California Governor's race

What if Meg just quit campaigning?

Zelda Bronstein
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What if Meg just quit campaigning?

The more money Meg Whitman spends, the worse she does in the polls. More than $150 million, and she’s in worse shape than she was six months ago. At least, that’s what the LA times says. And while that’s clearly the most optimistic poll around, the signs aren’t looking good for Whitman.

In fact, the smartest thing she could do now is to quit campaigning. Seriously: The more money she spends, the less people like her. Disappear and hope for low turnout — that’s her only hope.

Calbuzz has an interesting take: Whitman’s initial support of Prop. 23 has really hurt her. I also really, really like the Calbuzz analysis of Meg and “class warfare,” which ought to be required reading for every political reporter in the state.

How Team Whitman blew the housekeeper story

Zelda Bronstein
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How Team Whitman blew the housekeeper story

The folks at Calbuzz are asking the same questions that have been bothering me for a while now: How could Team Whitman, with its legions of high-paid political consultants, have bungled the Nicky Diaz story so badly?


If her campaign team knew about the problem a year ago (and she swears she told her consultants), why didn’t they go public themselves, control the damage and eliminate the story as an October Surprise?


Calbuzz:


According to Political Consulting 101, this is standard operating procedure: control the bad news, put it out yourself, do it early to inoculate against a late hit. It borders on campaign consultant malpractice to have handled it as it was handled.


Of course, campaign consultants can’t be sued for malpractice; there’s no regulatory body, no disciplinary association. But it’s astounding that so many professionals who are earning so much money did such a bad job here.


More important, it borders on criminal arrogance (alas, that’s not a crime) that Whitman didn’t give Diaz some sort of decent severance:


Why not spend $20,000 or so (or more, if need be) to hire her the best immigration attorney she could find to help her see what could be done to stay in the country or ease her return or whatever?


Why not offer her a year’s severance (about $18,000) or help her with re-settlement costs in Mexico? She was, in eMeg’s words, “a member of our extended family” (or as Meg said in one press conference, Freud never sleeping, “an extended member of our family”).


Okay, so Whitman and Harsh had to fire Diaz once they knew she was here illegally, if you buy their story. But they didn’t have to kick her to the curb.


I was pretty sure Whitman was on track to lose even before this happened, but I think the Diaz fiasco has sealed the deal. And it’s not so much the fact that she hired an undocumented worker (LOTS of Californians do that every day) but the fact that she was such an asshole to her employee.


And the $120 million campaign to create a carefully crafted image couldn’t deal with that basic problem.

Jerry v. Meg: Reality and the robot

Zelda Bronstein
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5
Jerry v. Meg: Reality and the robot

I watched the Brown-Whitman debate on TV, and I had an eerie Nixon-Kennedy experience. On the tube, Whitman looked …. creepy. That fake, plastic smile and the strictly scripted talking points made her appear almost robotic. I kept thinking about the employee she allegedly abused and I wonder if she had that same scary expression on her face when she pushed around and fired people.

Calitics thinks Brown won the debate handily and that Whitman acted as if she were running for governor ot Texas. I thought Jerry went a little over the top when he ranted about how the state’s pension funds would be in fine shape if everyone worked until his age (which just reminded the voters how old he is), but overall, he at least seemed real, interesting, and an actual human being. He also talked, at least somewhat, about fiscal reality. Whitman was channeling Schwarzenegger, who decided he could cut $5 billion out of the budget by eliminating the car tax and never worry about replacing the revenue. Her proposal for eliminating capital gains taxes makes even less sense; at least middle-class people got a break when the car tax was cut. All she would do is hlep the very rich.

Overall, I thought it was reality v. the robot. Reality generally wins that round.

 

The more Whitman spends, the more people hate her

Zelda Bronstein
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7
The more Whitman spends, the more people hate her

Johnny Angel and I have been talking about this trend for months, and now there’s evidence to support our conclusion: Meg Whitman’s massive blitz of campaign ads is doing her more harm than good.


From Calitics:


Jerry Brown’s campaign manager, Steve Glazer, took to the campaign’s blog today to offer his thoughts on the state of the race. In that post, Glazer offered this fascinating nugget of information:


    A survey we completed three days ago found most people who have seen a Whitman ad don’t believe her claims are true. When we asked whether these ads have improved or worsened their opinions of the candidates for Governor, the results were as follows:


    Attorney General Jerry Brown: 6% improved; 4% worsened; 58% unchanged


    Meg Whitman: 8% improved; 27% worsened; 31% unchanged


    In more than 30 years of working on campaigns, I have never seen a candidate’s ads have such a negative effect on that same candidate.


