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Meyer Looks at Meg’s Big Bill (With Apologies to Ben)

Saturday, August 14th, 2010

“Silence is not always a sign of wisdom, but babbling is ever a folly,” Ben Franklin once said. Good advice in politics, especially as we watch the race for California governor. Jerry Brown’s Zen-like silence may or may not be an indication of wisdom: we’ll know soon enough. We’ll also know whether voters conclude that the $100 million or so Meg Whitman has spent on TV ads is nothing more than babbling.

Today, Calbuzz Editorial Pen Swordsman Tom Meyer memorably looks at In Meg We Trust.

Was It Something We Said? We now have the official, break-our-hearts turndown from the Whitman campaign. Jerry Brown accepted but eMeg won’t join us, FlashReport and Calitics in a debate. Here’s the break-up letter:

Silver bullet for silver fox? Mega-kudos to Brian Joseph, the OC Register’s man in Sacramento, who’s dug out one helluva’ story about Jerry Brown’s pension or, more precisely, the mystery surrounding Jerry Brown’s pension.

Joseph, who spent weeks trying to get to the bottom of how many actual public dollars Krusty is due for serving, variously, one term as secretary of state, two terms as governor and one term as attorney general, came up with one terrific yarn about a scam called the “Legislators Retirement System” which was so shady it got banned by Proposition 140, the 1990 term limits initiative. Almost, kinda, sort of…

Turns out that a handful of very lucky, past and present state officials are still benefiting from the LRS’s very generous terms including, apparently, one Edmund G. Brown, Jr. Seems that it’s impossible to report the exact terms of Gandolf’s pension because the administrators of the double secret pension fund are sworn to confidentiality about its workings, terms and beneficiaries. Move along, nothing to see here…

Sterling Clifford, Brown’s otherwise talented campaign flack, has been doing a lot of very intensive tap dancing, in a vain effort to deflect Joseph’s multiple and persistent questions about the matter, but his answers to date have been, to put it charitably, unsatisfactory.

Calbuzz sez: This is a very serious issue for Brown, and he needs to quickly, and with great transparency, get all the facts out into the public domain about a) what he’s getting; b) what’s he already got and; c) what’s he due to get in the future from state pension systems. As soon as possible. Also: really, really fast.

Brown has done textbook nice work in making hay about the one-for-the-books City of Bell scandal. With its outrageous details about local government salaries, benefits and tax rip-offs, Bell has become the highest of high-profile symbols of government profligacy, in a year of taxpayer utter disgust with government.

But if Brown doesn’t come clean, and soon, about the terms of his pension, this issue will bite him the ass, big time, for three key reasons:

1-Brown’s recent outrage and self-righteous investigations of the Bell matter are going to turn to dust, of the most hypocritical kind, if it turns out he’s been living large on exactly the same kind of scam as he’s publicly decrying – and probing – in that community.

2-The official secrecy surrounding Brown’s pension belies the narrative he’s pushing about his fundamental integrity and monkish frugality, in contrast to Meg Whitman’s corporate greedhead lavishness, in a way that will rebound to her considerable advantage in what you like to call your Reasonable Man Test.

3-Brown’s so-far brilliant, gravity-defying ability to position himself as the outsider to eMeg’s insider – using political ju-jitsu to use her extraordinary campaign spending to portray her as the de facto incumbent in the governor’s race – will fall to earth and crash.

Should she put a couple million bucks behind ads that assail him as a dissembling, evasive scumbag who, with his pension, is ripping off the public trust he’s proclaiming in public he’s working overtime to protect (not exactly a long shot possibility) Brown will spend the next month trying to explain the pension checks he’s cashed, not to mention the stubs sitting in the top drawer of his bureau.

Somebody – most logically the Orange County Register – should file a Public Records Act request to get all the documents and data pertaining to Brown’s state pension (damn the personnel information exemption). Calbuzz will gladly lend our extraordinary financial resources to assist any such legal effort as a friend of the court.

