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Meyer Debuts, Dr. H Returns, Jerry Time Travels

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Today we present the latest, irrefutable evidence that America’s most talented journalists are free flowing to the web (emphasis on “free”), with the Calbuzz debut of award-winning editorial cartoonist Tom Meyer.

Meyer, who says he aimed to “entertain and exasperate readers” during a 28-year stint at the SF Chronicle, has also been published in the NYT, the WashPost, New Republic and National Journal, plus a whole bushel full of other places through United Features Syndicate.

Recipient of a Fischetti Award, the big-deal editorial cartoon competition named after the late, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist John Fischetti, Meyer also has been honored with a James Madison Freedom of Information Act Award – not to mention a couple of particle board plaques from the Peninsula Press Club. In his spare time, he likes to bet on dachshund races.

He’s quite simply one of the best in the business, a point we think is sharply underscored by today’s take on televising the Prop. 8 trial. Please join us in welcoming Meyer to the Calbuzz ranks.

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The Return of Dr. Hackenflack:

Dear Dr. H
In analyzing the Massachusetts Senate race, do you think Scott Brown’s nude centerfold photos in Cosmo were a really big factor?
– Lady Gaga, Poker Face, Tex.

Dear Gaga,
There was a MASSIVE gender gap on this issue: Men thought it a huge positive by +10, but women said it wasn’t that big a deal, only +4. Final length of victory = +5.

Herr Doktor,
I just heard Meg Whitman’s new statewide radio ad attacking people on welfare. Isn’t she a zillionaire or something – is this really the greatest good for the greatest number?
– Karl, Marxville

Dear Karl,
Please remember, the filthy rich are people, too. I’m sure she’s more than willing to give one of those welfare folks a good job grooming her horse or cleaning up behind it.

To Dr. P.J. Hackenflack
From Ellen from Malcolmsburg
Re: Women and Whitman

I just stumbled across Meg Whitman’s campaign video with testimonials about her from prominent women in politics, like Jillian Hasner, Amisha Patel, Jessica Patterson, Sara Myers and Sarah Pompei. She sounds like such a generous person!

Dear Ellen,
Yes, since everyone in the video is on her payroll, we think of it as eMeg’s very own welfare queen program.

Jerry smashe mike-curb s time-space continuum: Plenty of Calbuzzers, not yet eligible to pull money out of their 401(k)s, were scratching their heads when California’s Acting Governor, Attorney General Jerry Brown, joked in Wednesday’s “Quicktake” that he planned to suspend AB32 and compared himself in the process to former Lite Gov. Mike Curb.

A Calbuzz stroll through the dustbin of history (mixed metaphor? –ed) brought back vivid memories of Curb, the cherubic-faced record* executive-turned-future-hope-of-the-Republican party. In 1979, his first year in office, Curb carried on a campaign of political performance art, purporting to seize control of the levers of power every time Brown left California to promote his nascent bid for president, which was pretty damned often.

Curb’s dumbass guerrilla effort crashed on the evening of Wednesday, May 16, when he tried once again to assert his disputed powers as acting governor, this time suspending state standards for the content of gasoline, and pretty much making a fool of himself to boot.

With Brown in D.C. , Curb with great ceremony signed a proclamation in San Francisco, rolling back tougher-than-national standards on lead and vapor pressure in gas. Not long after, an aide discovered that the word “consistent” had been substituted for the word “inconsistent” in the signed executive order, which would have given it exactly the opposite effect Curb intended.

So he made a mad, 90-mile dash to Sacramento, for a very informal meeting with then-Deputy Secretary of State Michael S. Gagan, a favorite of Sacramento’s crowded, after-work saloon crowd, who happened to live one floor below Brown’s famous “mattress on the floor” digs in an apartment near the Capitol.

Curb was met at the curb by a trio of tipped-off reporters when he pulled up to the apartment. The group included a future Calbuzzer, who provided this chronology for S.F.’s morning paper the following day:

6:59:30 – Curb hustles into the apartment house elevator accompanied by an aide and several reporters who showed up to greet him.

As the elevator door closes, a building security guard throws it open and asks, “Who let you in?’”

