Archive for the ‘Illegal Immigration’ Category

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How Meg’s Citizenship Stand Hurts Among Latinos

Monday, August 9th, 2010

Can we get a fair program where people stand at the back of the line, they pay a fine, they do some things that would ultimately allow a path to legalization?
– Meg Whitman on citizenship for illegal immigrants, October 2009

So, I don’t think we should have blanket amnesty, and I am not for a path to citizenship. I have been very, very clear on that.
– Meg Whitman on citizenship for illegal immigrants, August 2010

By flatly declaring herself against a path to citizenship as she did on the John & Ken radio show last week, Whitman has, we believe, undercut her chances – slim as they might have been – of winning a significant portion of Latino votes in November.

Instead, she has driven voters to Jerry Brown who, if not entirely consistent on immigration issues himself, clearly supports developing a process by which illegal immigrants can become U.S. citizens.

This is a big blunder on the part of the Whitman campaign – on par with their decision to oppose AB 32, California’s pioneering climate change law, supported by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and iconic GOP figures like former Secretary of State George Shultz.

Together, these moves have hurt Whitman’s ability to capture votes from two constituencies that could decide the election: independents and Latinos.

Calbuzz has explained several times our thinking about independents and the environment.  See here, here and here, for example.

So now let’s recap why opposing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants – a position Whitman took to shore up her standing with conservatives during the GOP primary fight with Steve Poizner — is such a mistake by eMeg.

Since June 2007, the Public Policy Research Institute of California has asked this question:

If you had to choose, what do you think should happen to most illegal immigrants who have lived and worked in the United States for at least two years? They should be given a chance to keep their jobs and eventually apply for legal status or they should be deported back to their native country.

Overall, among all adults, the responses have ranged from 69% to 74% in favor of a path to citizenship. Democrats have hovered at about 80%, independents at about 70% and even Republicans at about 50%.

But among Latinos, the response has consistently been about 90%. This is not even a question for Latinos. It’s a core, baseline article of faith in the Hispanic community that illegal immigrants should not be deported but should, instead, be given an opportunity to become citizens.

eMeg has been on both sides of the issue, giving Working Families for California – the pro-Brown labor-funded independent committee – an opening to create a commercial accusing her of being “dos caras” – two faced. She is, in their Spanish language TV spot, “sin verguenza” – shameless.

Whitman’s problem is that as good as she might appear to Latino voters on jobs, education and cutting bloated government, she is on the wrong side on a deeply-rooted issue that is fundamental among this population. In fact, she agreed on the John and Ken radio show the other day that illegal immigrants should have to leave the country and apply through legal channels before they can become citizens.

John & Ken: No illegal alien is going to get any citizenship unless they leave the country and apply through the process. Is that true?

Whitman: Yes.

How are you going to make them leave the country and come back through legal channels, Meg? Shove ‘em, right? Unless her plan is to politely ask all the illegal immigrants to please, kindly go back home, we’re talking deportation.

Bill Whalen, the very smart former speechwriter for Pete Wilson who is now at the Hoover Institution, doesn’t believe Whitman has killed her chances with Latinos. First of all, he argues, “Every politician in America who opens their mouth and tries to speak lucidly about illegal immigration usually ends up creating problems for himself or herself.”

That’s true for Brown as well as Whitman, he believes, because illegal immigration is a Gordian Knot in American politics.

Moreover, he asks, “Is Jerry going to campaign on this?” Brown, he argues, has to be careful not to push too hard on the issue for fear of a backlash from voters who are not sympathetic to illegal immigrants.

But if PPIC’s numbers over three years are correct, Brown has little to fear from California voters by advocating a process by which illegal immigrants can become citizens: that’s a popular position. So why wouldn’t Brown campaign – among Latinos – on the issue?

If Brown ever campaigns at all among Latinos. Or anyone else.

For another – somewhat more partisan — look at this issue, you can read what the Oracle of Cruickshank has to say about it over at Calitics.

BTW: Camp eMeg argues — gamely but unconvincingly — that when Whitman said she was for “a path to legalization” she never meant “citizenship.” “She was talking about a temporary guest worker program,” the volcanic eMeg spokeshuman Sarah Pompei told John Myers.  “She supports a comprehensive solution that secures the borders first and includes a temporary guest worker program. What she said today is entirely consistent with what she has said before.”

Consistent, indeed.