Ballad for a Friday night after getting dumped by eMeg:

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Posted in Bell scandal, Blogosphere Debate, California Governor's Race, California Politics, Campaign Advertising, Campaign Contributions, Campaign Finance, Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman | No Comments »

Within eMeg’s $110 Million: Payoffs to Sock Puppets

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

After one day off, we just couldn’t help ourselves:

Spend a little time reading through Meg Whitman’s 691-page campaign finance doorstop report and you understand why Jerry Brown is, as one of his friends put it Monday, “completely freaked out” about how much money is being spent against him. And why he has tried to get every Democratic consultant in the western hemisphere (and a couple of Republicans, too) to work for him for free.

Whitman has now reported spending nearly $100 million, including $14.7 million just between June 8, when primary season ended and June 30, the end of the reporting period. That doesn’t event count July, when she upped her ad buy. Which means that when you count her monthly expenses and her TV and radio time, she’s likely spent about $110 million to date.

Meanwhile, Brown spent about $633,000 in the reporting period and has somewhere around $24 million in cash on hand – enough to cover his campaign and maybe eight to 10 weeks of advertising.

That eMeg is swamping Krusty in spending is not even a story any more. The fun is in the details. Here’s how Steve Harmon of the Contra Costa Times broke it down:

– $64.3 million on TV, radio, and the Web;
– $9.7 million on campaign consultants (including $861,474 on her chief strategist, Mike Murphy, a total that engulfs the $83,000 that Jerry Brown has spent on his campaign manager, Steven Glazer);
– $7.6 million on campaign literature and mailings;
– $4.3 million on campaign workers’ salaries and health insurance (including $196,000 to communications director Tucker Bounds, plus $7,349 for meetings and appearances; — – $125,311 for spokeswoman Sarah Pompei, plus $29,481 on travel and lodging; and $101,288 plus $3,968 on travel and lodging for top oppo-research aficianado, Dan Comstock; and, not to be overlooked, $125,480 to the former San Jose Mercury News political reporter, Mary Anne Ostrom);
– $2.8 million on information technology;
– $1.7 million on office expenses (AT&T should be very thankful for the business);
– $1.2 million on polling and research;
– $1.9 million on Whitman’s travel, lodging, meetings and appearances;
– $953,726 on staff/spouse travel/lodging;
– $847,155 on fundraising events;
– $703,869 for legal and accounting services;
– $521,067 on phone banks;
– $462,030 on postage, deliver and messenger services;
– $230,000 to the California GOP;
– $120,910 on print ads (the true tell on Whitman’s feelings about the importance of newspapers).

Some of those categories, by the way, actually understate how much was spent because the coding on the finance report isn’t entirely consistent. For example, there’s another $1,755,610 to Tokoni – the online company run by Meg’s former retainers at eBay – that’s not included in the above mentioned $2.8 million.

And there are a few items that ought to set some eyebrows on fire. There’s the $1,000 payment on June 30 to Eric Hogue, the conservative commentator who presents himself as a journalist but who, in fact, is nothing more than an underpaid flack for Whitman’s campaign. (LA radio stars John and Ken of KFI-AM are pretty pissed off about that. “There’s nothing lower than a paid whore who runs a radio show supported by a political candidate,” said John.)

And for those of you who remember our report back in February when we noticed “a $20,000 disbursement to Green Faucet LLC, which is an investment firm owned by Chip Hanlon and also the parent company of his Red County web sites.” The payment was made about a week after Hanlon fired Aaron Park, the erstwhile, paid sock puppet for Meg rival Steve Poizner.

Hanlon told us the $20k was nothing more than payment for advertising on his web sites, but we found another Red County advertiser who was paying about $300 a month for the same size ad, suggesting the subsidy was something more than it was supposed to appear.

No shit. Since then, Meg has paid Hanlon’s Green Faucet $15,000 a month for a total now of $110,000! Which means everything you read on Red County and from Hanlon is nothing more than sock puppetry of the first water.

A cursory glance through our email in-basket finds at least 10 times when eMeg’s flacks have sent out missives to reporters telling them to be sure to catch a piece by Hanlon or Red County. As if it were some sort of commentary by a neutral party. NOT!

