Last year, Meg Whitman rolled out her “Latino Coalition” at a Mexican restaurant (yes, really) and spoke to the crowd about entrepreneurialism and the spirit it takes to be successful in California.  Very heartwarming. yet, even in that heavily Republican room, she still found ways to anger the crowd.

And her opposition to driver’s licenses for the undocumented was a flop with the crowd  described by the media as “mostly Republicans.”

   

Whitman said she opposes drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants, an answer met with silence by the crowd.

It is amazing that Whitman had the temerity to say something like this, too:

   

“I am a big believer in focus… in business and in life you can only do three things or four things at 100 percent. Let’s try this approach in government,” she said.

So either she’s going to only try real hard at three or four things as governor or just be terrible at many things. Sounds like a winning message. (Matt Ortega)

Another interesting angle to this story is the fact that Pete Wilson is the Chair of Whitman’s campaign. You know, Pete Wilson, the power behind Prop 187’s demonizing campaign.  Fortunately, somebody was kind enough to post some of Wilson’s campaign commercials, lest anybody forget just who Pete Wilson is.

So, is Meg Whitman trying to reach out to the Latino community just as a way to sat that she at least tried, or is she going to actually listen to the community? Because with somebody as polarizing as Wilson so heavily involved in the campaign, it just doesn’t seem as if she’s trying very hard. Wilson might be popular amongst the Minutemen crowd in the primary, but she’ll need to reach beyond them to win the general.

Sure, she can spend millions of dollars to plaster her image all over every TV in the state, and perhaps it will be enough to buy the Governor’s office.  But in order to function as a leader in this state, you actually have to pay more than lip service to all of the state’s communities. It’s a lesson that Arnold learned on the job, but it doesn’t look like Whitman will be getting a head-start.