LOS ANGELES — Arnold Schwarzenegger settled into an enormous leather-based rocker recliner on the again patio of his mansion. His tiny rescue canine, Cherry, scampered at his toes, sporting a butterfly bow.

On his garden, his miniature donkey, Lulu, was making a break for the hedges. His miniature horse, Whiskey, loitered close to a marble bust of Abraham Lincoln. His bar held a dollhouse-size duplicate of the tank he had pushed throughout a stint in the Austrian Army. A biofuel Hummer was in the driveway. A nine-foot scale mannequin of the Statue of Liberty stood in the lobby. Things had been both very giant or very small.

Here is the place Mr. Schwarzenegger has been holding courtroom in particular person ever since he went to Dodger Stadium in January to get vaccinated, an occasion that has been viewed 20 million times on social media. People clamor to get penciled in for a back-patio go to — not simply the normal present enterprise individuals, but in addition political consultants, discuss present hosts and other people making an attempt to oust Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Up Mandeville Canyon they arrive, via the wrought iron gates, to speak Newsom with Schwarzenegger. They normally find yourself speaking Schwarzenegger with Schwarzenegger.

“Why did I get elected?” requested Mr. Schwarzenegger, 73, who rode a wave of populist angst in 2003 to change into California’s 38th governor, successful the recall election that toppled Gray Davis. “Why did Trump get elected? Because people were dissatisfied with the politicians. They hate the politicians. They can’t trust them. This is the overriding story.”

It has been 10 years since Mr. Schwarzenegger left Sacramento. An action-movie star who was elected — and re-elected — on a promise to rescue California from Democratic extra, he ended up with a 27 p.c approval ranking and a private scandal that ended his marriage.

But California is the land of second — and third and fourth — possibilities. Mr. Schwarzenegger didn’t a lot restore his picture as permit California to recalibrate its view of his contributions. He is a extra in style political determine in the present day than when he was elected, a feat for a Republican in a state so blue.

The causes are as sweeping and small as the causes California elected him in the first place. Some of it has to do with the pandemic. Some has to do with former President Donald J. Trump. His embrace of bipartisanship has a task, as does the state’s fixation with remembers, to not point out Whiskey and Lulu, who stole the present in a sequence of do-it-yourself public service movies he posted throughout the pandemic. But a lot of it’s Arnold — the solely particular person in the state’s 170-year historical past to change into governor in a recall — simply being Arnold.

“As a state, we are drawn to personalities who, like him, speak with clarity about what they stand for and who they are — and have a sense of humor about it,” mentioned Mark Baldassare, president of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. “But seeing him out there this year reminds me that Californians also have an ability to forgive and forget.”

Mr. Schwarzenegger persuaded previous and current governors to affix him in an ad touting face masks, and drafted his pets, kids, workers and girlfriend, a West Los Angeles bodily therapist, into serving to produce public service announcements on social distancing and handwashing. He raised hundreds of thousands of {dollars} final yr for protecting well being gear, anteing up $1 million of his personal. During the election, he spent $2.5 million in eight states to maintain polling locations open.

In January, when Mr. Trump’s false claims of voter fraud stirred a mob to storm Congress, Mr. Schwarzenegger posted a speech evaluating their actions to the 1938 Kristallnacht sacking of Jewish neighborhoods by European Nazis. The seven-minute video has drawn nearly 78 million views on his social media alone.

There is his Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy at the University of Southern California. And his new animated kids’s sequence. And his forthcoming spy present on Netflix. And the environmental summit he’s internet hosting this summer season in Austria.

None of this, he mentioned, is about ever operating once more for public workplace. “Elderly statesman” is how he describes his function now.

“When you leave office, you realize — well, I realized — that I just couldn’t cut it off like that,” he mentioned. “Just because I’m finished with this job that is only kind of a temporary job, does it mean that I have interest only in a temporary way? No! It’s like sports, with the follow-through.”

He leaped from the recliner and demonstrated a golf swing and a tennis volley. Cherry hopped to her tiny paws.

In a three-hour interview at his dwelling days earlier than the Newsom recall effort officially qualified for the ballot, Mr. Schwarzenegger was critical and humorous, brutally trustworthy and wily. His black zip-up jacket had a governor’s seal patch. It was morning, however he had already exercised and visited together with his daughters, who had come by to play tennis. A fireplace crackled in an out of doors fire the measurement of an actual Austrian tank.