BTW, our friend Jon Fleischman over at FlashReport – the most closely read conservative aggregator and platform – has pulled in a mere $18,765 in ad revenue. Which, World Headquarters for High Finance, Arbitrage and Bake Sales reminded us in a memo, IS $18,765 MORE THAN MEG (OR JERRY) HAS PAID FOR CALBUZZ ADS!!!

Why, we wonder, has Meg paid $3.8 million Arena Communications for campaign literature when the company is based in Salt Lake City, Utah? What’s that $60,000 to Arthur Laffer and his company all about? How do you rack up a $222,000 phone bill? Why send $3.7 million for direct mail to Majority Strategies in Pointe Vedra, Florida?

We’re just asking.

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Posted in California Governor's Race, California Politics, Campaign Advertising, Campaign Finance, Meg Whitman | 5 Comments »

Fun with Numbers: Has eMeg Got Her $$’s Worth?

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Three months before the November election, there appear to be three major beneficiaries of Meg Whitman’s over-the-top spending in her campaign for governor.

Unfortunately for the Republican nominee, none of them is her.

With new campaign finance statements scheduled to be filed this week, eMeg is expected to report somewhere north of $100 million in boodle disbursed to date, as the big winners in her extravagant spree are:

1-The vast legions of consultants, strategists, pollsters, flacks, purse carriers and other geniuses who have raked in tens of millions in fees, commissions, salaries and investments, in the greatest political bonanza since Bill Clinton auctioned off one-night stands in the Lincoln Bedroom..

2-The TV stations of California, which have been on the receiving end of Whitman’s own special economic stimulus program for nearly a year now. How’s this for a stat: Dan Morain noted in his Sunday SacBee column that she’s run 25,727 broadcast and cable ads since the primary alone. That’s not to mention Google and other online ad venues, where it’s all but  impossible to miss  that ubiquitous picture of Young Meg looking oddly forlorn for someone with that much loot in her future.

3-Carlos Alvarez and Dale Ogden, the Peace and Freedom and Libertarian candidates for governor, respectively, who each soared into the low single digits in the most recent PPIC poll, as Whitman drooped to her lowest level of support among likely voters in 2010.

In an interview the other day, her Democratic rival Jerry Brown said that eMeg has “wasted most of her money on unwise and ‘lavish’ spending,” according to our old friend Jim Boren at the Fresno Bee.

That’s easy for Krusty to say, even though his own poll numbers haven’t exactly taken flight; given that he’s spent a total of about 12 cents, it’s hard to argue with his point, if you overlay Whitman’s spending with some of her trend lines in the PPIC survey.

1-Among likely voters back in January, eMeg was backed by 36%, to Brown’s 41%; after inundating the airwaves for six months with the equivalent of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick’s GDP, the bottom line is that she lost two points of support, and now trails Brown 34-37%.

2-Among independent voters, Whitman’s investment has netted little.  In January, she trailed Brown among the crucial group of decline-to-state voters, who hold the balance of power in a statewide race,  28-36%; two months later, she’d surged, largely on the strength of a 14-point swing among independents, who then favored her over Brown, 43-37%. But after dominating the airwaves in the months since, she again trails among independents, 28-30%, according to the PPIC survey released last week.

3-Among female voters, who should represent a big opportunity for Whitman, the first Republican woman ever nominated for governor, there’s a stubborn gender gap. In January, she trailed Brown, 30-44%, among women; today, after going to the purse for $2 million a week, week after week, she’s behind 28-40%.

By far, Whitman’s strongest showing came in PPIC’s poll in March – before she unleashed the bulk of her advertising in her successful primary race against Steve Poizner. At that point, she led Brown 44-39% overall and, as noted above, ran ahead among independents; among women, she was within the margin of error.

But after that, all that bashing Poizner on the airwaves through the primary (while getting bashed by him to the tune of about $20 million) yielded was a 10-point shift in Brown’s favor; she trailed the AG shortly before the June 8 election by 37-42%. Now, after six weeks of incessant attacks against Brown, her level of support has eroded by another three points, though she’s also knocked him down by five.

