Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is taking heat for impregnating the family nanny during a previous marriage. Those attempting to make this a partisan issue might recall a similar case with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once served as California’s Republican governor.

In 1986, the action-film star married Maria Shriver, daughter of Sargent Shriver, husband of Eunice Kennedy. In 1996, Schwarzenegger had an affair with the family maid and fathered Joseph Baena. When Arnold ran for governor in 2003 Maria stood by her man, and some of his appointments seemed to be the selection of his Democrat wife.

Arnold was surely aware of Proposition 209, approved by voters in 1996, which bars the use of racial and ethnic preferences in state education, employment and contracting. Governor Schwarzenegger’s pick for state director of finance was Puerto Rico native Ana Matosantos. Her degrees in political science and feminist studies were rather meager qualifications, but Matosantos came billed as the first “Latina” to hold the post.

Recurring governor Jerry Brown refused to accept Matosantos resignation when she was arrested for drunk driving in Sacramento. Brown made the historic Latina his chief budget advisor, and over four years her tenure was marked by multibillion-dollar shortfalls. For Ana, this was not a problem.

Covered California, California’s subsidiary of Obamacare, hired Matosantos at $120,000 for a six-month “consulting” contract. Whatever services Matosantos performed did nothing to prevent Covered California from generating what health journalist Emily Bazar described as “widespread consumer misery.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom made Matosantos his “cabinet secretary” and in 2019 promoted her to state “energy czar.” The “genius” Latina, allegedly dedicated to public service, could not prevent blackouts during hot summer months. In 2022, the governor urged Californians not to charge their electric cars, to avoid straining the grid.

That same year, Gov. Newsom appointed Matosantos to the University of California Board of Regents. So the consequences of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s dalliance are still with us, but there’s more to his legacy.

In 2004, Schwarzenegger was a big promoter of Proposition 71, the $3 billion stem cell initiative, which created the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and promised life-saving cures for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other diseases. According to promoters, royalties from the cures and treatments would generate money for state coffers. But as the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2018, “not a single federally approved therapy has resulted from CIRM-funded science. The predicted financial windfall has not materialized.”

In 2020, CIRM grabbed another $5.5 billion through Proposition 14, which narrowly passed, possibly due to ballot harvesting. That year CIRM reported that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted “breakthrough therapy designation” to Magrolimab, funded by CIRM in trials. In February 2024, the FDA placed “a full clinical hold on all studies evaluating magrolimab,” in cases of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS).

A ballpark figure for CIRM’s promised cures from 2004 is zero, and Arnold shows only partial recall of his long career. As Californians may recall, the “Governator” worked closely with assembly speaker Fabian Núñez, a far-left Democrat. In 2008, Núñez’s son Esteban was involved in the fatal stabbing of college student Luis Santos and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

On January 2, 2011, during his final hours as governor, Schwarzenegger commuted Esteban’s sentence to seven years and failed to notify the victim’s family. So as Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger confirms, Democrats hold no monopoly on kindness to criminals, boondoggle bureaucracies or dalliance with nannies.