“You’re holding up state business,” says the aide, explaining that the deputy secretary of state is expecting the lieutenant governor.

7:00 – As the governor’s plane approaches California’s skies, the elevator slowly creaks up to the fifth floor and Curb mumbles, “There’s got to be an easier way to make a living…This is the last thing I needed this week.”

7:02:10 – Deputy Secretary of State Gagan calls the telephone recording that gives the time, as Curb signs his corrected executive order, sitting on a leather couch below a leaded glass lamp with the word “Budweiser” embossed on it.

7:03 – As Gagan, drinking a beer, completes the legal necessities of accepting the proclamation…Curb paces in the living room of the neatly furnished apartment and answers questions from reporters.

“Some people may not understand why we did this, but I think it’s a key issue,” Curb says. “I don’t think anyone with a brain doubts this is going to produce more gas.”

For the record, SF Chronicle night city editor Michael Taylor was told by the Federal Aviation Administration later that night that Brown’s plane entered California air space at the Colorado River on Jet Airway J-10 at 7:06 pm, PST. You could look it up.

* A disk designed to be played on a phonograph (an electronic device that reproduces sound by means of a stylus in contact with a grooved rotating disk).

iCarly defies laws of arithmetic: In the wake of the Massachusetts Senate race, there are plenty of things a Republican Senate wannabe like Carly Fiorina could whack an incumbent Democrat like Barbara Boxer over – but one of them is not campaign fundraising, especially one larded with numbers that are backasswards.

“Barbara Boxer should be a very worried incumbent senator today,” sez a new press release from Hurricane Carly HQ. “Not only did Carly out-raise Boxer in just 60 days to the tune of 2 to 1, but the polls” etc. etc.

Well, not really. In fact, iCarly’s “2-to-1” claim about out raising Boxer turns out to be what Poor George W would call your fuzzy math.

In her latest campaign finance filing, Fiorina in the 4^th quarter of 2009 did, in fact, report receipts of $3.58 million, compared to $1.8 million for Boxer. Problem is, $2.5 million of the total – 70 per cent – came in the form of $2.5 million loan from Carly to herself.

In contributions, it was Boxer who out-raised Fiorina almost 2-to-1 – $1.8 million to $1.08 million.

More importantly, Babs has $7.2 million in the bank, compared to the iCarly’s $2.75 million – including the self-loan. Which helps explain how the Hurricane messed up the finances at HP so effectively during her tenure there.

Today’s sign the end of civilization is near: TMZ sez Mo’Nique’s got a leg up on the competition. (You wanna see it, you gotta follow the link.)

Tags: campaign video, editorial cartoon, editorial cartoonist, Fishetti Award, Hackenflack, Mike Curb, Tom Meyer
Posted in Barbara Boxer, California Politics, Campaign Contributions, Campaign Finance, Carly Fiorina, Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman | 2 Comments »

Boston Massacre Has Implications for California

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Whatever the loss of Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat means for the Democrats nationally and for President Obama – and they have no one to blame but themselves — this historic and politically crippling massacre (see Jon Stewart’s takedown, the best political analysis out there) carries huge potential implications for California.

While no one expects U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer to make the kind of rookie, dumbass, arrogant mistakes that Massachusetts Attorney Gen. Martha Coakley made (she’d better not suggest, for example, that Willie Mays played for the Dodgers)*, the election of Republican state legislator Scott Brown in a true-blue state like Massachusetts, suggests that anyone who looks or smells like an incumbent could be in trouble in 2010.

Senator Elect Scott Brown

No doubt, Republicans Hurricane Carly Fiorina and Caveman Chuck DeVore would have a harder time against the Democrat Boxer because as pro-life conservatives they’d have more trouble connecting to California independents.

But Tom Campbell is a horse of a different color. If he were to somehow pull out a victory in the GOP primary, the pro-choice, pro-gay rights, somewhat green, social moderate and fiscal conservative would be a genuine threat to Boxer – especially in light of the pitchfork-bearing quality of the Massachusetts vote.

Taking nothing for granted, Boxer has been raising money at a record pace for her: she brought in $1.8 million in the last three months of 2009, the campaign announced Tuesday, leaving Babs with $7.2 million in the bank at the end of the year.