As a practical matter, the Whitman campaign has yet to give voters a strong, positive reason to be for her, or even told them much about her, except a) she used to be the CEO of eBay; b) she’s not Steve Poizner or Jerry Brown; c) she thinks jobs and schools are really important; d) she believes illegal immigration is a terrible thing, except when she doesn’t; e) did we mention she used to be the CEO of eBay?

The Field Poll shows a trend line in the Whitman-Brown head-to-head matchup that’s more favorable to eMeg than the PPIC survey, but it nevertheless also suggests that the more people hear about her, the less they like her.

Back in January – when her image was still a relatively clean slate for voters – less than half of those surveyed had an opinion of her, but among those who did, it was positive 25-20%. Today, more than 80 percent have an opinion about her, but it’s negative – 42% unfavorable and 40% favorable.

Calbuzzards ain’t exactly masters of the universe when it comes to matters of high finance, but for such a smart businesswoman, that $100 million out the door seems to us, all in all, like kind of a mediocre investment.

Of course, the funds spent by Brown’s labor pals  — especially California Working Families — may not have done much to boost Krusty’s favorables, but they seem to have helped prevent Meg from developing much of a favorable image among swing voters, either.

All this helps explain why Team Meg recently launched a new charm offensive, trying to cozy up to Latinos  (a strategy undercut by widespread reporting about her prevarication on the issue, not to mention her own conflicting statements to news outlets) and with a new, positive 60-second radio ad (which once again focuses almost exclusively on her eBay experience).

Obviously, with three months to go, and uncounted millions to spend, there’s plenty of time and resources for Team eMeg to make some adjustments that offer a more effective criteria for her candidacy than they have to date.

But the closer it gets to Labor Day, when Brown intends to start putting his own ads on the air, the more difficult it becomes for her to exploit her greatest asset, the unprecedented edge she enjoys in money and, by likely extension, in campaign mechanics and organization as well.

The big piece that’s still missing from eMeg’s big-spending campaign is a compelling positive message, along with the answers to two, lingering key questions:  Why, exactly, does she want to be elected governor so badly that she’s willing to spend $100 million+ to do it? And why, exactly, is that a good deal for voters?

Inquiring minds want to know.

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Posted in California Governor's Race, California Politics, Campaign Advertising, Campaign Contributions, Campaign Finance, Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman | 8 Comments »

Chris Finnie: Missing the Point About the Grassroots

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

By Chris Finnie
Special to Calbuzz

Calbuzz recently highlighted a link to Talking Points Memo, headlined “Meg Whitman Copies Obama Playbook,” in which writer Christina Bellantoni argues that eMeg’s $150 million campaign for governor is effectively cloning the president’s 2008 operation.

Sorry boys, but Christina’s clueless.

Whitman may be trying to duplicate some of the tactics of Obama’s game plan – appealing to Latino voters in Spanish, targeting young professionals and spending a lot of money (none of it, notably, raised from the grassroots as Obama’s was).

But like so many other politicians before her, she is missing the essence of the matter: she doesn’t have an emotional connection to voters. And that makes all the difference

Where’s the passion?

Before Obama, the new Internet Age, from-the- ground-up campaign was pioneered by Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential race. Political pundits were agog at his online organizing and fundraising; suddenly every candidate wanted Meetup groups and web organizing tools.

But they were often disappointed with the results, because they mistook the map for the territory.

I volunteered with both the 2004 Dean campaign and the 2008 Obama campaign. In both, many of the volunteers felt passionate about the candidate and connected with the other volunteers we worked with. Both campaigns did a great job of fostering those connections. And they persist to this day.

The Obama campaign did a masterful job of using technology, not as an end in itself, but to harness and organize this grassroots fervor. When I worked phone banks in Boulder Creek, California, the communication from Chicago was always quick and seamless. And the personal acknowledgements to volunteers were frequent and effective.

