John Myers looks at the question of Whitman’s spending slightly different in this story from the California Report.
Typically, the question is whether voters will be sick of all of her ads. And the answer is yes, IMHO anyway. But the question should be, will being sick of those ads make people not vote for her, and that’s a much tougher nut to crack.
The thing about Whitman’s expenditures is that she hasn’t built any grassroots armies. She’s spent the money on Mike Murphy and his consultant friends, a legion of campaign staff, and more TV time than has ever been purchased for a gubernatorial campaign. Hardly spending that makes you want to get up off your seat and cheer.
So, will this make the voters care more or less about her spending? That’s a good question. Most voters won’t even know that’s where her money goes, so it isn’t even clear if there are enough voters that care about this issue to even matter. But, if Jerry’s got one strength at this point, it’s Whitman herself and her big-spending ways while she lives high off the hog.
P.s. I hope the $350K of jet expenses were worth it.
In this day and age it seems pecular to have a big campaign staff but not have a chunk of it devoted to building a base. The lesson of Hillary’s Iowa mistake being so fresh, there seems to be something wrong with his picture. Planning such an effort for later in the campaign seems stupid, but OTOH I suppose that’s what Brown is doing.