The dynamics of the Massachusetts race have some potential implications for the California’s governor’s race as well. Whoever emerges from the Republican side – eMeg Whitman or Steve Commish Poisner – their goal will be to portray Attorney Gen. Jerry Brown as the insider who must be thrown out. Of course Jerry, the incumbent attorney general and former two-term governor, will do everything he can to portray himself as an outsider, newcomer and insurgent.

And in both the Senate and governor’s race, we expect the Democrats to sound a lot like one of the roving 1886 lecturers cited in “The Populist Movement” by Duke historian Larry Goodwyn:

We have an overproduction of poverty, barefooted women, political thieves and many liars. There is no difference between legalized robbery and highway robbery . . . If you listen to other classes, you will have only three rights . . . to work, to starve and to die.

Boxer and Brown — we predict — will run against the banks, the corporations and the oil companies — all of which will be lashed to their GOP opponents. Whether voters will buy it is anyone’s guess. The Coakley defeat will be massively overinterpreted by the national media (the best evidence is that it was mostly a case of a truly crappy Democratic campaign). But still, the Boston Massacre should be a cautionary tale for California Democrats.

Here’s the secret agreement: Some of the sharpest react we heard from Monday’s story about the behind-the-scenes maneuvering over the Tranquillon Ridge project came over the Environmental Defense Center’s agreement to advocate for the PXP oil company project, while receiving a $100,000 payment for reimbursement of legal fees from the firm.

“I’ve never heard of any environmental non-profit doing anything remotely like this,” said Mark Massara, a former longtime attorney-advocate for the Sierra Club.

By popular demand, we’re posting the text in pdf of the April 2008 EDC-PXP agreement here, for those who want even more detail than we gave you in Monday’s 3,000-word opus.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch: While the rest of the world was pondering the fate of Haiti and the future of the Democratic Party and health reform, the folks over at Jerry Brown headquarters were consumed by the great debate that’s ragiing from Hollywood to Brentwood: Conan vs. Jay . . . And Steve the Commish Poizner popped a bit of good news: He’s won the endorsement of former Gov. George Deukmejian, who is much preferred among GOP conservatives to former Gov. Pete Wilson, who has endorsed eMeg. Said Deukmejian: “Steve is the only candidate in this race with the right mix of experience, leadership, and vision to lead California back to economic prosperity.”. . . Minorities Need Apply: Good piece by Pete Carrillo and Orson Aguilar in the Mercury News noting that while “California reform-minded voters gave themselves the power to redraw legislative lines in California when they passed Proposition 11, the Voters First Act . . . an alarmingly low percentage of people of color is included in the pool of applicants from whom the 14 commissioners ultimately will be chosen. Less than 20 percent of that pool now is people of color, even though they make up 60 percent of California’s population.” . . . Condolences: We note with sadness the passing of Margaret Whitman, 89, of Lexington, Mass., mother of Meg Whitman.

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* Some of Coakley’s mistakes: She said the Taliban were gone from Afghanistan. She said Red Sox hero Curt Schilling was a Yankee fan. And when asked why she was not spending more time with voters (Brown had stood outside Fenway Park greeting hockey fans who attended a special outdoor game between the Boston Bruins and the Philadelphia Flyers) Coakley said, “As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?”

Tags: agreement, EDC, Jon Stewart, Margaret Whitman, Martha Coakley, PXP, Scott Brown, Sierra Club, Ted Kennedy
Posted in Barbara Boxer, California Politics, Campaign Finance, Carly Fiorina, Chuck DeVore, Tom Campbell | 3 Comments »

PPIC: Fear, Loathing and Crusty Beating eMeg

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

You might expect the campaign obsessed hacks at Calbuzz to jump all over the governor’s horse race numbers in the new PPIC poll out today (this just in: eMeg Whitman is waxing her Republican opponents and Crusty the General Brown is besting her in the fall).

But then you would underestimate our humanity and our sweeping political world view.