California Rep. Maxine Waters, D-L.A., highlighted this point at the state Democratic convention in April. Speaking to grassroots activists at the annual “Red to Blue” fundraising dinner to support Democratic candidates in Republican strongholds in California, Waters said campaign strategy is too often all about money, specifically the money that campaign consultants make on media buys.

She said that as long as the primary way consultants make money is by buying media, candidates will be increasingly distant from voters, and office holders isolated from the people they represent.

Harkening back to the days of real town hall meetings, Waters spoke of the passion generated when candidates meet in storefronts with local volunteers who walk and phone for them – not as a staged media event, but as a central part of their campaigns.

What Whitman lacks

Meg Whitman may have as many paid staff members on her communications team as the Obama campaign fielded in all 50 states. But I doubt she’ll attract many people to sit in a neighbor’s living room and make phone calls to support her.

She will continue to burn through vast amounts of money on media buys but never achieve the grassroots support Obama was able to mobilize.

She will not have anyone like the woman in Florida who rented an office and recruited volunteers, then presented the whole thing to the Obama campaign when they finally made it to her state.

The Whitman campaign may boast of having volunteers, but they’re little more than a prop. The plain fact is that there is no space in her corporate-style marketing campaign for personal communication or authentic interactions with the candidate. Heck, she won’t even talk to the media. As Rep. Waters told us, this approach will increasingly isolate her from the people she needs to reach.

Whitman also will not gain that support because California voters simply don’t like her. Not even the Republicans, which the Field Poll numbers show clearly.

Sure, they’re willing to let her try to buy the election; the party is grateful that she’s spending her money, and not theirs. But she doesn’t have a message that grabs anybody and nearly all of what she’s proposing has been tried by Schwarzenegger and hasn’t worked.

Most importantly, she has no emotional connection to voters.

Unfortunately for us Democrats, Jerry Brown’s campaign has been nearly as lackadaisical in building grassroots support, and is just beginning to reach out to volunteers.

John Laird = Obama Playbook

As Brown begins to do this, he would be well advised to look to the effort of former Assemblyman John Laird, who’s running in the special election race for the coastal 15th state Senate district.

Laird has volunteers setting up phone banks for him on their own all over the state. Community groups that came together through Organizing for America groups are making calls, as are statewide volunteers from Democracy for America.

Groups all over the state are organizing themselves, or working as a group to support Laird’s bid, because they feel passionately about his progressive ideas and having him in the Senate to enact them.

Republican Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee may have more money, with millions from big oil and insurance companies, and a big assist from Whitman, but Laird has the sort of people-powered campaign every politician should hope for.

Chris Finnie sits on the Santa Cruz County Democratic Central Committee, serves as a delegate to the California Democratic Party, and is a member of the CDP Organizational Development Committee. She became a political activist in the Howard Dean campaign in 2004 and has since served on campaign staffs with Cegelis for Congress and McNerney for Congress. She also volunteered in the Obama campaign in 2008, and has acted as a volunteer consultant with several other campaigns. She ran for chair of the California Democratic Party in 2009 as what Calbuzz called the “bran muffin” candidate. In her spare time, Chris works as a freelance marketing copywriter.

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Posted in California Governor's Race, California Politics, Campaign Finance, Campaign Technology, Jerry Brown, John Laird, Meg Whitman, Sam Blakeslee | 6 Comments »

Reilly: Underfunded Brown Bid a Case of Deja Vu

Monday, July 26th, 2010

By Clint Reilly
Special to Calbuzz

Today Calbuzz presents an assessment of the campaign for governor by political strategist, businessman and columnist Clint Reilly. Reilly, whose advice Brown recently sought, has a unique perspective, having run the 1994 gubernatorial bid of the Democratic candidate’s sister, Kathleen, against Pete Wilson, who enjoyed a substantial fundraising advantage.

Jerry Brown was the keynote speaker at the recent Gay Pride Breakfast in San Francisco. To loud cheers from the highly partisan audience, Brown talked human rights and revved up the crowd for a tough election in November. I was there with my candidate wife, Janet Reilly, who is running hard for the Board of Supervisors, to fill a seat previously held  by Dianne Feinstein and Gavin Newsom.

