California governor wannabe Meg Whitman won Monday's GOP debate in Costa Mesa, according to dean of Capitol muckrakers Dan Walters (“an indirect win”), conservative blogger Eric Hogue (“a win by split decision”) and Stanford's Hoover Institution fellow Bill Whalen (without a clear winner, the debate goes to the frontrunner).
She even won the Orange County Register's Orange Punch reader poll, which as of noon showed Whitman with 12 votes, her King of the Lollipop Kids opponent Steve Poizner with 11 and 3 draws. (The number of responders shocked us, too; Who knew that many tuned into the crappily streamed snoozefest?)
Already riding high, the Whitman campaign today announced it picked up the endorsement of the Orange County Taxpayers Association.
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“I am grateful to receive
the endorsement of the Orange County
Taxpayers Association, a dedicated advocate for California's
taxpayers,” says Whitman in a campaign-issued statement that proves her
ability to bore carries over from the screen and speaker to the
virtually printed page.
“Today, Californians have a government that
they can no longer afford. Working together, we can stand up to
big-spending Sacramento politicians and restore fiscal stability in
California.”
Huh? Whaaa? Is she still yammering?
The Orange County Taxpayers Association is the third Golden State taxpayer
group to endorse Whitman for governor, joining the
Howard Jarvis and Riverside County taxpayer associations.
“The Orange County Taxpayers Association is pleased to endorse Meg
Whitman because she will keep state spending in check and help get
California's economy moving,” Reed Royalty, secretary of the
Orange County Taxpayers Association Political Action Committee, poses in the same release. “Meg's
plan to reform lavish public employee pensions will save taxpayers
billions of dollars while restoring simple fairness between the public
and private sectors.”
Funny thing about that. Whitman insists on the stump that state employees must make financial
concessions to help balance the budget. Her teevee commercials blast Poizner for
“joining liberal unions” to support a 2000 ballot measure that lowered
the vote threshold to pass school bonds. She dismissed a demand to release her taxes as coming from a “union front
for Jerry Brown.”
“All of these moves are calculated to help Whitman tap into
conservative and Tea Party frustrations with the increasing size of
government,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
But the teabaggers should know that Whitman backed away from supporting two voter initiatives for this November's ballot–the same one she's on–that would have reduced the pension and health benefits for new public employee hires.
(The California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility has since suspended its campaign, this report notes.)
So, Whitman could have been campaigning with the dual force of a gubernatorial campaign and a voter initiative drive that helps define it. Why on earth would she deny herself that–let alone her likely voters?
Well, it seems ol' Meg apparently feared having those propositions on the same ballot as her would light such a bonfire under the unions that scores of foes would flock to
the polls–foes who are also likely to punch their cards for Gov.
Moonbeam.
More bold leadership coming to Sacramento, ladies and germs.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.