Whitman Gets a HUGE Bailout As Santa Clara Co. Acknowledges Registration In 1999

Meg Whitman was seriously on the ropes for her apparent lack of voting or even registering to vote until she was 46 years old. Her contradictory and downright puzzling alibis and statements after the fact were utterly mockable, and Chris Kelly did the honors, as he's wont to do. But all along, Whitman was looking for a lifeline - some discrepancy in the reporting that she could use to muddy the entire story, to "prove" that the Sacramento Bee was wrong in their reporting, even if 99% of the story remains true. She has found that lifeline.

Republican candidate Meg Whitman was registered to vote in Santa Clara County for nine months in 1999, Santa Clara elections officials said today, admitting that they supplied inaccurate information to The Bee and other news organizations on the issue.

The Registrar of Voters had previously told The Bee and other media outlets that there was no record of Margaret Cushing Whitman being registered to vote or voting in Santa Clara County in its current voter registration database, on its older microfiche records, or in a separate database of canceled voter registrations.
On Monday, Whitman's campaign said its own team had last week discovered a previously unknown record of Whitman being registered to vote. They said they found it in an archived Santa Clara County voter registration database [...]

DFM then found an archival voting registration record for Whitman on an old back-up file of the county's 1999 registration records not available to county staff, he said.

"The back-up file confirmed that Ms. Whitman was registered to vote in Palo Alto from February 8, 1999 to October 4, 1999," Moreles said.

Importantly, no votes took place in Santa Clara County between February and October 1999. And while Whitman, according to the Registrar of Voters, re-registered in a different county sometime after that, there is not yet a record of such a registration - at least not until 2002.

The point is that this doesn't fundamentally change the story about Whitman's voting record. She still hasn't produced the full records on her own; still hasn't confirmed any registration or vote prior to 1999, when she was 43 years old; still hasn't accounted for the "I clearly remember voting in 1984" remark she made on Fox News yesterday; still hasn't clarified numerous contradictions in her evolving set of stories; and still hasn't shown a voting record befitting any kind of engaged citizen.

However, she has one little data point where the Bee made a mistake. And she's sure to use that to try and discredit the whole article and the whole issue. Whenever asked about this from now on, she'll start with "The Sacramento Bee article was inaccurate." And she'll be technically right. And it won't answer the question.

It'll probably work, too.

It's at least good enough for Rudy Giuliani to endorse her.

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.

Oh, This Is Going To Be Fun

Last week, Meg Whitman raised some eyebrows when she vowed to suspend implementation of AB 32, California's landmark global-warming law. This drew criticisms from the usual suspects, and also happens to be broadly unpopular in a state which supports action on climate change. It was also a thumb in the eye of the current Governor and practically the only policy on which he can claim a legacy. So Schwarzenegger came out today and said Whitman's making an idle threat that she doesn't mean.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today dismissed a vow by Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman to suspend California's landmark greenhouse gas law if she's elected to succeed him next year as "just rhetoric that is going on among the candidates."

"You will hear all kinds of stories," Schwarzenegger told an audience at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. "What will happen in reality and what they will do when they go into office is probably a whole different ballgame, and I think she will probably reconsider what she said.

"I'm sure she does not want to be counted as one of those Republicans that will want to move us back to the Stone Age or something like that," the Republican governor said. "So I would pay no attention to this kind of rhetoric."

Of course, relics from the Stone Age are the target demographic for a Republican primary, so Whitman has to say what she said. And she's not being accused of political pandering by, of all people, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Which should make for a fun weekend when the two appear together at the GOP convention in Indian Wells starting tomorrow.

Whitman's more pressing problem is that she has virtually no voting record as a private citizen, apparently having not even registered to vote prior to 2002. In an amusing moment of brazenness, Steve Poizner called on her to end her campaign as a result.

Poizner's camp issued a statement in response to the story this morning, attacking the Whitman campaign for "refusing to answer simple questions and deliberately lying to cover up the facts" and calling for the candidate to "step aside" and drop out of the race.

"It's understandable that Meg Whitman is ashamed of this record. But it's unacceptable that she continues to run from the record and deceive voters. Though there is no shred of evidence she ever registered as a Republican before 2007, she insists she did, yet she refuses to provide any evidence. Her arrogant answer: 'Go find it,' " Communications Director Jarrod Agen said in a statement. "In the history of America, no one has been elected governor of a state with Meg Whitman's 25 year history of no-show voting. She is unelectable and has tried to cover her lack of honesty with millions of dollars."