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

Conservative Yakkers: eMeg “Lying” on Immigration

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

The ferocious pounding that high-profile conservative talk show hosts John and Ken delivered to Meg Whitman over the L.A. airwaves this week clearly shows that her blatant untruthiness isn’t playing any better on the right than it is on the left.

“If she’s going to lie to us during the engagement process then the hell with her,” said John Kobylt, one half of the dynamic duo featured on the “John and Ken Show.”

“Schwarzenegger did it after he was elected twice and then he screwed us over on taxes… She’s lying about immigration already.”

Broadcast with partner Ken Chiampou, the popular 2-7 p.m. weekday show on KFI-AM 640 is a loud megaphone for hardcore conservative views, and a Southern California touchstone for right-wing true believers. Mindful of offending the base of the party, Republican candidates of all stripes, including eMeg, covet the political blessing of the frequently entertaining, if ideologically reflexive, pair, who routinely savage GOP apostates by calling for their “heads on a pike.”

This week, their own heads exploded over the recent spectacle of Her Megness gussying herself up as some kind of moderate on immigration issues, mounting a lavish, Spanish language multi-media campaign to woo Latino voters with kissy poo noises after portraying herself in the GOP primary as the fiercest scourge of illegals since Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

John and Ken’s outrage over Whitman’s transparent, 180-degree pandering was the focus of verbal assaults from them and their radio callers this week, as they also festooned their home page with a huge “Stop the Pandering” headline above a call to action for listeners to contact the Whitman campaign and “tell her not to take your vote for granted and to stop pandering to the open borders crowd!”

Worse for Whitman, the pair sputtered their splenetic outrage on the evening newscast of mainstream KTLA-TV, where they also have a regular gig. In the episode, which the Brown campaign posted on its You Tube page the yakkers railed at eMeg for trumpeting her opposition to Prop. 187, for claiming in a Spanish language op-ed that she and Krusty are virtually identical on immigration – “Jerry Brown is for amnesty!” – and for running away from the tough stances she struck in competing for right-wing support against the vanquished Steve Poizner in the GOP primary. Said John:

She’s saying one thing in Spanish and the exact opposite in English…She is going to lose white, black and Asian votes and she’s going to lose a lot of conservative and independent votes, if she’s acting as if she’s two-faced, and she’s acting like she’s two-faced…You can’t believe the anger coming out of the phone lines.

Said Whitman spokeshuman Sarah Pompei:  “Meg is the best candidate for Californians who want to see the laws enforced and our borders secure.”

Up next: eMeg unveils new $2 million ad buy charging John and Ken, Calitics and the CNA are conspiring to stop her – She refuses to be stopped! – from letting California fail.

Three dot lounge: Interesting to note that Carly Fiorina’s sudden flip flop on unemployment insurance legislation in the Senate comes the same day a new Field Poll shows that 53 percent of her supporters – not to mention 71 percent of independents – agree with Roe v. Wade, which the Hurricane has promised to undo. Must be getting kinda’ lonely out there on the far right, despite what horse’s ass George Will sez about how mainstream she is…

You know you’re in trouble when the New York Times enlists recalled governor Gray Davis to give you advice on how to save your sinking presidency…News to us that you can still watch the great Watergate-era newspaper show “Lou Grant” in reruns. Where the hell are Rossi and Billy when you need ‘em?…Kudos to Coco Timesman Steve Harmon for flying the MSM flag  on calling eMeg to account for her Pinocchio prevarications.

Today’s sign the end of civilization is near: Major bust for minor blockbuster.

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Posted in California Governor's Race, California Politics, California Senate Race, Campaign Advertising, Carly Fiorina, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, Meg Whitman, Newspapers, Proposition 187, Senate race | 2 Comments »

Press Clips: Hardnose vs Brown Nose Reporting

Saturday, June 26th, 2010

If the emperor has no clothes – simply avert your eyes: In a week when Michael Hastings reminded everyone what tough, hard nose reporting looks like, here comes David Brooks to offer a perfect glimpse of its polar opposite: brown-nose reporting.

As the world now knows, Hastings’ long-form piece in Rolling Stone not only uncovered a culture of arrogance, disrespect, and trash-talking of civilian leadership in the inner circle of General Stanley McChrystal, but also disclosed a festering conflict at the highest levels over U.S. policy in Afghanistan between and among senior military and government leaders.

But to Brooks, the mealy-mouthed moderate conservative columnist for the NYT, Hastings is simply a gossip-mongering ruffian without the refined sensibilities and fine feelings needed to appreciate and understand that matters such as a general’s actual candid words are never to be reported.

