LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- The sign, held up by a Huntington Beach surfer at one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's final campaign stops, summed up the candidate's winning strategy in California's unprecedented gubernatorial recall election:

"Ride the wave, Arnold!"

Californians, those who voted for Schwarzenegger and those who didn't, still have little idea what their new "governator" will do. But with the sort of name recognition that no amount of campaign commercials could buy, palpable public resentment toward incumbent Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and a truncated two-month campaign that allowed him to short-circuit demands for detailed policy proposals, Schwarzenegger simply "rode the wave" and landed upright in the governor's office.

Ironically, the conservative Republicans who had bankrolled the massive recall effort to get rid of Davis ended up with a socially liberal Republican governor they never would have supported in a regular election.

Along the way, with a wide smile and a wave, candidate Schwarzenegger frustrated news reporters eager for proposals, granting interviews instead to "Entertainment Tonight," and "Extra." He held few substantive press conferences and performed essentially the same script rally after rally, with the crowds eating up every word and leaping for every "Join Arnold" T-shirt he threw their way.

Some political reporters who joined Schwarzenegger's highly hyped four-day bus tour from San Diego to Sacramento dropped out at the halfway point when it became clear that being on board would give them no access to the candidate. Schwarzenegger rode in the lead vehicle, dubbed "The Running Man" after one of his movies. The press rode in three buses that trailed, which were not so subtly named "Predator 1," "Predator 2," and "Predator 3."

Even after six women accused him of sexual harassment and an old interview surfaced in which he had expressed some admiration for Adolf Hitler's political skills, Schwarzenegger granted just a handful of mainstream press interviews. He preferred to talk to Oprah Winfrey, Howard Stern and conservative radio talk show hosts, whom he thanked for talking him into running.

Schwarzenegger simply asked voters to trust him and, in the end, plenty did.

Fifty-five percent of voters decided to send a humbled Davis packing, 11 months after electing him to a second term. On the second question as to who should replace him, 49 percent voted for Schwarzenegger over 134 other candidates. It could be late November before he is sworn in, depending on how long it takes the California secretary of state to certify the vote.

The day after winning the election, Schwarzenegger said, "What we have to do is open up the books through the audit, find out where the waste is, and then we have to go step by step. In the very near future, I will be announcing all those details of what we are going to do."

It was almost exactly what he had said at the start of the campaign just two months earlier.

As his opponents criticized his lack of specifics, however, he countered by using their specific plans against them, especially Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante's "tough love" proposal to increase taxes on high incomes, cigarettes and alcohol.

"In a longer campaign, he would have to be more specific, and not just say, 'I'm going to cut spending, get rid of the car tax, not raise taxes and balance the budget,' which is sheer nonsense," said Gary Jacobson, political science professor at the University of California, San Diego. "But voters said, 'Give it a try.' Bustamante was promising pain, which is going to happen whether you promise it or not."

Would Schwarzenegger have been able to pull it off if he'd had to run in a traditional election -- one in which he had to compete in a Republican primary and could not use the excuse of a brief campaign to limit himself to a single debate or to put off questions about how he would patch the state's leaky budget?

"The stars lined up just right," said Jack Pitney, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College outside Los Angeles. "If he had to compete in a Republican primary, [conservative state Sen.] Tom McClintock might have beaten him."

There has been a dearth of Republican statewide victories in California in recent years, in large part because the Grand Old Party prefers candidates who are far more conservative than the typical Californian.

Last year, the highly unpopular Davis virtually guaranteed himself re-election by spending his own campaign money to help conservative businessman Bill Simon win the Republican nomination over the more moderate former mayor of Los Angeles, Dick Riordan. Davis romped over Simon in the general election.

An Austrian immigrant actor with no government experience who had appeared nude on screen and who favored abortion rights, gay rights and some gun control would have had a tough time defeating a well-liked, pro-life, pro-Second Amendment senator like McClintock in a primary election in which only Republicans could vote.

In the end, Schwarzenegger's victory owed as much to Democrats and independents as to Republicans. The recall election forced a Republican Party that was tired of losing to get behind a candidate who could win, even if that candidate didn't represent what many Republicans regard as the core beliefs of the party.

"All Californians -- Republicans, Democrats, independents -- united," said Duff Sundheim, chairman of the California Republican Party. "Twenty-five percent of Democrats voted for this recall. The independents voted well over 50 percent. The issue was, 'did we need new leadership,' and that was something that united us. I hope that's something that's going to keep us united as we move forward to make the very difficult choices that we're going to have to make."

Difficult choices, indeed.

Schwarzenegger will enter office facing a deficit of at least $8 billion, after promising to make it half again as large by cutting car taxes $4 billion and after vowing to maintain funding for schools, one of the biggest items in the state budget.

The waves, churned up by some very rough seas, will come fast and hard at Schwarzenegger. And he'll have to ride them for far longer than two months.