Hasta la vista, Arnold

California teachers are mad at Governor Schwarzenegger for reneging on a $3 billion budgetary promise, nurses are locked in a battle with him over hospital staffing standards, and labor generally is girding for war over his special election and ballot proposals that aim to gut union political power in the state.

Judging by the polls, none of this is helping Arnold with the voters. Just 42 percent approve of his handling of tax and budget matters. Only 33 percent agree with him on education and nearly eight in 10 think new state revenues should go to K-12 public education.

Sixty-one percent oppose his plan for a special election, while only 33 percent approve.

Today was a big day for the Governor's opponents, who staged large rallies in Sacramento and Los Angeles that seemed to advance their momentum.

The L.A. rally took place in Pershing Square, just down the hill from my office. The building management folks are always great about alerting us to both demonstrations and film shoots, so when I heard the faint sound of cheering way up in my "corporate aerie" late in the afternoon, I knew what it was and where it was coming from. My office window faces south. I looked out -- Pershing Square appeared nearly full of people.

I was curious, so at 5:00 p.m. (our nominal end-of-day, though I rarely manage to escape before 6:30), I slipped down the elevator and steps to Olive Street, then down the hill to the Biltmore.

The demonstration was orderly and pretty well confined to the park. Traffic didn't seem very much affected. I fell in with the crowd and crossed over.

The morning overcast was long gone, the afternoon had grown warm and there was a friendly, festival air to the place. Downtown looked lovely in the late afternoon light -- the towers on Bunker Hill had taken on a liquid glow.

LAPD was barely in evidence -- and the officers I saw were smiling, hatless and cordial. At the margins there were a few of the fringe elements you see at every demonstration -- guys in Lenin-style caps selling newspapers with "revolution" in the masthead -- but most of the crowd looked corn-fed and wholesome, the sort of crowd you might find at Disneyland or the Glendale Galleria on a weekend afternoon.

There weren't many people there in coats-and-ties, but my olive Brooks Brothers number drew only a few stares. One perfect stranger said in a friendly way, "Say, aren't you with the L.A. Times?" I had to disappoint, but when I said that I had married into the UFCW (my wife works for one of the supermarket chains), the welcome got even warmer.

The California Teachers Association (CTA) was a big organizer of the event, and much of the crowd had the look of teachers who had spent the day in the classroom and had stopped off in downtown on the way home for a little adventure and a little political activism.

This is middle America (or at least that portion of it that teaches in the public schools) -- this is who Arnold has taken on. It doesn't seem to be working out for him.

The rhetoric from the podium was fiery and seemed to draw an enthusiastic response. Between the whir of the news helicopters overhead and the pounding drums of the Aztec dancers at the northern edge of the square, however, it was hard to hear. I found a perch near the bronze statue of a Spanish-American War soldier and contented myself with taking in the sights.

The signs people carried struck me as revealing. Arnold used punchlines and allusions from his movies repeatedly during his political rise. Now they're being turned against him. Here's a smattering:

"Hey, Arnold, Don't Terminate Our Schools"

"The Kindergarten Cop Has Robbed Our Kids"

"Don't Be A Girlie Man Gov -- Pump Up ED"

"Arnold, Pump Up Your Brain"

"Nurses -- The Real Action Heroes"

"Hasta La Vista, Arnold!"

The last, of course, is my personal favorite. Rumor has it that Maria wants him to come home. Maybe in the end, the Terminator will turn out to be a flash-in-the-pan.

Photo: California Governor's Office