Walking Backwards In Indian Wells

In 2006, the Schwarzenegger campaign uncorked an ad almost immediately after the primaries showing Phil Angelides walking backwards, the assumption being that he would take the state backwards as well. One of the ads liberally quoted Angelides' rival for the Democratic nomination, Steve Westly, using the bruising primary against the winner. “What if Steve Westly was right?” the announcer says, after citing Westly's rhetoric in claiming that Angelides favored $10 billion in new taxes. Steve Westly wrote most of Arnold Schwarzenegger's early strategy and even his campaign spots, as Angelides was defined by his opponent swiftly.

Steve Poizner basically bestowed the same gift on eMeg Whitman over the weekend. The ads about Whitman's failure to register to vote for 28 years write themselves, but Poizner took the liberty of making the ad. If Republicans know how to do one thing well, it's go hard negative, and this ad will probably be very effective to the GOP primary audience. It will also be effective as a "here's what Republicans say about Meg Whitman" ad next year, should see prevail in the primary. Poizner actually reiterated his call for Whitman to drop out of the race "for the good of the party" over the weekend at the Republican convention in Indian Wells. The issue received major pickup throughout the media.



And Whitman did herself no favors at all with some of the worst damage control you'll see in politics, as she repeated like a mantra this line about how "there is no excuse for my voting record," completely avoiding any specifics about why. If she manages to win the primary, expect to hear this audio right through to next November. It's cringe-worthy.

I'm guessing the Republican Governor's Association just tried to pull back their invitation to Meg Whitman to come to any of their gala events.

This is terrible crisis management, of course. And it suggests that the general election would be no kinder on eMeg. But it's not like the split in the US Senate race, with serial non-voter Carlyfornia going up against wingnut conservative Chuck DeVore (The LA Times gets this wrong by trying to impose a blanket comparison). The Yacht Party grassroots has figured out that they have no candidate in the Republican primary, and regardless of who wins they probably won't be all that excited to work for the top of the ticket.

For activists such as Mike Spence, past president of the conservative California Republican Assembly, such centrist talk inspires unease following what they said was Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's betrayal of the Republican base.

Spence called the Republican governor a failure and blasted him for breaking his promises to conservatives by, among other things, approving the biggest tax increase in state history earlier this year. Schwarzenegger has also championed traditionally liberal causes such as Assembly Bill 32, which requires the state to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by about 25 percent by 2020.

"After the governor, people are cautious about who they support," Spence said.

Of course, this could be true of the Democratic grassroots as well, depending on circumstances. I think the only certainty in next year's elections will be the low turnout, as a slice of both sides stay home for their own reasons. But the Yacht Party's cast of characters look particularly uninspiring.

iCarly: In This Case, the I Stands For Iran

If we're going to have to deal with eMeg, then we also must contend with iCarly (and anyone with sons, daughters, nieces or nephews knows the reference). Weeks into her brave transition from failed CEO and failed Presidential campaign surrogate into the bold new world of failed Seante candidate, Carly Fiorina has hit a snag in the form of her extremely dicey past:

Over the past dozen years, Hewlett-Packard has sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of printers and other products to Iran through a Middle East distributor, sidestepping a U.S. ban on trade with the country.

Now the person who headed HP for much of that time, Carly Fiorina, is ramping up to run for U.S. Senate. And questions are emerging about what Fiorina knew about HP's growing presence in Iran during her six-year tenure at the Silicon Valley firm from 1999 to 2005 [...]

Fiorina, a Republican who is gearing up to challenge three-term Democratic incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer in 2010, declined an interview request. But she issued a statement through her campaign spokeswoman saying that she was unaware of any sales to Iran during her time at the company.

"It is illegal for American companies to do business in Iran," the spokeswoman, Beth Miller, wrote. "To her knowledge, during her tenure, HP never did business in Iran and fully complied with all U.S. sanctions and laws."

iCarly's stock response when questioned about her awful tenure at Hewlett-Packard is to say that she was unaware of the misdeeds and only aware of the deeds. For someone running on her success as a go-go CEO, that's a curious position to take, that she didn't know about large chunks of HP's business. Especially when the evidence has been clear for years that HP products found their way into Iran, with their printers becoming "nearly ubiquitous there," according to a Boston Globe report. HP has finally gotten around to severing their relationship with a Dubai-based distributor which clearly funneled their products into Iran. That distributor worked for HP throughout iCarly's tenure.

