Meg Whitman, trailing in the polls, is feeling pretty desperate as she stares at an expensive defeat on Tuesday. On the campaign trail this Halloween, Whitman resorted to scaring voters with the bogeyman – yep, Gray Davis:
Whitman also told the crowd she had heard a “scary rumor” that Brown had picked Davis, Brown’s former chief of staff who was recalled from the governor’s office in 2003, to lead Brown’s transition team. The crowd booed.
Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford said the rumor was false.
“There is no transition team in place,” he said. “That is a Wednesday conversation if we win.”
Whitman’s just scraping the bottom of the barrel here, desperately hoping that she can pull out a victory by scaring voters into thinking a Jerry Brown administration would mean a Gray Davis comeback. Like voters are going to care?
This silly scare tactic is a sign not only that Whitman has nothing to offer Californians as she tries to climb back into the race – it’s a sign she is fundamentally out of touch with the concerns and hopes of the voters.
Californians don’t care about Gray Davis. They forgot about Gray Davis the moment he was recalled in 2003. Instead they care about their jobs, their schools, their homes, their parks, their health care. And they know that a wealthy CEO hack like Whitman only cares about those things just long enough to make a profit for herself and her friends – whereas Jerry Brown spends his time talking about building a sustainable future for California:
“The key to California is imagination, it’s innovation, it’s creativity. It’s not going backwards,” he said. “All these new ideas are ready to put into place. This idea of solar and wind, before, they laughed at that.”…
He added: “I have a vision of California cars, of electric cars, powered by California sun, California wind, California steam,” he said.
Whitman isn’t going to be beaten by opinion polls or by bad campaign tactics. She’ll only be beaten by votes. Make sure you vote – and then help GOTV these last 48 hours.
I’m surprised nobody’s written about this on the front page yet, but the Field Poll (.pdf) shows it’s a one-point race, with Steve Cooley (R) leading just 39%-38%, with a whopping 23% still undecided.
You have 13% of Democrats defecting to Cooley, while only 6% of Republicans are supporting Harris.
Harris is actually ahead in Los Angeles County 43%-37%, but she’s only up in the Bay Area 52%-27%.
She’s getting 50% of the Latino vote, but Cooley’s still getting 27% of them. FYI, Field has Latinos only making up 16% of the electorate, with 71% of the turnout being non-Hispanic whites, who are going for Cooley, 43%-35%. Blacks make up 5% of the electorate, and Harris has a 69%-14% lead among them.
And I’ll say it. If any gay person votes for Cooley, they’ll have no right to complain when he prevents them from getting married.