THE BUZZ: RECALL REDUX: He’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaack.

The Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger is returning to Sacramento to mark two decades since his recall election earthquake shook California — and the political universe writ large.

Schwarzenegger will sit down for a lunchtime Press Club interview with California Playbooker Emerita Carla Marinucci. In the evening, the former governor and box-office juggernaut will celebrate the 20-year anniversary with alums at a reception.

Schwarzenegger’s 60-day recall sprint was captured in vivid form by the journalist Joe Mathews. He writes in a new retrospective and short audiobook narrated by Edoardo Ballerini that one poll at the time showed the race was followed by a whopping 99 percent of Californians.

POLITICO caught up with Schwarzenegger over FaceTime to commemorate his return to California’s Capitol, including the moment when the recall officially started on NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” We wanted to know if Schwarzenegger was indeed totally undecided about running all the way up until the moment Leno asked him on the show.

“It could have been either one,” Schwarzenegger deadpanned. “It could have been fiction. It could have been real.”

A cigar hung from his mouth as his pet pig, Schnelly, wandered around by his feet.

“I don’t rehearse those things,” he continued. “I just don’t know. I make — a lot of times — decisions like that. So, it was kind of like, I would say most likely that I would go for it. But I was really watching the responses of the audience when I talked. It was fun to do it that way.”

Read more on what Schwarzenegger told POLITICO about Ron DeSantis’ rubber boots and how he views the likely rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Once elected, it took him some time to find his footing, but Schwarzenegger said he wouldn’t change a thing about his first run for office. “My campaign,” he said, “was flawless.”

“But, at the same time, you’re not going to step in there with all the experience in the world. I mean, put someone up there on the Mr. Olympia stage for the first time that has never trained. He’s gonna fumble around, too, a little bit.”

Schwarzenegger suffered some big losses at the ballot in 2005, but eventually got with the program as he likes to say and implemented his vision, winning majority Democrats’ buy-in on infrastructure spending and an ambitious agenda to address climate change. For Schwarzenegger, his seven years in Sacramento were “the most important years of my life,” he said.

California’s last Republican governor, Schwarzenegger left the office in 2011. He warned California Republicans at the time that the party’s rightward shift would spell doom in the blue state.

He said he’s still not particularly optimistic about another Republican breaking with their party dogma, connecting with a wider swath of the left-leaning electorate, and winning a statewide election again as he did. But he stressed that something needs to happen to restore a sense of political balance in the state.

“I see the frustration, but you can’t blame the Democrats for it that much because that’s what happens when you have a one-party system. People start only seeing their point of view. It makes it very, very difficult,” Schwarzenegger said. “But we need more Republicans in there. We need to bring it back to the old days, no doubt.”

GOOD MORNING. Happy Friday. Thanks for waking up with Playbook.

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WHERE’S GAVIN? Back in Sacramento after several days at APEC in San Francisco. Nothing official has been announced, though Newsom will surely be working the state Democratic Party convention circuit.

ONTO STATE COURT — The man who assaulted Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer was convicted on all federal counts Thursday, but the legal saga over that horrific night is far from over.

A jury in San Francisco found defendant David DePape, who was fixated on fringe conspiracies, guilty of attempting to kidnap the former speaker when he broke into her home and of assaulting her husband, Paul Pelosi. DePape’s sentencing hearing has not been scheduled, but he faces decades in prison for those crimes.

DePape also faces charges in state court: attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse and false imprisonment. San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said Thursday that she was prepared to move forward to trial, though her office would review the verdict and consult with federal prosecutors.

HIGH PRAISE FOR LEE: Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t endorsed in California Senate race, but during a Thursday fundraiser at the Piedmont home of longtime supporters Quinn Delaney and Wayne Jordan, she lauded Rep. Barbara Lee — who also attended and is close with Delaney. Harris called Lee a “dear friend, and an extraordinary leader, and a courageous leader, and in so many ways, for so many of us, a conscience of our country.”

SAFETY CHECK — Democratic officials and candidates were already prepared for debate over Israel-Hamas war to lead to an extra-raucous party convention in Sacramento this weekend. But this week’s melee at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington underscored just how charged this gathering could be.

Organizers have “put in place a set of enhanced security protocols for the weekend,” said party Chair Rusty Hicks. “Bottom line, the safety and security of all attendees is of utmost importance.”

Elected officials are well accustomed to having their convention speeches interrupted by supporters of causes like single-payer healthcare. But with some high-profile confrontations at California protests, including one that led to a Jewish man’s death and another where a Stanford student was targeted in a hit-and-run, attendees have expressed an unusual degree of uneasiness about how the weekend may play out.

Read more about how tensions over the conflict are making Democrats ask hard questions about their relationship to the party and longtime political allies.
— Melanie Mason

UC RESIGNATION CALL — The public fight between ethnic studies faculty at the University of California and a governing board member over the Israel-Hamas war has escalated into calls for the resignation of the UC Regent, Hollywood talent agent Jay Sures.

The exchange began when the faculty wrote university leaders a letter condemning their public statements calling Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel for misrepresenting “the unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.” Sures responded to the group late last month, calling their comments “appalling” and “repugnant.” The UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council in a Wednesday letter to Sures, obtained by POLITICO, demanded he resign and accused him of treating “Palestinian life as an afterthought” and singling the faculty members out.

Allison Gollust, an ex-CNN executive acting as a spokesperson for Sures, confirmed that he had seen it and said he “strongly stands by his letter.”
— Blake Jones

ELENI’S MOMENT — It’s not every day that California’s second-ranking statewide official gets her own moment in the spotlight.

Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis has been working the circuit at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation — or APEC — summit in San Francisco this week. She has been the top-ranking official at a host of VIP events with world leaders and CEOs.

Bay Area political darlings Newson and Vice President Kamala Harris, of course, got much of the public love at APEC from the hometown crowd and visiting dignitaries. But Eleni, who helped raise more than $20 million to allow San Francisco to host, found herself surrounded by some of the most powerful company.

Case in point: Kounalakis sat at Chinese President Xi Jinping’s table during a dinner on Wednesday. Last night, she was the top state official at a CEO event hosted by Salesforce mogul Marc Benioff. Her calendar had her at 16 events, including five bilateral meetings.

Kounalakis, a former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, pushed hard for San Francisco to land APEC, and personally lobbied Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the decision.

ROAD RAGE: The conditions under the Interstate 10 that fueled a massive fire that led to the freeway’s closure south of downtown Los Angeles were no mystery to state inspectors. State officials had leased the land to a private company that subleased it to a business that stored wood pallets — in an area near homeless camps where people regularly lit fires. (Los Angeles Times)

BRIDGEGATE: There’s been a smorgasbord of APEC-related protests in San Francisco this week. But none were nearly as disruptive as the pro-Palestinian protest that closed all westbound lanes of the Bay Bridge for hours yesterday morning, standing hundreds commuters crossing the bridge. (San Francisco Chronicle)

FILLING HER SHOES: With Rep. Katie Porter vacating her Orange County congressional seat to run for Senate, Democrats must pick someone who can defend the battleground district. The party is torn between state Sen. Dave Min and Joanna Weiss, who each hail from a key constituency that could help keep the seat blue. (POLITICO)

ARREST MADE: A college professor has been arrested on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Paul Kessler, a Jewish man who died after he suffered injuries during a clash between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protesters. (Los Angeles Times)

BIRTHDAYS — Susan Rice … Linda Moore of TechNet … Michele Tasoff

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Correction: An earlier version of this newsletter included the wrong first name for a fundraising host.