In the below-the-radar race for the GOP nomination, Steve Poizner keeps chipping away at the central premise of Meg Whitman’s campaign for governor, aiming low-intensity but sustained sniper fire at her much-ballyhooed business acumen.
The Poison Commissioner in recent days threw two new shots at eMeg’s stewardship of eBay, one that landed crisply and the other a poorly advised boomerang.
The first came in an interview with Fortune magazine, one of eMeg’s favorite venues (n-e-e-e-i-i-i-g-g-h-h!) in which he contrasted his Silicon Valley success story of engineering portable GPS systems with his rival’s creation of an online market for peddling Beanie Babies.
In a sharp two-track political attack, Poizner smoothly and simultaneously promoted his own business bona fides as a serious-minded entrepreneur while dismissing her private sector experience as little more than marketing department fluff:
“My competitor [has] extensive great experience in marketing and branding at Disney and Hasbro and eBay and other places,” he said. “And you know, a lot of people who are interested in the idea that California needs to be rebranded or marketed in a better way, will find Meg a very appealing choice.
“In my case, if people will find my candidacy to be the right choice, if they are looking for the state not to be rebranded, but to be rebuilt. So people are looking for that kind of entrepreneurial engineering horsepower to actually rebuild the state of California then I’ll be their choice.”
A few days later, however, Poizner’s campaign misfired by e-blasting a You Tube clip
of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” in which Jim Cramer defended the performance of eBay’s new CEO on grounds he inherited a company from Whitman that was “falling apart.”
Jim Cramer? Really?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Cramer was a no-account TV clown even before Jon Stewart famously pantsed him in a segment of “The Daily Show” that went viral across the blogosphere for several weeks. Using Cramer as a third-party validator for your campaign is like being endorsed by Alfred E. Newman or Carrot Top.
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