The numbers that really jumped out and grabbed us by the throat – numbers that may well drive all politics in the coming year – are these: Half of all adult Californians and nearly six in 10 people with incomes under $40,000 are concerned that they or someone in their family will lose their job in the next year.

Although that’s an 8-point decline from January, it’s accompanied by a 6-point increase in the number of respondents who volunteered to pollsters that their family has already experienced job loss (11%, up from 5%).

Even worse, 65% — nearly 7 in 10 people – say they are concerned about having enough money to pay their rent or mortgage. In Los Angeles, it’s 73%!

Who gives a damn about the governor’s race if you’re worried about paying the rent?

Or, as Mark Baldassare, president and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California put it: “Voters have more immediate concerns than who is going to be the next governor.”

The horse race: Then again, who cares about voters? We’re junkies.

First, the GOP contest, where six in 10 Republicans likely to vote either never heard of or have no opinion about former eBay CEO Meg Whitman – the leader of that race.

In fact, undecided is the leader with 44% — followed by eMeg at 32%, former Congressman Tom Campbell at 12% and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner at 8%.

Good thing eMeg has spent something like $20 million*, because it’s gotten her favorable all the way up to 22%, compared to a 19% unfavorable rating. Sheesh. Not much better than Campbell’s poor-man’s 16-14% but a lot better than Poizner’s negative 9-18%.

An intriguing question: Voters tell PPIC they’d prefer a candidate to raise money from supporters (49%) rather than using their own money (39%) –- among Republicans it’s 55-38%. Might we witness a bit of cognitive dissonance between voters worried about paying the rent and candidates spending like $100 million of their own money to become governor? Ya think?

Check out this nifty chart:

Which do you view most positively?		Party			Ideology
A candidate using mostly …	Likelies	Dem	Rep	Ind	Lib	Mod	Cons
…his or her own money
to pay for political campaigning?	39%	42	38	29	33	42	41

…money collected from supporters
to pay for political campaigning?	49%	46	55	50	56	45	50

Or, by the time the deal goes down, will voters actually care who paid for what?

Who will vote? Calbuzz thinks the PPIC poll, solid as it may be, has a couple problems, most notably one that a public pollster can’t easily address: the sample of likely voters in the survey is a) inferred from an undisclosed cluster of questions asked of respondents and b) reflects the official statewide distribution of registered voters, not the likely 2010 electorate which — in our view — will be about 60% age 50 and older.

So when we look at PPIC’s November match-up of Jerry Brown versus Meg Whitman — reported at 43-37% — we think it’s likely 2-to-5 percentage points too low for Brown and too high for Whitman. Those numbers seem to us to reflect a sample that’s too young – only 44% age 55 and older — and that gives Brown a 35% favorable and a 36% unfavorable. (Most other surveys we’ve seen are closer to the Field Poll, which had Crusty’s favorable at 44-29%.)

We asked PPIC for some crosstabs by age group and they gladly obliged us, including one that shows Brown beating Whitman 44-34% among likely voters age 55 and older – strengthening our point.

BTW, the PPIC poll has Brown beating Campbell 46-34% and Poizner 47-31% among all likely voters. They were selected, we’re told, like this: “A respondent is defined as a likely voter based on certain combinations of factors, including citizenship status, voter registration, past voting, intention to vote, and different levels of education and political interest dependent on length of time at their current residence.” Hmm.

What kind of experience matters? So who cares if the general election match-ups are a bit skewed against Crusty? Brown’s fundraising doesn’t depend on early polling at this point and neither does eMeg’s. The only people to whom it matters are Campbell and Poizner — and since Poizner has just committed to spend $15 million, he’s probably not that concerned either.

More interesting is the finding that, in choosing candidates for statewide office like governor or Senator, voters are evenly divided, at 43%, on whether they prefer candidates to have experience in elected office or experience running a business.

Democrats prefer experience in office 60-26% over experience running a business; Republicans, just the opposite, 61% prefer experience running a business and 27% prefer experience in office. Likewise, liberals and conservatives hold opposite views.

Independents — 17% of the likely voters in the survey — prefer experience in business 50-32%. But moderates — who comprise twice as big a chunk of the electorate — lean toward experience in office 44-39%.