As California’s Republican-led recall campaign has superior towards a possible November poll, a few half-dozen potential challengers to Mr. Newsom, together with some Democrats, have come to Mr. Schwarzenegger confidentially for counsel, in response to his advisers. He sees them in particular person, or on FaceTime or Zoom — “I want to see people’s faces,” he mentioned, brandishing his iPad.

He gives recommendation on the political dynamics, however he has not endorsed Mr. Newsom or any rival or taken a place for or in opposition to a recall.

“I have had everyone that is interested in it get in touch with me about it, and talk to me about it, and get advice about it,” Mr. Schwarzenegger mentioned. “I tell people what the landscape is and what my experience was. I don’t encourage anyone — or discourage anyone.”

In hyperpartisan instances, such neutrality is an exception. Though he’s considerably estranged from the Republican Party and has referred to as Mr. Trump “the worst president ever,” he has championed moderation and looking out past celebration. The Democrat he defeated to change into governor, Mr. Davis, he now considers a pal.

“He speaks for a certain kind of California Republican,” D.J. Waldie, a Southern California creator and cultural historian, mentioned. “It may be a rare and a dying breed and it certainly doesn’t reflect the party leaders, but it does reflect something about the character of ordinary Republicans in California. I sometimes wonder if that gravelly Austrian accent might be the voice of Republicanism Without Trump.”

A worldwide star with a spouse from the Kennedy household, Mr. Schwarzenegger got here to Sacramento at the expense of Mr. Davis, a liberal Democrat unfortunate sufficient to have been in cost throughout the dotcom bust, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assaults and blackouts.

He had not deliberate to run, though Republican leaders had begged and Mr. Davis had stood him up at a gathering the place he had hoped to foyer for his signature trigger, after-school applications.

He mentioned his now ex-wife, Maria Shriver — whose public accounts have echoed his recollection — was loath to pull their household into the political highlight. He was undecided till Jay Leno ushered him onto his sofa on the “Tonight Show” and a cheer erupted. “I let my mouth speak for itself,” he mentioned, nonetheless laughing at his delight when it mentioned he was operating for governor. When he bought dwelling, he mentioned, Ms. Shriver was in tears.

A 55.four p.c majority of voters elected to recall Mr. Davis, and a 48.6 plurality selected Mr. Schwarzenegger as his substitute. As governor, he promised to overtake the manner state budgeting choices had been made. His finance proposals failed however he did win state election reforms that, over time, have made it more durable for extremists in each events to gridlock decision-making.

An neutral fee has changed partisan gerrymandering in figuring out the boundaries of legislative districts, making it more durable for the events to recreation them. And California’s “top two” major system has put extra moderates of each events on the poll.

But passing these reforms consumed virtually all of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s political capital by the time he left workplace. Looking again, he believes that the recall was mainly an expression of a lot bigger societal forces.

“In 2003 we were just getting out of a world recession — this was a worldwide phenomenon — and right alongside it was then the state problems,” he mentioned.

He felt bipartisan compassion in November when Mr. Newsom got caught at a Michelin-starred restaurant after telling pandemic-weary Californians to not collect.

“Oy vey!” he mentioned, laughing. “It’s — you know, you can see how it can happen. But you crunch and you say this is not the time to make this the issue. With the recall, it just put so much fuel on the fire.”

Scandal corroded Mr. Schwarzenegger’s personal picture when, months after he left workplace, information broke that he had fathered a toddler with a family worker in the mid-1990s. It was the last straw for Ms. Shriver, who had defended him in 2003 after a number of ladies mentioned he had groped them.

“The end of the marriage was my screw-up,” Mr. Schwarzenegger mentioned. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall. I couldn’t complain about it — I did it. I was the governor and, of course, I crashed down big time.”

His kids are all adults now, and he’s a grandfather. That again patio recliner helped him recuperate from coronary heart surgical procedure in 2018. A YouGov.com poll this yr discovered him to be the nation’s hottest Republican with a 51 p.c approval ranking.

“My father always said, ‘Be useful,’” Mr. Schwarzenegger mentioned. “That is always all I’m trying to do.”