To my surprise, after delivering his address, Brown took a seat next to me and proceeded to question me intensely for more than half an hour about my experience running his sister Kathleen Brown’s campaign for Governor in 1994.

The Attorney General had clearly read carefully an April 2010 article I had written in the editions of all 11 Bay Area MediaNews newspapers. I had predicted that Whitman would launch a withering assault right after the primary and present him with a classic Hobson’s Choice:

Should he deplete his limited war chest and respond with tough attacks on Meg Whitman’s record and character in order to prevent her from building an insurmountable lead over the summer? Or should he keep his powder dry until after Labor Day and be competitive on television during the crucial weeks of September and October?

I had faced the same dilemma as Kathleen Brown’s campaign consultant and chairman in 1994.

That year, I was hired after a late primary campaign shakeup to take over Treasurer Brown’s sagging bid for governor against incumbent Pete Wilson. First, we had to defeat John Garamendi‘s persistent primary challenge. Garamendi was easily dispatched, but the skirmish sucked up valuable campaign resources.  Kathleen’s two-year march to the primary had exhausted precious money as well.

I took a poll following her June primary victory; the euphoria was quickly killed when I discovered that Gov. Pete Wilson had built a 10-point lead over Brown.

Public polls at the time still showed Brown with a lead over the governor. But Wilson’s unanswered negative commercials during his uncontested primary had clearly worked. Initially, I was skeptical and did something I had never done in more than two decades in the business — I took another poll.

Unfortunately, the second results were worse.

As we entered July, Wilson had a huge financial advantage. Ultimately, he outspent us by more than 2.5 to 1 during the time I worked for Brown. Because we were decisively behind during the summer, I chose  to spend money during the summer to close the gap. I reasoned that unless we were in the hunt after Labor Day, Wilson’s vastly superior bank account would bury us at the end.

As it turned out, bad polls in September and October choked off our fundraising and we ran out of money.

Of course I was roundly criticized. Press, pundits and competitors fed on my carcass for weeks after Brown lost badly in November. At a well attended UC Berkeley post mortem on the race in January 1995 – ill-timed on my birthday – I remarked that I felt like a cadaver at my own autopsy.

Campaign professionals – like sports coaches – are often confronted with two unpalatable options. In 2006, then-Treasurer Phil Angelides faced the same problem against Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Behind in the summer and drained from a costly primary against Steve Westly, Angelides decided not to compete with Arnold’s summer television blitz. By September he was so far behind that he was never able to make a dent in the Governor’s 20-point lead. Angelides lost by the same margin as Kathleen Brown.

This year, Whitman’s summer assault by mid-June had already closed a post primary gap of 5 points enjoyed by Brown. Now, I believe, she has already moved ahead by mid-single digits . Unanswered, she will reach Labor Day with an insurmountable head start.

Back to my discussion with Jerry Brown at the Pride breakfast. Here’s what I told him:  His $30 million war chest isn’t enough to beat a billionaire who will spend more than $100 million.

The real choice is not whether to spend his limited funds now or later, it is to convince his allies in labor to power a substantial independent expenditure campaign during the summer that keeps him in the game; the total Democratic campaign must be roughly equal in dollars to Whitman’s in order for the attorney general to prevail.

But Brown faces two stumbling blocks: First, public employee unions are an easy target in an era when  budget deficits in Sacramento are a major issue in the November election. Second, Whitman’s money might have boomeranged like Al Checchi and other previous, wealthy self-funded candidates. But recently, voters seem to be accepting her huge personal spending as just another form of legitimate funding.

The lesson of Kathleen Brown’s 1994 failed campaign and Phil Angelides’ 2006 debacle is the simple rule followed by generals in battles through the ages: the side with superior resources usually wins.

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Posted in California Governor's Race, California Politics, Campaign Advertising, Campaign Finance, Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman, Pete Wilson | 10 Comments »

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