“The most interesting part of my job is that I get to observe powerful people at close quarters,” Brooks began (gag).

General McChrystal was excellent at his job. He had outstanding relations with the White House and entirely proper relationships with his various civilian partners in the State Department and beyond. He set up a superb decision-making apparatus that deftly used military and civilian expertise.

But McChrystal, like everyone else, kvetched. And having apparently missed the last 50 years of cultural history, he did so on the record, in front of a reporter. And this reporter, being a product of the culture of exposure, made the kvetching the center of his magazine profile.

By putting the kvetching in the magazine, the reporter essentially took run-of-the-mill complaining and turned it into a direct challenge to presidential authority. He took a successful general and made it impossible for President Obama to retain him.

Imagine – Hastings put it in the magazine. We can only imagine how much inside stuff Brooks gets to see and hear in the course of his days, but never bothers to share with his readers because then…he wouldn’t get to “observe powerful people at close quarters.”

This just in: Hastings fires back at Brooks:

More on McChrystal media: The pink-shirted, purple-tied Brooks wasn’t the only journo whose nose was put out of joint by the Hastings report. Jon Stewart’s crew put together a nice mash-up of Beltway MSM types tut-tutting about the bombshell piece.

When the camera cut back to him after the video clips, Stewart had donned a pair of black horn rims which he removed to solemnly announce, in best Cronkite-doing-JFK-assassination style: “At approximately 11:04 Eastern Standard Time, the American news media finally realized they kind of sucked.”

Politico also enmeshed itself in the thorny issue of journalistic ethical relativism, with a long report on the Rolling Stone piece that included this intriguing paragraph:

McChrystal, an expert on counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency, has long been thought to be uniquely qualified to lead in Afghanistan. But he is not known for being media savvy. Hastings, who has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for two years, according to the magazine, is not well-known within the Defense Department. And as a freelance reporter, Hastings would be considered a bigger risk to be given unfettered access, compared with a beat reporter, who would not risk burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal’s remarks. (emph. ours)

In other words, a beat reporter would never be so craven as Hastings and actually report the truth – it might affect his access!

It’s instructive that a few hours after the piece was posted, Politico substituted a new version, with that very telling paragraph excised.  Jay Rosen had a swell time dissecting that move over at Press Think.

The Brooks/Politico journalism thought police were joined in their pecksniffian pronouncements by the Washington Post, which weighed in with a yarn quoting anonymous military sources accusing Rolling Stone of having violated rules of attribution in getting their scoop.

McChrystal was betrayed when the journalist quoted banter among the general and his staff, much of which they thought was off the record.

Hastings and his editor both vehemently deny this, but you can be sure that it’s only a matter of time before that view becomes received Beltway wisdom about the Rolling Stone piece. After all, if the story was worth reporting, surely someone worth knowing would have reported it.

Huh? Wuddhe say? Kudos to California Watch for their terrific new feature “Politics Verbatim” which provides horse’s mouth statements and speech excerpts from candidates in the 2010 campaigns. It’s a great resource because, with apologies to Joe Mathews, it really does matter what politicians say.

Because Calwatch is focused on the importance of language in politics, however, we were surprised to find this construction in their recent piece on Meg’s hypocritical new ad on immigration:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman set to work courting support among Latinos last week after a brutal GOP primary battle that forced her to take a loud and hard stance against immigration issues.

Forced her? Really?

Actually eMeg chose to follow Steve Poizner down the shameful road of immigrant bashing in the primary because she was far more worried about her own skin than in standing up and taking a principled position on the issue. And why not – she knew she could then just turn around and spend a couple million more trying to fool people into thinking that’s what she’d done all along. Forced? C’mon.

On the other hand, Joe: Hat tip to Joe Matthews for exposing some of the falsehoods in eMeg’s snappy 60-second, golden-oldies hit on Krusty the General. Under the Calbuzzworthy headline “Shocker! In New Ad Meg Whitman comes Out Against Prop 13″ Joe writes:

Should we feel sorry for Brown? Not in the least. By failing to level with voters about Prop 13 and the need to change the budget system it helped launch, Brown created this opening for Meg’s mischief. But Whitman is doing a disservice to the state and its voters (particularly those who don’t know or don’t remember the history) by misrepresenting a very important and relevant part of our state’s.

She should pull the ad. In the meantime, California TV stations, which have an obligation to serve the public, could honor that obligation by refusing to run it.

