Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday told officials in his hometown in Austria to remove his name from a sports stadium and stop using his identity to promote the city.
With officials in his Austrian homeland poised to strip his name from the local soccer stadium, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sought to beat them to it Monday, sending an indignant letter demanding that his name be removed by year's end.
Politicians in the city of Graz had begun a petition drive to rename the stadium following Schwarzenegger's decision to allow the execution last week of Stanley Tookie Williams. The governor's refusal to grant clemency to the convicted murderer of four sparked outrage across Europe and revived an on-again, off-again effort in Graz to drop his name from the stadium.
In his letter, Schwarzenegger said he had heard that the Graz City Council planned to order his name removed on Jan. 19. The stadium, which seats 15,400, has carried Schwarzenegger's name since 1997.
Schwarzenegger also wrote that he was revoking his permission for Graz to use his name in any advertising campaigns that promote the city, located 10 minutes from his hometown village of Thal.
Mentioning a separate proposal to rescind the award of a "ring of honor" that was given to him in 1999, Schwarzenegger said in the letter that he does not want the ring any more and had sent it back.
"Since … the official Graz appears to no longer accept me as one of their own, this ring has lost its meaning and value to me," Schwarzenegger wrote. "It is already in the mail."
Schwarzenegger's letter suggests that more executions may be coming. Another death row inmate, Clarence Ray Allen, 75, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Jan. 17.
"In all likelihood, during my term as governor I will have to make similar and equally difficult decisions," he wrote. "In order to spare the responsible politicians of the city of Graz further concern, I withdraw from them as of this day the right to use my name in association with the … stadium. You will receive related correspondence from my legal counsel shortly."
Schwarzenegger wrote the letter himself in German. It was faxed Monday to Graz Mayor Siegfried Nagl, who could not be reached for comment. The letter was translated into English by a press aide to the governor, Katherine McLane.