Hysterical. By the way, if you think eMeg's voting record is back, take a look at iCarly's. Quite a team they'll make on the GOP ticket next year...

Meg Whitman: Maths Iz Hard: UPDATE Arnold Enjoyes Meg Math

UPDATED at the top, as the Governor lays off 5,000 state workers, the perfect thing to get California working again. He's basically borrowing from the Whitman playbook here. See below for why that's crazy.

It's a long way until the 2010 Governor's race, but I think Calitics needs to do our part in pointing out that Meg Whitman is frequently full of crap. She's seized on this idea that California's problems can merely be solved by firing all the state employees. Now, first of all, California has the second-lowest rate of state employees per capita in the entire nation, a conveniently forgotten fact by eMeg and the rest of the swinging corporate raiders in the Yacht Party. Next, as Josh Richman explains:

“We haven’t looked hard enough at where we can cut. We can lay off 20,000 to 30,000 state employees while prioritizing public safety and teachers,” Whitman told the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce. “We shouldn’t have to lay off teachers, we need to lay off bureaucrats.”

Fact is, “cut the bloated bureaucracy” has been a GOP rallying cry for decades, and yet whenever the study, the audit or the blue-ribbon commission report comes back, we’re suddently talking about far less “waste, fraud and abuse” than they’d implied. Is there some fat to cut? Sure. Should we? Probably. Will it fix this deficit? Not even close.

The budget deficit now looks to be about $21.3 billion; it would be about $15 billion if voters approved Propositions 1C, 1D and 1E next week, but that almost certainly ain’t gonna happen. And $21 billion isn’t 30,000 jobs, as George Skelton so eloquently put it back in February:

According to the state budget document, there is the equivalent of 205,000 full-time jobs controlled by the governor. There actually are more workers than that because some are part-time. Do the math based on 16 months, since that’s now the time frame of the projected deficit, assuming a balanced-budget package could be implemented by March 1.

You could lay off all those state workers — rid yourself of their pay and benefits — and save only $24.4 billion.

Meanwhile, you would have dumped 160,000 convicted felons onto the streets because all the prisons were closed after the guards and wardens were fired. There’d be no Highway Patrol because all the officers were canned. State parks would be closed because there were no fee-collectors or rangers.

Truth is the savings wouldn’t even add up to $24.4 billion because some of those employees are paid out of small special funds that are self-sustaining.

If these people were in an empty trash bin, they'd still clamor to "cut the waste."

Let me again commend Chris Kelly's Meg Whitman week on the Huffington Post, he's doing an oppo research job that should practically ensure him a spot on any number of campaign staffs. I particularly like the part detailing the $1.78 million she stole from Goldman Sachs, which for all I know might make her a folk hero.

Next year oughta be fun.

...by the way, I'm not letting other Yacht Party gubernatorial hopefuls off the hook either, like Tom Campbell. He predictably dissembles about California's low per-pupil spending on K-12 education, making the same debunked "hey, the schools have plenty of money" claim that Dan Walters likes to peddle. Allow me to introduce them both to Julia Rosen circa April 2008, which by the way is before the even deeper cuts to schools made in the February budget agreement.

Prop. 1A: Stakeholders Line Up

I'm thoroughly unsurprised that Steve Poizner has joined Meg Whitman in an effort to out-anti-tax one another through opposition to Prop. 1A.

Specifically, the politicians don’t want you to know all the facts when it comes to Proposition 1A. This is the ballot measure that would impose a state constitutional spending limit - a concept that is supported by an overwhelming majority of Californians.

However, if the measure passes, it will also extend the huge tax increases recently approved by the legislature. Passage of Proposition 1A means that the near-doubling of the car tax, the 1 cent statewide sales tax increase, the income tax hike and the reduction in the dependent tax credit would continue for an additional two years. That adds up to an estimated $16 billion in higher taxes. It’s no surprise these taxes are not supported by the majority of Californians.

That’s why our state legislators want to keep the truth from you about Proposition 1A and they’ve stacked the deck in their favor. So when you read the official ballot description of the measure – what should be an objective description on what is being voted on - you will see no mention of the taxes. The legislative leadership wrote the ballot description themselves and intentionally omitted any reference to the tax increase extension. They made sure what you read is biased.

