From: Watching Maria Shriver by Connie Bruck
Days before the election, the L.A. Times published stories containing accounts from women who alleged he had made unsolicited physical advances toward them, grabbing their breasts or putting his hands under their clothes.
The allegations were hardly new. A 2001 article in Premiere magazine entitled “Arnold the Barbarian” had described a range of Schwarzenegger’s sexual activities, from groping women to a sexual encounter with a willing woman—and many who knew Schwarzenegger told me that the general behavior portrayed in that article was familiar to them.
But the timing of the L.A. Times pieces seemed likely to doom his candidacy; two Schwarzenegger advisers told me that they were convinced that only Maria could save him.
She did what was required, and more — not only accompanying him on the campaign trail and kissing him for the cameras, but attacking the women who had made their grievances known.
“You can believe someone who met him for five minutes thirty years ago,” she said, in a voice dripping contempt, “or you can believe me!”