The bottom line: All of which may ultimately prove of marginal interest if voters’ economic circumstances don’t improve by November. Slightly more than half the voters think their financial situation will get better in the coming year.

Good thing, because while 63% of those making $80,000 or more say their personal finances are excellent or good, 65% of those making $40,000-80,000 say their financial condition is only fair or poor. A staggering 85% of those making less than $40,000 say their financial situation is fair or poor.

Any candidate for high office not acutely aware of and attuned to how Californians feel about their financial and economic circumstances will clearly be seen as out of touch and irrelevant.

Six in 10 voters say the most important issue facing the people of California is jobs and/or the economy; Gov. Schwarzenegger’s approval rating is 27%, the Legislature’s is 17% and a staggering 75% of the people say the state is going in the wrong direction.

Looks like a “change” election is on the horizon. But what does that mean? Who will define it? Which candidate will personify change and which will be saddled with the status quo?

To find answers to these and life’s other persistent questions, don’t miss a single edition of Calbuzz.

*That’s a guess, of course. Officially, before her expensive radio campaign, eMeg had spent $6.2 million as of June 30.

Tags: approval rating, crossstabs, PPIC poll, unemployment
Posted in Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Economy, California Governor's Race, California Politics, Campaign Finance, Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman, Steve Poizner, Tom Campbell | 2 Comments »

Money Down: What Poizner’s Cash Play Means

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

We’re not sure what possessed Steve Poizner to put on his web site a digital running total that publicly tracks his ballyhooed effort to raise $50K in December – without having at least two-thirds of the amount committed and ready to post, to feed the perception of momentum.

Whatever it was, however, we’re pretty sure it was just about the worst idea since the Edsel.

One look at Poizner’s version of the Jerry’s Kids telethon thermometer Monday – when it stood at a pathetically droopy $12,885 – - is all you need to know about why The Commish suddenly announced he would go to the wallet for $15 million of his own fortune to sustain his lagging campaign for governor.

“He didn’t have any other option,” said one Republican insider. “There were rumors all over Sacramento that he was going to drop out.”

Poizner’s $15 million move will likely stop the bleeding among the gossip-mongering cognoscenti (which he’s done for the moment, at least to judge by campaign flack Jarrod Agen’s success in getting the entire press corps to write exactly the same story Monday). It also may calm some of his current supporters, whose restiveness in the face of his failure to move the needle in the polls seems to have led to the we-got-her-right-where-we-want-her memo his campaign e-blasted last week, which smacked of desperation.

Having made his move, Poizner now faces two other, far more difficult tasks: a) actually writing the check he’s promised (we’ll be watching) and b) figuring out how to spend the dough wisely. We’re also not convinced that $15 million is enough to make the kind of splash – positive, negative or both – he needs.

As we noted last week in our six-months-out-from-the-primary analysis, which said flatly that Poizner needed to fork out some serious cash soon, Whitman’s scorched earth strategy of spending Whatever It Takes means it’ll cost Single Digits Steve big bucks just to get even with the name ID she’s already bought, let alone cruise by her.

With Her Megness trouncing The Commish in early opinion surveys, his campaign will surely be tempted to go negative on her out of the box, in an effort to stop her momentum.

This would be an unforced error, in our view, since the only people in California who have any idea who he is right now are the disheveled hordes who read Calbuzz, and he doesn’t want the first thing they learn about him to be that he beats up girls; beyond that, eMeg’s low-profile but expensive radio campaign has laid down a pretty good ground cover defense against a sudden air attack.

On the other hand, putting a couple million bucks behind positive spots, based on his recent “Back from the Brink” bio web ad (slight digression: Who thought that was a swell title? Not a few political junkies assumed he was talking about his campaign, not the state of California) is the safe and conventional play, but it remains to be seen whether the centerpiece of Poizner’s campaign, his ”bold” 10-10-10 budget proposal, has enough juice to give him some movement.

Certainly, the specificity of his tax cut plan gives him one potentially sharp contrast with eMeg, who has said the state’s current tax structure doesn’t need remaking. He’s also likely to compare her broad brush plan to can 40,000 state employees unfavorably with his more detailed proposed for a 10 percent spending cut.

