after meeting him that I thought, 'You could go all the way to the White House,'" she says.

She predicts that, with the governor's campaigning before November's special election, Californians "will start seeing in October what the rest of us have been seeing regularly. He's on the rails and he's not going to go off the rails."

Asked whether he made political miscalculations, Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones conceded that the governor angered too many "special interest groups" at once and they united against him, referring to teachers, nurses, firefighters and police unions that opposed his plans, including changes to their pension programs.

As for the governor's press coverage, "They have been flat-out biased," she says. "The Fourth Estate is good against the big-money crowd, but habitually backs the unions and teachers and anyone they see who is downtrodden, and they miss what should be covered" -- a state with severe fiscal problems.

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