Meg Whitman spent last week crisscrossing California with her Wall Street pal Mitt Romney, pumping up her already overflowing campaign coffers with even more corporate cash. Her campaign strategy is clear: write big checks and avoid a real conversation with voters about her background, her policies, and her plans for the state.
But California’s workers aren’t going to let Meg and her Wall Street agenda take the express jet to the Governor’s office. While Meg and Mitt were rubbing elbows with the corporate elite, an army of nurses, educators, construction trades workers, and others who would be directly impacted by Meg’s anti-worker agenda were putting the final touches on our campaign to expose her plans to do Wall Street’s bidding and what her Governorship would mean for California’s families.
Today, the California Labor Federation launched a massive grassroots campaign massive grassroots campaign that will deploy an army of volunteers to expose the truth about Meg Whitman’s Wall Street agenda and her history on the board at Goldman Sachs. The campaign will counter Whitman’s avalanche of TV ads and estimated $150 war chest with online tools as well as and person-to-person contact, which is proven to be the best way to reach voters.
The brand-new website www.WallStreetWhitman.com will bring the pieces of the grassroots campaign together online. Serving as a one-stop information hub that exposes the truth of Whitman’s Wall Street agenda for California, www.WallStreetWhitman.com will also enable worker activists to engage others in the campaign through extensive use of email and social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter.
Union voters represent about 1 out of every 5 voters who will go to the polls on Election Day, and many millions more share the same concerns about what Meg Whitman’s agenda will mean for their families. Our plans to reach millions of member voters and deploy tens of thousands of volunteers to speak to their like-minded friends, neighbors, and co-workers will be critical to defeating Meg Whitman’s agenda, which includes plans to fire 40,000 public employees, roll back critical consumer protections that protect our healthcare, and take away worker’s rights, to name a few.
Meg Whitman’s wants to corporatize and downsize the California economy, which will be disastrous for everyone who works hard for a living in California – whether they are union members or not, whether they work in the public sector or the private sector. While Meg’s campaign is fueled by her allegiance to Goldman Sachs and the Wall Street culture that destroyed our economy, our campaign is powered with the passion of tens of thousands of workers who are determined to build better lives for themselves and their children.
We’re ready to spend from today through Election Day getting out the truth about Whitman’s record and letting voters know exactly where she stands on the issues they care about, including jobs, health care, education, and workers’ rights. Join us at www.WallStreetWhitman.com.
Steve Smith is communications director at the California Labor Federation, which represents 2.1 million workers in 1,200 AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions across the state.
Paid for by the California Labor Federation. Not authorized by a candidate or committee controlled by a candidate.