Say Cheez: The truth isn’t the only thing eMeg is doing violence to with her new ad:  Cheezburger Network, host of a batch of popular sites including FAIL blog, is crying rip-off. Cheezburger founder Ben Huh has issued an angry statement assailing the Whitman campaign for appropriating the look and feel of their “fail” schtick for the anti-Brown ad:

We want to make it VERY clear that FAIL Blog nor the Cheezburger Network had any involvement or knowledge of the Whitman campaign use of a screenshot of FAIL Blog. In fact, the screenshot portrayed in the video never existed because the Whitman campaign faked the content within the screenshot. FAIL Blog or the Cheezburger Network has never been involved in any endorsement of any candidate or political party and do not plan to do so….

We demand a written apology from the Whitman campaign and the removal of the video.

No response from Team eMeg on the demand.

No news is, eh, no news: Calbuzz, FlashReport and Calitics have received no word from Jerry Brown or Meg Whitman in response to our invitation for a Sept. 13 debate between them — with us as questioners.

The hall is booked at San Jose State; the university, the college of Social Sciences and Commonwealth Club of Silicon Valley all have agreed to sponsor. But the candidates seem: 1) too scared of this group of questioners to step up; 2) sure it’s a bad idea to respond before knowing if the other camp is too chicken to respond; 3) not entirely happy with Calbuzz for all our, um, irreverence about them; 4) all of the above. No worries, we have Plan B up our sleeves. Stay tuned.

Redeem this, buster: Just what do you have to do to disqualify yourself for a job in the fancy-pants world of network and big-time cable news? Judging from CNN’s embrace of disgraced NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer, it seems like the Road to Redemption is getting shorter by the minute. It took Marv Albert two full years! (as if that was enough) before NBC put him back on the air calling NBA games after he plead guilty to misdemeanor assault and battery when, during his felony trial for forcible sodomy, DNA tests proved that bite marks on the victim’s back were his. Now CNN will give Spitzer a show with convenient conservative columnist Kathleen Parker (formerly of the San Jose Mercury News, btw) after the whoring former gov blogged for Slate and analyzed for MSNBC. Sheesh.

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Posted in Blogosphere Debate, California Governor's Race, California Politics, Campaign Advertising, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, Meg Whitman, National Politics, Proposition 13 | 1 Comment »

Shady Sam’s Sham Oil Stance Meets Mariachi Meg

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

Sam Blakeslee, the San Luis oilman Californians just can’t trust, is trying to steal a victory in a state senate special election next week by posing as a moderate Republican environmentalist who loves sea otters even more than snowy plovers.

The blunt truth of the matter, however, may be found in 1) the lavish oil industry contributions shoveled into committees that have forked out more than $1 million to back Blakeslee’s play in the 15th State Senate district and 2)  the photograph posted at the top of this story, which shows exactly where the San Luis Obispo GOP assemblyman stood on offshore oil drilling in California – before that whole Gulf of Mexico thing made it really, really unfashionable.

The ex-Republican assembly leader is locked in a fierce battle with former Democratic assemblyman John Laird for the seat representing a vast, coastal district that was held until recently by Lite Governor Abel Maldonado. It’s up for grabs in a special next Tuesday that Governor Schwarzmuscle carefully scheduled to benefit Blakeslee.

Laird just now is getting his brains beat in on TV, as BP, Chevron and other oil companies have rushed to finance pro-Blakeslee independent expenditure committees that are paying for a barrage of ads portraying the Democrat as a crazed socialist considerably to the left of Hugo Chavez.

As we predicted a year ago hardliner Blakeslee now is falsely positioning himself as a pro-green centrist, in an effort to capture a majority vote in the June 22 primary, which would make a scheduled August run-off unnecessary.

“I have been an environmental Republican throughout my service,” Blakeslee told Paul Rogers of the Mercury News. “I’ve never wavered on my protection of the coast.”

Excuse us while we build a tower big enough to hold our laughter.

In claiming he’s against offshore oil, Blakeslee tries to hide behind the skirts of a group of Santa Barbara environmentalists, who pitched the controversial Tranquillon Ridge offshore project, just off the coast of the southern end of the 15th SD, as a way to trade new drilling now for less in the future (for those who’ve been hanging out on Uranus for the last year, our primer on T-Ridge is here).

In truth, Blakeslee’s history on the issue is strongly at odds with the greens who originally co-sponsored the plan with the Houston-based oil company PXP; his record shows a drill-baby-drill determination to ram through the offshore project via a series of backdoor legislative schemes intended to overrun the opposition of the State Lands Commission, which rejected T-Ridge and which, oh yeah, for decades happens to have had sole jurisdiction over state oil leases.

