Those who see the White House in Arnold Schwarzenegger's future have taken to the airwaves and the Internet to generate support for a constitutional amendment to make it possible.

A multimedia campaign looking to clear the way for California's Republican governor to run for president is drawing surprising support from people across the nation.

A Web site backing the constitutional amendment that would let the Austrian-born Schwarzenegger compete for the nation's top job, www.amendus.org, has received tens of thousands of e-mails since a 30-second TV spot touting the idea began running Monday, said Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones, the Peninsula woman who has put together the effort.

"They're coming in from freaking everywhere," said Morgenthaler-Jones, a retired mutual fund trader who worked for Schwarzenegger's election campaign last year. "We've had 4 million hits on the Web site in the last three days."

While the ad is running for a week only in San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, Stockton and Los Angeles, it has been getting daily exposure on national news shows frantic for stories about the charismatic movie star turned politician. Morgenthaler-Jones, 47, has made the rounds of the network morning shows and the cable news channels, talking about why the change is needed.

"The natural-born citizen clause is a real problem, since it's so ambiguous," she said. "It's so ambiguous that it could conceivably disqualify (Arizona Sen.) John McCain from running for president, since he was born in the Panama Canal Zone, which isn't part of the United States any longer."

Support for a new amendment isn't just from California voters or action movie fans. Two Republicans, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and Huntington Beach Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, introduced constitutional amendments that would allow foreign-born citizens to run for president. Those amendments failed to reach the floor of either house during the current session of Congress, which is scheduled to end this week.

"If (Schwarzenegger) can help our country, he shouldn't be cut off simply because he was born somewhere else," Rohrabacher said Wednesday on NBC's "Today" show.

Schwarzenegger has played coy with the "Amend for Arnold" effort, endorsing the constitutional change but declining to get involved with the effort.

"I think it is a good idea to open it up and to let foreign-born people also participate in that process or to run if they're long enough here," Schwarzenegger said Tuesday on CNN's "Larry King Live." "But I think it's important to leave me out of that discussion because otherwise it becomes a political discussion, because I'm not thinking about running for president."

But Schwarzenegger isn't ruling it out, either. He made headlines across the nation last month when he told Morley Safer of CBS's "60 Minutes" that he would like to run for president.

"Yes, absolutely. Why not?" the governor said. "With my way of thinking, you always shoot for the top."

Schwarzenegger, 57, moved to the United States in 1968 and became a citizen in 1983. That would be just good enough for Hatch and Rohrabacher, who would make naturalized citizens eligible for office if they've been citizens for 20 years.

The governor's supporters must change the Constitution's requirement that a candidate for president or vice president be a natural-born citizen at least 35 years old who has lived in the country for 14 years.

To win approval, a proposed constitutional amendment must be passed by a two-thirds vote in the House and the Senate. Two-thirds of the states also could vote to call a constitutional convention, although that's never happened in the nation's history. In either case, an amendment would also need to be approved by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states.

It's a hard road, which is why only 17 amendments have been approved in more than 200 years.

"I don't think we should move precipitously," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D- Calif., said when Hatch's proposal came before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month. "I've never had anyone approach me and say you have to do this because it's so important."

Partisan politics also could play a role. Democrats are likely to be unwilling to open the way for a popular Republican such as Schwarzenegger to run for national office.

"The U.S. Constitution and its amendments aren't there to satisfy the ambitious goals of a politician," said Bob Mulholland, a consultant for California's Democratic Party. "America should be very cautious on amendments designed for one person."

While Schwarzenegger remains popular with California voters, an October Field Poll showed that only 36 percent of the state's registered voters want to amend the Constitution to allow him to run for president and only 26 percent said they would vote for him if the amendment were to pass.

But an amendment to allow foreign-born citizens to run for president could draw support, especially if people can look beyond Schwarzenegger, said Richard Epstein, a constitutional law expert at the University of Chicago's law school.

"People say 'Why should we want to shrink the pool of talent?' " Epstein said. "While the (natural-born citizen) clause made sense originally, now it may be seen as just a tiny bit xenophobic."

That's the tone Morgenthaler-Jones is taking in her ad, which cost about $20,000 to run for the week.

"You cannot choose the land of your birth," she says in the ad. "You can choose the land you love."

The ad talks about the 12 million Americans who have become naturalized citizens and the fairness of letting them run for any office in the land.

"Help us amend for Arnold and 12 million other Americans," the ad says.

The "Amend for Arnold" group has volunteers in 11 states and plans to expand with ads in other parts of the country, featuring local residents. Morgenthaler-Jones wants her group to bring pressure on politicians to back the constitutional change.

"We want to have marches in state capitals across the nation," she said.

Those tactics could succeed, especially on a measure as straightforward as a change in the qualifications for president, Epstein said.

"There are no gray areas, you either like it or you don't," he said. "If the sentiment in California can be replicated in places like Missouri, Illinois and Idaho, it could become law."

Changing the U.S. Constitution

To amend the Constitution:

-- Two-thirds of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and the legislatures of three-fourths of the states, must approve the proposal; or

-- Two-thirds of the states can call for a constitutional convention, but any amendments would still need to be ratified by three-fourths of the states.