It turns out California’s
knight in shining armor was riding a stolen horse. A Sacramento Court
ruled late this afternoon that Arnold violated campaign finance laws in
the days just before the election by arranging a personally-guaranteed
loan to his campaign of more than $4 million that ignored a
voter-approved $100,000 limit on personal loans. The candidate who came
to office claiming to clean up Sacramento politics was playing dirty
himself.
Since elected, Schwarzenegger has been holding fundraisers up and down
the state with special interest groups to repay the loan. He no longer
can under the ruling today. That means that the cash flowing at those
fundraisers at least cannot go directly into the Governor’s own bank
account. Arnold will have to repay this debt himself and he still owes
another debt to Californians that put him in office — Delivering on
political reform promises that will foreclose the possibility that the
type of money laundering Arnold engaged in will ever occur again.