This is fun:

One former federal trade enforcement official said HP's dealings with the country are ripe for further investigation. If Fiorina or other HP employees based in the United States were aware that HP products were being resold to Iran, they could face fines or even prosecution for violating the trade embargo, said Mike Turner, former director of the Office of Trade Enforcement at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

"If I was still sitting in my chair today," said Turner, who retired as head of the enforcement agency two years ago, "I'd be looking at who at HP had knowledge of this and when did they develop that knowledge."

I actually appreciate iCarly entering the race. It would be so boring watching Chuck DeVore play the Washington Generals to Barbara Boxer's Harlem Globetrotters. iCarly will add a dash or two of corporate failure, espionage, illegal trade practices and possible indictment, all the while giving the state economy a stimulus by spending all her money in defeat.

Campaign Update: CA-Sen, CA-Gov, CA-10

A few campaign items that will hopefully tickle your fancy this morning.

• CA-Sen: According to the San Jose Mercury News, former HP CEO Carly Fiorina is "seriously considering challenging" Barbara Boxer for the US Senate. Yeah, that would be challenging, wouldn't it? What a fearsome figure she casts, as a failed corporate CEO who got a $25 million dollar golden parachute while laying off half her company! Who was 20 points down to Boxer in the last poll! "Corporate CEO who got giant bonus for bad work" doesn't seem to me to be the profile of a political challenger anytime soon.

I'm still holding out the possibility that this is an April Fool's Day joke.

• CA-Gov: When you are having major staff problems 14 months before the primary, I'd say your gubernatorial campaign is in trouble.

Lt. Gov. John Garamendi is saying goodbye to his senior adviser today. And whether he likes it or not, he is saying hello to speculation his upstart gubernatorial bid is struggling.

Senior campaign adviser Jude Barry, who formerly managed the 2006 gubernatorial campaign of then-state controller Steve Westly, let his new boss know that he would resign to pursue other opportunities on March 31.

On his Facebook page, Barry thanked Garamendi but didn't exactly offer an upbeat assessment of the campaign.

"I like John Garamendi and appreciate the opportunity to have worked with him and many other good people on his team, both on the campaign and in the lieutenant governor's office," he wrote. "But at this point, I've done all I can to help him. It doesn't feel right to just hang around the campaign. I wish John and the campaign good luck."

According to CalBuzz, Garamendi has yet to find campaign co-chairs or finance co-chairs, and we all know that winning statewide costs a ridiculous amount of money and essentially a two-year campaign, if not longer. I'm toying with the idea that California ought to have a slate of regional gubernatorial primaries, to encourage retail campaigning and keep costs down in the near term, to allow a greater multiplicity of views. Otherwise we will keep getting the same old hacks and rich people running for these seats. The state is big enough so that it makes a decent amount of sense.

• CA-10: Mark DeSaulnier continues to marshal institutional support for his presumed run for Congress replacing Ellen Tauscher, earning the endorsement of Senate leader Darrell Steinberg. Though he hasn't formally announced, DeSaulnier announced plans to walk districts as early as this week. That's probably a good idea, because a new poll shows that nobody has a decent name ID in the district.

A poll commissioned by potential Democratic congressional candidate and former BART Director Dan Richard shows state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier in statistical dead heat with Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan (15 and 13 percent respectively) and Richard trailing at 7 percent.

The poll showed DeSaulnier with a 19 percent favorable approval rating compared with a 9 percent unfavorable while 23 percent did not know. The remaining 49 percent said they had never heard of him. Ouch.

Buchanan received similar numbers: 16 percent favorable approval, 8 percent unfavorable, 29 percent didn’t know and 47 percent had never heard of her.

We just saw a special election in upstate New York where over 150,000 people voted. This special election, like most in California, will be lucky to get half that many.

And The Lies And Distortions Continue

So I guess McCain has been slamming Barack Obama's ties to individuals in his orbit with ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while having his campaign manager receive millions from the mortgage giants to lobby for them against increased government regulation:

Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say [...]

...several current and former executives of the companies came forward to discuss the role that Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager and longtime adviser, played in helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beat back regulatory challenges when he served as president of their advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of 2000. Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their descriptions.