The Yacht Party has been so consumed with tax ideology, as if the only role of government is to decide what not to tax, that they fail to see the spending cap forest through the trees. Which is fine with me, because as Anthony Wright notes, this cap would painfully ratchet down services and make any economic revival in California extremely difficult.

The revenue forecast amount established by Proposition 1A, which limits spending from the state’s existing tax base, would be significantly below the Governor’s “baseline” spending forecast, a forecast that assumes that the cuts proposed by the Governor in his New Year’s Eve budget release continue. For example, in 2010-11, the first year when the Director of Finance would be required to calculate whether the state has received “unanticipated revenues,” the revenue cap would be an estimated $16 billion lower than the Governor’s “baseline” spending estimate for the same year. The gap would widen in 2011-12 and 2012-13 to $17 billion and $21 billion, respectively.

By basing the new cap on a level of revenues that is insufficient to pay for the current level of programs and services, Proposition 1A would limit the state’s ability to restore reductions made during the current downturn out of existing revenues [...]

Proposition 1A limits the amount that can be used from the reserve in “bad budget” years to the difference between anticipated revenues and prior year’s spending adjusted for population growth and the CPI. It does not allow the reserve to be used to support a “current services” or “baseline” budget, even if sufficient funds would be available in the reserve to do so. The discrepancy arises from the fact that the CPI – the inflation measure used by Proposition 1A – is designed to measure changes in the cost of goods purchased by households, not governments.

Thus, the CPI does not accurately measure the year-to-year increase in the cost of delivering the same level of public services. Specifically, the CPI does not take into account the fact that government spends a larger share of its budget on items – such as health care – for which costs have risen faster than the rate of inflation. Between 1990 and 2007, for example, national per capita health care expenditures more than doubled, rising by 164 percent, while the CPI for California, which measures inflation in households’ purchases, rose by just 61 percent.

The particular concern for health care is noteworthy. If the formulas in Prop 1A don't take into account medical inflation, an aging population, or other impacts--like the erosion of employer-based health coverage--then existing health programs are threatened.

Read the whole thing. These are the guts of this awful deal, what you won't hear when you call your legislator and they use buzzwords like "rainy day fund." At a time when the health care system in California frays at the edges, this spending cap would ultimately stop any progressive reform on anything that costs money, bottom line. The executive under 1A gets all kinds of new powers to make cuts, and absolutely none to raise revenues. It's Prop. 13 on steroids. That's why the Governor likes it so much.

But 1A has been structured to sidestep vigorous opposition through a series of bribes, particularly to the teacher's union. Prop. 1B, which would repay $9.3 billion dollars to schools starting in 2011-2012 can only pass if Prop. 1A passes. This has led the CTA to support all six budget measures on the May ballot, severing the united front that labor used to beat Arnold's special election measures in 2005. Interestingly, the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) will only support Prop. 1B, and in a pique of schizophrenia, denounced 1A as a "power grab" by the Governor.

Of course, the CFT is substantially smaller than CTA. And while the California Nurses Association's opposition to the whole special election ballot is noble and appreciated, ultimately some of the stakeholders with money will need to enter the arena. We leave a shameful legacy to the children of this state if the spending cap passes.

CA-Gov: Way-Too-Early-Field-Isn't-Even-Set Poll Coverage!

Two polls were actually released today on the 2010 California Governor's race. The Field Poll did an extensive poll of the race, including favorability ratings, and Lake Research, a Democratic firm, did their own poll which included some head-to-head matchups.

Field's poll included Dianne Feinstein and I don't think the results were all that great for her. In the primary she polls well under 50%, compared to earlier polls which had her closer to that number.