After the lands commission turned down the project in 2009 – saying its promise to end future drilling was unenforceable because the power to do so ultimately resided with the scandal-ridden federal Minerals  Management Service, Blakeslee plotted with fellow knuckledragger assemblyman Chuck DeVore of Orange County to end run the commission, a move that the enviros who originally backed the proposal categorically opposed.

First, the dynamic duo tried to pass AB23*, a DeVore bill that was gutted in the Senate and amended to approve PXP’s T-Ridge project by creating a special exemption and removing it from the jurisdiction of the lands commission.

On July 24, 2009, the measure was heatedly debated in the Assembly and defeated with only 30 of the house’s 80 members supporting the drilling plan.

Within hours, however, the official record of that vote was expunged, in what appeared to be a Blakeslee maneuver to remove his fingerprints from the pro-drilling bill. Despite the insistence of Blakeslee flacks  that he had nothing to do with erasing the vote, the reliable Anthony York of Capitol Weekly shortly after the deal went down cited sources who traced the move to the then-Republican Assembly leader.

For those still pondering the mystery of that expunged vote, Calbuzz is pleased to provide an historic photo of it, which clearly shows Blakeslee among the small minority of those who backed the special interest legislation to expand drilling off the coast.

Two months later, Blakeslee was back at it, this time gutting one of his own bills in an effort have his way on behalf of the oil industry, which would have liked nothing more than to use T-Ridge as a foot in the door to overcome California’s four decade opposition to any new leases authorizing more drilling in state water.

It’s instructive that when Laird kicked off the 15th SD special election campaign by whacking Blakeslee on offshore drilling,  the Republican a) began trying to finesse the issue by touting his purported environmental credentials and b) changed the subject, unloading a barrage of ads assailing Laird as a menace to society on fiscal issues.

Among other crimes, it seems, Laird accepted pay raises that, um, Blakeslee also took (Jon Coupal, the doctrinaire Howard Jarvis acolyte who’s plugging Blakeslee in the IE ads, might want to check out some of Sam’s squishier statements on tax increases here and here).

Then again, if Shady Sam is willing to masquerade his environmental record to get elected, why should anyone be surprised that he’d gussy  himself up on other issues as well?

eMeg proves she has no shame: Guess who’s nowhere to be found on Meg Whitman’s new website Latinos for Meg or in her new Spanish language TV commercials? Former Gov. Pete Wilson, her campaign chairman and iconic diablo among Hispanics in California.

Gone is the “tough-as-nails” Meg Whitman who sternly warned “No amnesty. No exceptions” as she vowed to send the National Guard to the border, crack down on sanctuary cities and generally lower the boom on illegal immigrants.

As Calbuzz predicted a couple of weeks ago: Whitman, now desperate to capture Latino voters she didn’t give a rat’s ass about in the Republican primary, suddenly is all about jobs and opportunity, sunshine and inclusiveness. Oh puhleeeese. What a fraud.

The only uncertainty, as we noted before: “…we don’t know whether, by spending untold sums on campaign propaganda, Whitman will be able to obliterate the collective memory voters might otherwise have of her lurch to the right.”

Oh, and Meg dropped another $20 million into her war chest this week, bringing her personal “investment” to $91 million.

Now, Mariachi Meg is emphasizing that she was never for Proposition 187 (although its chief advocate is her campaign chairman) and she opposes Arizona’s check-their-status law. Maybe – after spending serious money to make the point that she opposes amnesty – she’ll go back to arguing for a guest worker program where people “stand at the back of the line and pay a fine.”

So far no one is up on TV countering Whitman’s hypocritical drive to round up Latino voters. But the Democratic Governor’s Association did create a 90-second video in Spanish called “Send Pete Packing.”

As Tenoch Flores, on behalf of the California Democratic Party,  argued:

“Apparently Meg Whitman forgot that we live in the age of ‘the internets’ – ironic for someone who touts her eBay experience. She sincerely believes a Spanish language advertising buy is going to gloss over the fact that together with her mentor Pete Wilson, and her rival Steve Poizner, she engaged in the greatest Republican Party anti-immigrant hate-fest this side of the California-Arizona border.”

The CDP also reprised Meg’s “Tough as Nails” radio ad and even offered up a Spanish translation. Said Flores:

“Latino voters in California haven’t forgotten about Pete Wilson’s anti-immigrant crusade, and that was over ten years ago. They certainly won’t forget that Whitman used them as foil to get herself through the GOP primary less than a month ago.”