“The value that he brought to the relationship was the closeness to Senator McCain and the possibility that Senator McCain was going to run for president again,” said Robert McCarson, a former spokesman for Fannie Mae, who said that while he worked there from 2000 to 2002, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together paid Mr. Davis’s firm $35,000 a month.

After the Obama campaign decided to make an issue of this, McCain decided to shoot the messenger and claim that the New York Times is not a real news organization. Which I'm sure endeared them to their conservative base, but is pretty much a non-answer answer. It certainly doesn't address Davis' lobbying on behalf of deregulation, which matches up perfectly with the words out of McCain's mouth:

Q: In 1999, you were one of the senators who helped pass deregulation of Wall Street. Do you regret that now?

McCAIN: No. I think the deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy.

While McCain is hiding behind Obama on the subject of the Wall Street bailout and hoping not to catch any shrapnel, he has been vocal, along with key Democrats, in rejecting massive golden parachutes for CEOs of the effective companies. Which is a solid argument, made less solid by having a CEO who received a golden parachute as a member of your economic inner circle:

On NBC this morning, host Meredith Vieira noted that (Carly) Fiorina “is an example of exactly the kind of person you say is at the root of the problem.” McCain replied, “I don’t think so”:

McCAIN: I don’t think so. … Because I think she did a good job as CEO in many respects. I don’t know the details of her compensation package. But she’s one of many advisers that I have.

Q: But she did get a $45 million dollar golden parachute after being fired while 20,000 of her employees were laid off.

McCAIN: I have many of the people, but I do not know the details of what happened.

“How can you not know the details of her past? I mean, that would be awfully important,” Vieira responded.

This is a familiar dodge for McCain, feigning ignorance when challenged with a question that he knows has a terrible answer.

It's getting to be embarrassing for this guy.

Sent To The Penalty Box

In other business news, Carly Fiorina has been fired again.

Asked by a St. Louis radio station whether she thought Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin could run a company like Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina responded: "No, I don't.

“But that's not what she's running for. Running a corporation is a different set of things."

Asked about that remark on MSNBC, she made the same unprompted assessment of the GOP presidential nominee. "I don't think John McCain could run a major corporation."

She also said she did not believe Democrats Barack Obama or Joe Biden had the right business background either.

But with the economy center stage in the campaign, the words that gave Democrats easy fodder to attack the Republican ticket.

A top McCain official contacted by CNN said, on condition on anonymity, "No big deal, but not how you get on the surrogate all-star team. Very Biden-like."

“This campaign source said Fiorina would be discouraged from additional media interviews.

Another top campaign adviser was far less diplomatic.

"Carly will now disappear," this source said. "Senator McCain was furious." Asked to define "disappear," this source said, adding that she would be off TV for a while – but remain at the Republican National Committee and keep her role as head of the party’s joint fundraising committee with the McCain campaign.

In other words, kicked upstairs. And if it's anything like Hewlett-Packard, she'll get a lump sum of $20 million or so for her troubles.

I know I'll miss her...

(p.s. Considering that Joe Biden has been nothing but on point since he came on the ticket, I think "Biden-like" is really uncalled for, although in the future I look forward to this expression being "Fiorina-like")

Nobody Does It Like Fiorina

So Carly Fiorina got in some hot water for asserting that Sarah Palin couldn't run Hewlett-Packard. Then when pressed, she said that John McCain couldn't run a corporation either.

Of course, you have to understand the messenger here. Fiorina was forced to resign from Hewlett after failing to turn the company around, laid off thousands of workers during her tenure, admitted to hiding money offshore to avoid paying corporate taxes (what a patriot!), and spied on her own employees during a leak investigation:

Leak Investigation At H-P Began With Fiorina’s Tenure, And Later Erupted Into A Spying Scandal. After details of the board of directors’ intentions to fire Carly Fiorina became public in the Wall Street Journal, Ms. Fiorina “demanded a confession” from the directors. Following these demands from Fiorina, an aggressive leak investigation that resulted in a “spying scandal” commenced. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “The spying scandal dates to early 2005, when then-CEO Carly Fiorina and other directors began looking into leaks of board deliberations to journalists. After Fiorina was fired, her successor as chairwoman, Dunn, pursued the investigation, which eventually pointed to director George Keyworth. Another director, Thomas Perkins, a Keyworth ally, left the board in protest over the handling of the probe. Dunn and Keyworth also later left after the scandal became public last year.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 3/17/07]

