If you want to run as a Republican for the top offices (Governor, U.S. Senate, or California Secretary of State), you better be a plutocrat or forget about running.
The California Republican Party is so broke that nobody without their own buckets of cash should even look at the job. The upshot is the super-rich neophytes drown out any remaining experienced politicians out of running for higher office.
The current list of well-healed GOP candidates includes :
- Damon Dunn Secretary of state
- Carly Fiorina US Senate
- Meg Whitman Governor
- Steve Poizner Governor
Lately the importance of being wealthy has been proven by Meg Whitman’s current radio campaign. She has been dominating the local radio air waves and drowning out her Republican competitors like (Al Gore supporter) moderate Republican turned conservative Steve Poizner and the thinking person’s candidate Tom Campbell. Campbell to my mind is the best candidate because he has real political experience and intellectual fire power but he is being flooded by Whitman’s message of focusing on the economy.
In a state with a U3 unemployment rate of 12.5 percent Whitman’s is a solid strategy. In a recent Rasmussen poll she has pulled even with Democrat Jerry Brown in the race for Governor. Yet, I still wonder. If creating positive change to California government and improving our economy was easy as slashing taxes and laying off state workers and throwing out illegal aliens—all Whitman proposals—and returning the free market—whatever your perception of that is—this would have been done a long time ago.
The fact is that California since the gold rush has been a land of booms and busts. I worry that the same folks that brought us our last saviour, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, are again selling us pabulum in a time of clear desperation for many Californians.
Whitman lately has been tapping into populist anger against career politicians, she has stated that “she has had it with career politicians” and I would agree there are as many bad politicians as there are bad CEOs, but not every career politician is bad.
My political hero Pete Wilson (Whitman supporter) was also was a career politician, and he was the best governor this state ever had. Wilson had the guts to get in the back room and go eye to eye with Willie Brown in a titanic struggle over the future of California in the early 1990’s.
I don’t see anything in Whitman’s resume that equips her to go head to head with the entrenched interests that run Sacramento. If anything, as a CEO of non-union EBAY she strikes me as more of a compromise candidate than the leader of unvarnished capitalism and that political ruse of small goverment Republicanism. A couple of curious choices she made that will test her Republican bonafides was her 2004 love letter to Senator Barbara Boxer endorsing her reelection and calling her leadership courageous. Does this mean Whitman thinks Boxer is not a career politician? Then her recent charity foundations showers donations on environmental groups.
So the question begs: is Whitman reallyArnold Schwarzenegger in a skirt?
With massive government deficits as high as $20-25 billion looming next year Californians should demand specifics from our candidates for all offices and take a long hard look at who is the best person for the job and not be swayed by boat loads of campaign cash and snappy media buys.