Amazing, but it makes sense. The ads are becoming annoying — you can’t turn on the radio or TV in California without being assaulted by Meg, Meg, Meg — and her mesage is so flat and lacking in credibility that the voters can apparently see through it.


There’s an interesting possibility that Whitman will lose and Prop. 23 will lose, and combined with PG&E losing on Prop. 16 this spring, the notion that money alone can buy a California election may be changing. A little.

The good news for Jerry Brown

Zelda Bronstein
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The good news for Jerry Brown

The press is all over the latest Field Poll, which shows Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman in a dead heat.  And it’s no surprise that, thanks to a campaign that thus far has been almost entirely negative, voters aren’t particularly thrilled with either candidate.


But I think there’s some good news for Jerry Brown here. Whitman has spent more than $90 million so far, and the voters like her less than they did six months ago. After all that money, some of which has gone for blistering attacks on Brown, Whitman is still not ahead. And it’s hard to see what she can do now to move the needle.


CallBuzz:


Moreover, it looks like the attack ads on Whitman by Brown’s labor allies — including California Working Families 2010 — have had their intended effect: to increase Whitman’s negatives and keep her from pulling away from Brown during the summer, before he can afford to put his own ads on TV.


Meanwhile, Brown’s favorability is only marginally changed from March. It’s 42-40% favorable today, compared to 41-37% favorable before. (Of course, Brown’s favorable was 50-25% back in March of 2009, but that was when he was just the new Attorney General and not a candidate for governor with rivals.)


At some point, Jerry’s got to start seriously campaigning, and he’s got a lot of work to do. He has to define himself to younger voters, who know a lot more about Ebay than about Brown’s tenure as governor, which was generally pretty good. He has to remind Latinos of how awful Whitman is on immigration. He’s got to spend some money.


But at this point, there’s hardly a voter in California (at least, not one with a TV set) who hasn’t seen multiple Whitman ads, defining her as a successful business person and attacking Brown as a failed politician. Those are powerful messages. The ads have been well produced, well targeted and should have been effective. And they haven’t gotten her over the halfway point yet — even against an opponent who is vulnerable to attack and hasn’t campaigned much at all.


Both candidates seem to be holding the party loyalists — the vast majority of the Republicans like Meg, the vast majority of the Democrats like Jerry. And there are more Democrats than Republicans. The independents aren’t breaking Meg’s way, either — she’s only slightly ahead, not enough to make up the difference.


Now if Brown can just get his people to care enough to go to the polls. …

Weird Uncle Jerry

Zelda Bronstein
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0
Weird Uncle Jerry

I’m starting to feel as if Jerry Brown is that strange old uncle who comes over for dinner and says things that make you cringe — and you can’t really tell if he’s just a loveable old character, a bright guy with a weird sense of humor, or someone who’s completely losing his marbles.


Check this out: First he makes a very valid, even insightful statement that’s right on target:


“Were I a CEO and someone said, ‘You know what, I’ve never been in this company, I never saw the product and I want to be a boss,’ I’d say, ‘Hey, why don’t you start at the bottom and work your way up,’ ” he said. “That’s the same way with government — you can’t wake up one morning and say, ‘Gee, I’ve got a billion dollars and I want to be governor.’ You got to learn something because those people up in Sacramento are sharks.”


Then he goes completely off the deep end:


Brown discussed his implementation of Prop. 13 despite his earlier opposition to it, as well as support for the 2nd Amendment and same-sex marriage. He said he opposed efforts to legalize marijuana, which will be on the November ballot.


“We got to compete with China, and if everybody’s stoned, how the hell are we going to make it?” he said.


Jerry, pal, I’ve got news for you: The people who are the most successfully competing with China, the brilliant high-tech visionaries you love so much? They’re already stoned. All we can do now is get some tax money out of it.


Besides, China can’t compete with this:


 


 

Was Meg Whitman verbally or physically abusive?

Mary Magee
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Was Meg Whitman verbally or physically abusive?

Either way, the question spells trouble for the Whitman campaign.

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