In today’s Sacramento Bee, Jack Chang asks a question:  Can Whitman’s spending move the tied polls?

And while the title sentence could work for a million questions in Sacramento, it works perfectly for Chang’s question.  No.  Whitman’s spending cannot move Californians.

Of course, that statement alone doesn’t end debate, so let’s look at the situation.  Most importantly, Meg Whitman has been spending $2 million per week on her incessant ads, basically since the Winter Olympics back in February. They were annoying back then, but by now people just want them to stop.  This is born out by anecdotal and hard data.  As Robert pointed out recently, Jerry Brown’s team has data showing that her ads are moving people in the wrong direction from what she intended:

A survey we completed three days ago found most people who have seen a Whitman ad don’t believe her claims are true. When we asked whether these ads have improved or worsened their opinions of the candidates for Governor, the results were as follows:

Attorney General Jerry Brown: 6% improved; 4% worsened; 58% unchanged

Meg Whitman: 8% improved; 27% worsened; 31% unchanged

But there is another issue at play here, it is more than just the point counter point ads.  For whatever money labor is spending to support Jerry (and I assure you that it is nowhere near the funding level that Whitman is looking at), the real issue is that it isn’t just Meg alone, or her ads, that are turning off voters. It is her failed ideas.

For nearly seven years now, we have dealt with a Governor who has espoused the notion that our government is a failed experiment and we just cannot afford it.  The facts don’t bear that out, and Whitman’s ideas to slash and burn through the state government are simply a step too far, even when compared to the Governator.

There aren’t 40,000 jobs to cut in the state.  There aren’t billions to be saved through IT innovation.  A few hundred million, perhaps, if it is done correctly.  But the huge savings she is predicting simply by improving and “innovating” just will not be there.  They are simply a new way of the old conservative propaganda tune of “Waste, Fraud, & abuse.”  Sure, there is a bit of waste, but overall productivity rates at our government institutions are quite high.  

We have to stop looking for new panaceas and get back to the simple drudgery of providing quality services.  The way we do that is to provide stable and good-paying jobs for well-trained state employees while providing enough oversight to ensure that our money is well-spent.  Not by going on staff cutting binges that produce no savings, but a lot of confusion and failure.