One potential game changer in the GOP race, of course, would be Tom Campbell abandoning his bid for governor to jump into the Republican primary race for Senate.

Campbell spokesman James Fisfis confirmed to Chris Cillizza of the WashPost that Tom Terrific has been approached to make the switch. It makes sense in a lot of ways: Campbell by nature is more of the legislative than executive type and, even though he’d still face an uphill battle raising money against Carly Fiorina, it would be an easier slog than trying to make his way in the Daddy/Mommy Warbucks primary against eMeg and The Commish.

We talked to Campbell about the rumors Monday and, for the first time in his life, he was tight lipped:

“I am in the race for governor. I have nothing to add to that.”

Try as we might to twist ourselves into contortions to get more out of him – i.e. “When you return from your holiday vacation (he and his wife are headed to Panama to study intensive Spanish – honest, you could look it up) will you still be a candidate for governor?

“I am in the race for governor, and I’m not really going to add to that.”

Which smells suspiciously like he’s seriously looking at it. If he goes, about one-quarter of the GOP vote, which is where he’s been polling, is suddenly up for grabs.

On the natural, that would seem to benefit Poizner, just because he would gain from anything that shakes up the race, and he comes closer to Campbell’s egghead appeal. But as Poizner tacks hard right, Campbell’s politics are closer to Whitman’s, so she’d likely at least a split his vote.

For months, Poizner has been trashing Whitman for spending millions of her own money on the race, charging that she thinks the election “is an eBay auction.” Now, he’s finally made his own bid, and the key question is, will it prove too little, too late.

Tags: Back from the Brink, Jarrod Agen
Posted in California Governor's Race, California Politics, Campaign Contributions, Campaign Finance, Carly Fiorina, Steve Poizner, Tom Campbell | 6 Comments »

Three Key Questions About the Governor’s Race

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Six months before California voters select the major party candidates for governor, the basic shape of the race has become clear, with Jerry Brown having cleared the field of Democratic rivals and Meg Whitman’s early spending establishing her as the Republican favorite.

In both the Field Poll and the LA Times/USC survey, eMeg leads among the Republicans from 2-8 points over Tom Campbell, with Steve Poizner in third, a single digit presence in the race.

Within that framework, Calbuzz sees three key questions, the answers to which will largely determine if the fundamental dynamics change significantly between now and June 7:

1. Will Steve Poizner spend serious money in the next 60 days to establish himself as a legitimate rival to Whitman?
2. Will Jerry Brown begin to assemble a serious and professional 21st Century campaign team or will he continue to drift along like a leaf in a Lao Tzu parable?
3. How will change be defined in 2010? Who will claim the mantle of change and who will be saddled with the status quo?

Let’s break it down:

Poizner: Threat or Menace? As we noted last week eMeg’s willingness to toss big money on the table a year before the primary voting has started to create a perception that she is the presumptive Republican nominee. Latest example: although it’s still way early, the Democratic Governor’s Association last week identified Whitman as one of its five top GOP targets for 2010 and has committed at least $1 million to defeating her.

While we have great admiration for Tom Campbell’s intelligence and commitment to public service, at this point, we still don’t see a way for him to pull together the resources needed to make a serious run at mega-bucks Meg. That leaves Poizner, whose personal fortune provides him the table stakes needed in this rich-blood race, potentially positioned to emerge as a conservative foil to Whitman.

Team Poizner eblasted a memo last week trying to calm supporters fretting that The Commish has already waited too long to get into the game; on one level, Camp Steve’s people are right, of course, that the calendar shows it’s still very early and there’s plenty of time to make up last ground. At the same time, however, Whitman’s demonstrated willingness to spend Whatever It Takes means it’ll cost major bucks just to get even with the name ID she’s already bought, let alone cruise by her by sharpening contrasts in ways that convince conservative GOP primary voters.

In other words, by waiting…and waiting…to throw at least a couple million into the pot, Poizner runs the risk of falling out of striking distance and never being able to catch up.

