that the strongest Republican candidate would be former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who had unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for governor the previous year. Lockyer, at the start of August, publicly warned Davis and his political consultants against a repeat effort to sabotage Riordan's candidacy by negative attack ads: "If they do the trashy campaign on Dick Riordan ... I think there are going to be prominent Democrats that will defect and just say, 'We're tired of that puke politics. Don't you dare do it again or we're just going to help pull the plug.'" Five days later, Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he would run as a Republican in the recall election. Lockyer and Schwarzenegger had been casual friends since Lockyer's state senate years, when the actor had chaired the Governor's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, and the two men had together toured charter schools in southern California. Later, Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante announced he would become the only prominent Democrat to place his name on the recall ballot. On October 7, by a decisive vote, Davis was recalled, and Schwarzenegger was elected to replace him. Two weeks later, at a UC Berkeley post-mortem conference on the election, Lockyer made the surprise announcement that while he had voted against the recall, he had also voted for Schwarzenegger, the first time he had ever voted for a Republican in a state election. He explained that he was "tired of transactional, cynical, deal-making politics," and that, for him, "Arnold represented... hope, change, reform, opportunity, upbeat problem solving". He added, "I hope I haven't been conned". Many fellow Democrats and feminists reacted bitterly to Lockyer's surprise announcement, which proved damaging to his future political aspirations. State treasurer 2006 election By a year into Schwarzenegger's governorship, Lockyer increasingly felt the Governor's performance was disheartening, marked by inexperience, lack of strong political conviction, and personal braggadocio. In a 2005 interview, Lockyer criticized Schwarzenegger's leadership style as demonstrating an "arrogance of power" with the "odor of Austrian politics", alluding to the Austrian-born Governor's upbringing in a country with a "long history" of "elite...autocracy". Soon after the recall election, Lockyer, barred by term limits from seeking a third term as attorney general, began contemplating his own run for governor in the 2006 election. In January 2005, he tentatively announced his candidacy for governor: "the one and only office that has held abiding interest for me