Unless Whitman’s beyond standard quantum limit spending can wipe away all memory.

* In an earlier version of this post we had a typo that labeled AB23 as AB32 — a super mix-up since AB32 is the famous climate-change bill.

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Posted in California Governor's Race, California Politics, Campaign Advertising, Environment, Illegal Immigration, John Laird, Meg Whitman, Proposition 187, Sam Blakeslee | 5 Comments »

eMeg’s Pander on the Right Hurts Her Against Brown

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

By lurching to the right to defeat Steve Poizner for the Republican nomination for governor, Meg Whitman has eroded her standing among  independents and moderates, women and Latinos – all key constituencies in a general election against Democrat Jerry Brown.

In March, before she pulled out all the stops to outflank Poizner among conservatives over illegal immigration, abortion and taxes, to name a few issues, Whitman’s favorable-to-unfavorable ratings were 25-21% among independents, 29-25% among moderates, 30-21% among women and 25-12% among Latinos, according to the USC/LA Times poll.

But in the May survey, eMeg’s favorable-unfavorable standings were 25-39% among independents, 29-42% among moderates, 28-37% among women and 22-31% among Latinos. (Get a pdf of the crosstabs here.)

Likewise, in March Whitman was running ahead of Brown 44-41% in a simulated general election match-up, including 40-39% among independents and 44-38% among women. But she now trails Brown 44-38% overall, 48-30% among independents and 46-34% among women.

“It’s not irretrievable,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC’s College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “But it puts her in a hole going forward.”

By comparison, Democrat Jerry Brown, who has been able to avoid the crossfire between Whitman and Poizner, has maintained positive favorability ratings among these key groups – 33-26% among independents, 38-29% among moderates, 38-29% among women and 33-16% among Latinos.

In a conference call with reporters last week, Whitman’s chief strategist, Mike Murphy, addressed the issue of his candidate’s loss of support among Latinos, arguing that the former eBay CEO would not suffer permanently because Latinos are not single-issue voters.

But Whitman’s embrace of the Neanderthal Wing of the GOP has only barely been driven home to key constituencies, and only from the right – not yet from the left. Except for the populist attacks on her by Poizner and the California Democratic Party over her connections to Goldman Sachs, most of the TV ads aimed at her have tried to make her out to be a squishy liberal.

While Poizner has apparently bet his entire end-game strategy on the belief that one’s stand on the Arizona anti-immigration law – he’s for it, Whitman’s against it — has become the dividing line in the Republican primary, that idea seems wrong-headed.

According to the survey, 50% of registered voters support the Arizona law, including 77% of Republicans. But Whitman is beating Poizner among those who favor the law by 54-29%. He actually does better – 46-29% — among those who oppose the law.

But the sharp divide on the Arizona law helps to illuminate how Whitman’s efforts to look tough on immigration have hurt her in the general election. Among those who support the law, she beats Brown 55-30%. But among those who oppose the law, Brown leads by a huge margin of 61-19%.

The USC/LA Times survey suggests some areas where Brown has yet to make a mark. While he led Whitman among Latinos 52-29% in March, his standing slipped to 40-31% in May. And while upwards of 85% of voters 45 and older have an opinion about Brown (4-5 points favorable), only 34% of those 18-19 years old know enough about Brown even to express an opinion.

As we’ve noted before, however, Krusty the General has yet to remind Latinos that he put Cruz Reynoso on the California Supreme Court, Mario Obledo in his cabinet, marched with Caesar Cesar Chavez, created the Agricultural Relations Board and dated Linda Ronstadt. Nor has he yet told younger voters about Whitman’s flip-flops on offshore oil drilling or her stance against California’s pioneering law to address climate change.

And we’re still not sure how Brown, who opposes the legalize-and-tax marijuana initiative on the November ballot, will play the dope card. Being attorney general and all (and having been a pretty straight-laced Jesuit school boy as a youth) it’s hard to figure how he will make use of this factoid from the USC/LA Times poll:

Among those who opposed the legalization of marijuana (41% of voters), Whitman leads Brown 45-35%. But among those who favor legalization (49%), Brown leads 53-33%. And among those who used marijuana in the past year, Brown smokes Whitman 60-34%. Hey campers, want some Fritos with that precinct list?

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Posted in California Governor's Race, California Politics, Illegal Immigration, Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman | 2 Comments »

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