An important corollary of this question: Does eMeg have a glass jaw? Whitman so far has seemed terrified to show up for tough duty –- making herself accessible to California reporters and engaging her rivals in face-to-face debates — so she remains an unproven commodity in being able to handle the (HT to Jack Kavanagh) rough and tumble of a campaign.

She’s headed back to Delaware this week to testify in a major lawsuit involving her tenure at eBay and it also remains to be seen whether her record as a business executive comes back to bite her the way former airlines executive Al Checchi’s did in 1998.

What’s next for Jerry? Campaign potholders, distributed door to door? Bumper strips reading “This time he’ll get it right?” How about campaign photos posing with Linda Ronstadt next to the ‘74 Plymouth?

Brown so far seems content to settle for ’80s-era campaign strategy and tactics, and determined to try to ad lib and improvise this way back to the Horseshoe. He’s expressed contempt for political consultants and he’s a notorious tightwad.

As we’ve argued, however, it’s well past time for him to hire a cadre of political professionals to manage and focus his scattershot un-campaign for governor. True, he’s been successful to date in quietly raising several million while keeping a low profile; his big haul down in Bel-Air at the $32-million home of Sandy Gallin, former agent for the likes of Dolly Parton, Barbra Streisand and Michael Jackson, in particular was “a huge success and a great launch for his effort down here,” as noted by organizer Andy Spahn, Steven Spielberg’s former political ramrod.

Still, even if Brown raises $20 million before the primary, that will barely match what Whitman as spent already. He simply can’t compete with her for money, so he needs to beat her on message and tight campaign organization, or she could bury him in paid media.

Brown has considerable strength among voters 50 and over and among minorities, especially Latinos, as the guy who put Cruz Reynoso on the Supreme Court and Mario Obledo in his cabinet, who marched with Caesar Chavez, signed the Agricultural Relations Act and dated the aforementioned Ms. Ronstadt all the way to South Africa.

While it would be short-sighted to underestimate Brown’s non-monetary assets, the widespread anger of voters towards elected officials, coupled with the, um, complexities of his own political record, create a treacherous landscape which will require strategic thinking and planning that goes well beyond his abiding belief in his own ability to wing it.

Who represents change? The numbers speak for themselves: More than two-thirds of voters think California is on the wrong track, the same number who think the governor is doing a lousy job, while the number of those who like the Legislature hovers barely above 10 percent.

Clearly people are disgusted with government and want change. But what kind of change, and who best represents it?

Whitman is already banging Brown as a washed-up hack and vivid symbol of what’s wrong with the Sacramento political class. But will voters see her as what’s needed – a moderate Republican outsider from the private sector promising to reform the Capitol – after seven years of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s failed star turn in the same movie?

While it may be hard to portray iconclast Brown as behind the curve, how exactly does his ceaseless seeking of office — eight years as governor, former Secretary of State, Attorney General, Oakland Mayor, Democratic Party Chairman, three-time candidate for president and US Senate wannabe –- make the case that he’s just the guy to shake things up?

Poizner and Campbell have both put forward detailed and specific plans for addressing the state’s budget woes; putting aside the fiscal arguments on the merits, neither has come close to making a convincing political case that they’ll be able to implement their ideas.

Amid the chronic deficits, unshakeable political gridlock and the voter’s utter cynicism, nobody yet has offered a game-changing political and policy formulation for leading California out of its historic decline. And that’s the biggest unanswered question of all.

Tags: change, consultants, Democratic Governor's Association, Field Poll, political professionals
Posted in California Governor's Race, California Politics, Campaign Finance, Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman, Steve Poizner, Tom Campbell | 3 Comments »

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Archive for the ‘Campaign Finance’ Category

Meyer Debuts, Dr. H Returns, Jerry Time Travels

Boston Massacre Has Implications for California

PPIC: Fear, Loathing and Crusty Beating eMeg

Money Down: What Poizner’s Cash Play Means

Three Key Questions About the Governor’s Race

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Archive for the ‘Campaign Finance’ Category

Meyer Debuts, Dr. H Returns, Jerry Time Travels

Boston Massacre Has Implications for California

PPIC: Fear, Loathing and Crusty Beating eMeg

Money Down: What Poizner’s Cash Play Means

Three Key Questions About the Governor’s Race

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