Dianne Feinstein: 38%
Jerry Brown: 16%
Antonio Villaraigosa: 16%
Gavin Newsom: 10%
John Garamendi: 4%
Steve Westly: 2%
Bill Lockyer: 1%
Jack O’Connell: 1%
Undecided: 12%

Considering she's the most well-known figure in California politics, and that there won't be that many competitors in the final field, that's not a runaway at all. Plus, her net favorables with the electorate (+23) are less than Jerry Brown's (+25), despite her being more well-known (Among just Democrats, her unfavs are slightly higher than Brown's but so are her faves). If anything, this shows that she would have a tough race, maybe too tough for her to want to try it rather than luxuriate in her position whitewashing Bush's war crimes on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Without DiFi in the race, it's a packed field. Here's Field's poll:

Jerry Brown: 26%
Antonio Villaraigosa: 22%
Gavin Newsom: 16%
John Garamendi: 8%
Steve Westly: 2%
Bill Lockyer: 2%
Jack O’Connell: 2%
Undecided: 22%

DiFi's votes are, then, basically evenly distributed. Lake's primary poll (they didn't poll with DiFi) was similar:

Jerry Brown: 27%
Antonio Villaraigosa: 20%
Gavin Newsom: 14%
John Garamendi: 8%
Steve Westly: 3%
Jack O’Connell: 1%
Undecided: 27%

Big undecideds there, and obviously Villaraigosa is benefiting from being the only SoCal candidate in the field, although given his re-election performance he may have some work to do with his southern base. As for everyone else, there's time, but they're all pretty far back.

The Republican primary? Nobody's heard of any of the candidates, and the undecideds are off the charts, but it's early.

Meg Whitman: 21%
Tom Campbell: 18%
Steve Poizner: 7%
Undecided: 54%

Surprised to see Campbell that close, but it's probably just name ID; he's run statewide before. At least 63% of all voters, and at least 67% of Republicans, have no impression whatsoever of any of these candidates. Their favorables are miniscule. Given that, Poizner and Whitman will have to spend a lot of their millions just to introduce themselves to the public.

Finally, Lake Research did some (selected) head-to-heads.

Brown: 41%
Poizner: 30%
Undecided: 29%

Brown: 43%
Whitman: 27%
Undecided: 30%

Newsom: 38%
Poizner: 29%
Undecided: 33%

Newsom: 40%
Whitman: 25%
Undecided: 35%

Long story short, DiFi wouldn't have a cakewalk, Villaraigosa appears to have strength based on geographic isolation, Brown looks well-positioned, nobody knows the Republicans, and any Democrat can win.

Hiding Signs, Making Toothless Resolutions - The Yacht Party In Sacramento

The Yacht Party wrapped up their convention in Sacramento yesterday, and while they didn't censure the members of the caucus who voted for tax hikes, they did deprive them of support in future elections. There's a problem with this, of course - only Dave Cogdill and Anthony Adams are running for their seats in the next election, as everyone else is termed out. In addition, what this really prevents is slate mailers, not really anything else. It doesn't prevent mailers that candidates can buy a spot on, or funding from individual members of the party, etc. This measure is good for the "heads on a stick" crowd but not for much else. You can already see the Yacht Party trying to run away from the insanity they've enabled for 30 years.

Shortly before the voice vote, a banner reading "The Six Losers" was unveiled listing lawmakers who voted for the budget. State Republican chairman Ron Nehring quickly closed curtains to cover the sign, which was displayed behind the table of party executive officers.

Hilarious.

I eagerly await seeing how the suicide cult reacts to a gubernatorial candidate who will try to buy the election. Meg Whitman is certainly an economic conservative but differs with the base on a few social issues. Unlike with an Assembly or Senate candidate, the state party delegates will have no chance of holding the purse strings over someone like Meg Whitman.

Ms. Whitman predicted that her campaign could cost $150 million, much of it coming from her own fortune. (Forbes most recently estimated it at $1.4 billion.)

This doesn't make her unbeatable, even in the primary - Ms. Whitman, say hello to Al Checchi. But it does mean that the base will have less leverage and less relevance.

CA Campaign 2010 Odds and Ends

Just because it's never too early to get a campaign fix, here are a few items that amused, exasperated and provoked me the past few days.

• Topline political commentators still have no idea what they're talking about concerning Barbara Boxer's race for Senate in 2010. Chris Cillizza seems to think that Boxer is vulnerable to a challenge by Arnold Schwarzenegger. First of all, her approval ratings are BETTER than Arnold's. Second, there's no way he can win a Republican primary after having advocated for tax increases. His positions on health care reform and global warming and Prop. 8 don't help either, but in particular the tax position is untenable in a closed Republican primary. Chuck DeVore would slaughter him in a straight-up one-on-one matchup. The Yacht Party isn't going to line up behind Schwarzenegger. It's just not going to happen. And Arnold knows it, which is why he won't run.

