Group working for Arnold amendment
Group works to make Schwarzenegger eligible to run for president

Dallas Morning News | March 27, 2005
By ANDREW BECKER

MENLO PARK, Calif. – The drive to get Arnold Schwarzenegger into the White House starts here, in a former French restaurant deep in Silicon Valley.

The political war room is a jumble of lamps with price tags still on, unpacked boxes of office equipment and two dozen extra chairs. But it's well stocked with hats, buttons and T-shirts emblazoned with "Amend for Arnold" and "Girlie-man for Arnold."

"We're still on the flat part of takeoff," said Richard Hilt, who helps on the phones and mail when he's not trying to get his renewable-energy business off the ground.

Leading the charge is Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones, a retired money manager and Schwarzenegger fan trying to rally support nationwide to change the Constitution so foreign-born citizens can be president.

Polls show widespread opposition to that change, and the Austrian-born Schwarzenegger – a U.S. citizen since 1983 who was elected California's governor more than a year ago – has resisted such talk.

"I have never thought about running for president, and this is not my vision," he said recently.

Still, Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones said she's encouraged by the favorable reaction to pro-amendment TV ads she paid for last fall in California and Washington.

"We were caught off guard" by the flood of attention, she said. "The front end – the Web site [AmendUs.org], the answering service – was ready for the publicity. The back end – the office – was not."

For now, Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones and group co-founder Mimi Chen, a stay-at-home mom and aspiring actress in Los Angeles, are recruiting volunteers to tell legislators and others about the campaign to open up eligibility for the Oval Office.

Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones signed up more than 100 backers at The Arnold Classic, an Ohio bodybuilding competition named for the seven-time Mr. Olympia. And she spent several days this month lobbying moderate Republicans in Washington.

Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones, who slips in and out of Ah-nold impressions, estimates she's spent nearly $200,000 on the efforts, most of it her own money.

"Arnold's not perfect. God never made a perfect candidate," she said. "But he's as close as we're going to come."

Austin-based talk radio host Alex Jones hopes that never happens. He's waged a "save the Constitution" blitz on his Web site, at www.arnoldexposed.com, and raised $15,000 for cable TV spots against the proposal. He said he distrusts Mr. Schwarzenegger and the "political muscle behind him – pun intended."

The Founding Fathers enacted the non-native clause in 1787 after fears that European powers might manipulate the new nation's elections. Now, said Bruce Cain, a political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, that idea is outdated – but the Schwarzenegger debate has clouded the issue.

"The Constitution should be decided on deeper grounds than one candidate," Mr. Cain said. "But because he blocks the sun wherever he goes, it's going to be about Arnold."