“Extraordinary Tactics” Used In Leak Investigation, Prompting Federal Investigation. Co-CEO Mark Hurd admitted in September of 2006 that Hewlett-Packard used “disturbing” tactics in an internal leak investigation into the board of directors. The investigation began after a Wall Street Journal article revealed in January of 2005 presumably only what board members would have known—that the board was unhappy with Carly Fiorina’s performance at the. “[Hurd] offered apologies to H-P board members, journalists and others for violating their privacy, but confirmed only a few details about the tactics employed and when he knew them. The investigation to plug the leaks used a range of extraordinary tactics, including obtaining private phone records using false pretenses and tailing both a director and a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Another reporter, for CNET News.com, was sent a doctored email by H-P investigators that could provide the sender information about where it was sent.” [Wall Street Journal, 9/23/06]

H-P Employed Controversial Tactics To Spy On Employees; Employed “Security Outsourcing Inc.” and “Pretexting” Methodology. The Wall Street Journal reported, “The now-controversial tactics have been documented most clearly in 2006 with a new phase of the investigation. Security Outsourcing began gathering private phone records of directors and reporters through false pretenses, called ‘pretexting,’ said Mr. Holston. The pretexting was the subject of a Sept. 6 story in the Journal, after which H-P came under criminal investigation by federal and California authorities.” [Wall Street Journal, 9/23/06]

So when Fiorina claims that John McCain and Sarah Palin couldn't run a corporation like Hewlett-Packard, maybe she was paying them a compliment!

UPDATE: Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor: "If John McCain’s top economic advisor doesn’t think he can run a corporation, how on Earth can he run the largest economy in the world in the midst of a financial crisis? Apparently even the people who run his campaign agree that the economy is an issue John McCain doesn’t understand as well as he should."

Old Man McCain

Hey, I'm not the one making the slur (the RNC tells me that calling someone "old" is a slur, now), take your beef to the American electorate.

The top 10 answers people volunteered when asked to describe presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Monday. Included is the percentage of people who gave each answer. More than one response was allowed.

John McCain:
1, Old, 19 percent
2. Military service, 9 percent
3, Record, qualifications, 8 percent
4, Bush, 7 percent
5. Strength, 7 percent
6. Insider, politician, 7 percent
7. Iraq, terrorism, 6 percent
8. Honest, 5 percent
9. Republican, 5 percent
10. (tie) Moral/good and dishonest, 4 percent

When the guy admits that he can't use a computer, it tends to typecast him as from a different generation. But many people of advanced age, in fact the majority, happily use technology in their lives and have kept up with the times. I wouldn't call McCain old, I would call him retrograde. And such thinking is actually dangerous for the country.

And where is McCain on tech policy? Not so shockingly, the computer-free senator's campaign is not as plugged in as his rival's. In fact, his campaign website fails to address America's lagging performance on broadband access or affordability, the technological capabilities of the federal bureaucracy, or the Internet's ability to increase government transparency. "There are red flags," says Brian Reich, author of the book Media Rules!: Mastering Today's Technology to Connect With and Keep Your Audience and the former editor of Campaign Web Review, a blog that tracked the use of the Internet by candidates, campaigns, and activists.

Barack Obama has embraced the Internet, with his thunderous online fundraising and sophisticated MyBO website. (Plus, he's comfortable talking about what's on his iPod.) Unsurprisingly, high-tech leaders hail his comprehensive tech policies.

It's a major problem. America has fallen behind in broadband capacity, has failed to use the promise of technology in areas like health care and government transparency, is in danger of deleting the concept of network neutrality that would stunt innovation, and has generally seen its advantage on technology and the Internet wither. A tech policy is not just about tax breaks for the industry, it's about implementing and utilizing technology. And McCain opposes net neutrality on the advice of CEOs looking for another revenue stream:

I asked her about McCain's opposition to so-called network neutrality, proposed government rules that would prohibit Internet service providers from charging websites for faster delivery of their content. McCain is on the side of the cable and phone companies, which argue that the rules would squelch investment in new broadband networks. Obama has been a big supporter of net neutrality, a huge issue among online activists that adds to his Internet buzz factor, leading some (OK, it was us) to ask if Obama is a Mac and McCain a PC.