• As for Schwarzenegger's successor, the great hope of the Republican Party, former eBay executive Meg Whitman, has already lost top political operatives Steve Schmidt and Adam Mendelsohn before she's even announced for the position. FAIL. Although, given Schmidt's performance on John McCain's campaign, I'm not sure you want his help. I think it's important for Democrats to make Schmidt absolute poison for any California Republican seeking to hire him.

• Meanwhile, Jerry Brown, angling for the Governor's office for a third term, is getting fund-raising help from Gray Davis. See above re: poison.

• Glenn Greenwald has been tracking Dianne Feinstein's presumed backpedaling and vagueness regarding torture and forcing all branches of government to comply with the Army Field Manual on interrogations. This bears a lot of watching. Feinstein's equivocations and turnarounds against her constituents are so perfunctory now as to be banal, but if she thinks she can get away with wavering on torture and still try to win votes, she's just flat wrong.

• This article at Swing State Project posits that Obama won 4 Congressional districts in California currently held by Republicans - Gallegly (CA-24); Dreier (CA-26); Bono-Mack (CA-45); Bilbray (CA-50). He bases this on assumptions from the county-level data, assumptions which I'm not sure can be made. Anecdotally, I heard Obama carried CA-48, so if anything the diarist may be undercounting this. Once all the data is received, we'll have a full report, but I find this too speculative to be worthy of comment.

Off The Reservation

The McCain campaign is going to war today, trying to throw a hissy fit over the coverage of their VP pick, claiming that the librul media and the "angry left" (ah, what a joy to have that back in the lexicon) is being unrepentantly sexist in their reactions, turning Sarah Palin into a martyr. The conservative base, whipped into a frenzy over the selection, loves nothing more than being permanently aggrieved, the persecuted minority, and so this will play very well with them. So will attacking the press, which is a common tool in their toolkit. Joe Klein describes this fairly well, actually.

Steve Schmidt has decided, for tactical reasons, to slime the press. He wants the public to believe that there is an unfair--sexist (you gotta love it)--personal assault going on against Palin and her family. This is a smokescreen, intended to divert attention from the fact the very real and responsible vetting that is taking place in the media--about the substance of Palin's record as mayor and governor. Sure, there are a few outliers--and the tabloid press--who have fixed on baby stories. That was inevitable....the flip side of the personal stories that the McCain team thought would work to their advantage--Palin's moose-hunting and wolf-shooting, and her admirable decision to have a Down Syndrome baby. And yes, when we all fix on the same story, whether it's a hurricane or a little-known politician, a zoo ensues. But the media coverage of the Palin story has been well within the bounds of responsibility. Schmidt is trying to make it seem otherwise, a desperate tactic.

There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.

The problem the McCain campaign is coming up against is that some of their minions are either uncomfortable with or unaware of the new talking points, leading to Meg Whitman calling the media reaction completely fair. And then there's this delightful bit of off-mike, off-message fun from none other than Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy.



The first rule of throwing a hissy fit is that everyone actually knows about it and stays on message. McCain's campaign is so erratic and flailing that they can't even pull off the one thing Republicans know how to do in their sleep.

Auctioning Off The Governorship

Because having a governor with no political experience whatsoever is working out so well, the Republicans, who have no bench to speak of, may be tapping another unconventional candidate to be their standard-bearer in 2010.

As she prepares to depart from EBay after a decade at the helm, Chief Executive Meg Whitman appears to be investigating a new career -- in politics.

Whitman has talked with top Republicans about the possibility of a run for California governor in 2010, according to three operatives who have had discussions with her. Whitman is said to be asking detailed questions about the logistics of a run and the effect she could have as governor, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal the conversations.

Whitman did not make herself available for comment. A source close to her said she had been talking with Republicans around the state and had become "fascinated" by politics in her work as a fundraiser for GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts and a former colleague of Whitman at the consulting firm Bain & Co.

As tempting as anyone close to Mitt "Who let the dogs out" Romney is to me as a chief executive, I'm thinking no.

But what's interesting here is that Whitman is not driving the discussion as much as Republican party leaders, who see nobody on the horizon that would put up much of a fight. There are a couple gazillionaires and Tom McClintock, who is more likely than any of them to win a primary. Has McClintock ever even voted for a budget? Have the others run a government bureaucracy?

I think Alan Keyes and Ted Nugent will be the next names up for speculation.