Fiorina said McCain understands the importance of the Internet and sees government-mandated net neutrality as a hindrance.

"There's no question that it is to our economy's benefit to have more Internet access, more broadband capability, to have this country more wired, so to speak, as we move forward.... I think John McCain understands the way to get that done effectively is by principally allowing business to get it done as opposed to a big government-mandated program. And business won't get it done unless they see sufficient return on their investment."

That's just a huge lie, which isn't surprising for Fiorina, a failed executive and professional liar who wants us to think that 23 million businesses make over $250,000 in sales when in actuality it's about 5% of that number. Net neutrality has brought untold wealth to this country and almost single-handedly created the tech boom of the mid-1990s. The incentive for telecoms to increase broadband capacity is opening up its customer base, which will make them plenty rich. Discriminating on content will make the Internet less popular, more stratified, and would funnel money to Fiorina and her pals.

McCain probably doesn't have a coherent answer on this at all. He's too busy finding the "ON" switch.

Those Pesky Hundreds Of Lobbyists

John W. McCain thought his little lobbyist problem was over when he solemnly announced new standards of conduct for his staff, asked for and received the resignations of a few employees, and jutted out his jaw so that everyone in his media base could see how forthright and scrupulous he was. Surely his barbecue buddies would decide that this was no longer an issue, and any further talk of lobbyists would be off-limits from this point forward.

Except it's not going away. For as I said at the time, for McCain to truly wash his hands of lobbyists he'd have to fire his entire campaign staff, not a few aides on the margins. If he didn't, the ties would remain, like his employment of 7 lobbyists for Airbus, which looks bad in the light of his intervening to get Airbus a lucrative Pentagon contract. One of them, Susan Nelson, is McCain's national finance director, and apparently a lobbying shop was still paying her while she was affiliated with the campaign.

Then there's his chief economic advisor Carly Fiorina, who while the CEO of Hewlett-Packard traded with Iran in violation of an international boycott.

Then there's the big one involving Rick Davis, his campaign manager:

John McCain's presidential campaign is blasting a New York Times report that his campaign manager once worked for a Kremlin-backed politician, and that McCain likely knew of his efforts.

The McCain campaign is strongly denying the paper's reporting that in 2005, a White House National Security Council staffer called John McCain's Senate office to complain that Rick Davis, at the time a GOP lobbyist, was "undercutting American policy on Ukraine" by lobbying for a Kremlin-backed politician, Viktor Yanukovich, the paper reported.

The Bush White House -- and McCain  opposed Yanukovich, whom the United States and others had accused of election fraud, and benefiting from violence and intimidation towards journalists [...]

The story also raises the possibility that Davis may have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a 1938 anti-espionage law requiring all agents of foreign powers to register with the U.S. government and disclose their activities. Davis never filed -- though according to the campaign, of course, he had no reason to do so.

The Times report is a doozy, alleging that Davis worked for Yanukovich without registering as a lobbyist, and that McCain knew about this since 2005. This is leading some reform-minded Democrats to propose a law requiring fuller disclosure of lobbyists who argue for foreign clients. It's a great way to wedge McCain, and Sen. Obama has already signed on to close the loophole that keeps such activities in the dark.

Under current law, Washington lobbyists can hide their dealings with foreign businesses and governments. This bill will close that loophole and establish a new standard for disclosure.

Barack is taking this important stand against powerful interests, but he can't change Washington without our help.

Sign our petition to stand with Barack on Lobbying reform:

http://my.barackobama.com/lobbyistloophole1

While Barack Obama is working to change the culture in Washington, John McCain has turned a blind eye to the lobbyist loophole.

He has to -- his Senior staff includes lobbyists who have used the loophole to hide their foreign clients, and McCain's fundraising strategy relies on huge checks from Washington Lobbyists and special interest PACs.

Barack's campaign is different. He has never accepted contributions from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs, so Barack is only accountable to ordinary people like me and you.

I don't know about all that, but clearly McCain is accountable to a much higher power. Lobbyists have managed his policy on issues like FISA and more, and they're completely entangled in his camapign apparatus. He deserves to be slammed for this.