Today is the second, and likely last, debate in the GOP Gubernatorial primary, and for Steve Poizner, this is his last best chance at scoring a knockout punch to the MegMachine:

After months of being bludgeoned by billionaire Meg Whitman in a one-way campaign, the former Silicon Valley entrepreneur is finally showing signs of life. And today, he again goes head to head against the former eBay CEO in the final scheduled debate before the June 8 primary.

Live from San Jose.

“It’s his last chance,” said Bill Whalen, chief speechwriter for former Gov. Pete Wilson.

“Poizner’s strategy has always been, ‘Don’t fire until you see the whites of her eyes,’ ” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. “Well, here she is.”

Even when the largely self-funded candidate was 50 percentage points down in the polls – refusing to spend much of his bulging war chest – Poizner had a “what, me worry?” confidence. But in recent weeks, the underdog has unleashed his own torrent of ads, spending about $2 million a week to introduce himself to voters and join Democratic groups in bashing the free-spending Whitman. (SJ merc)

Poizner who has finally gone to the airwaves to combat Whitman’s months-long siege of the state of California’s ears and eyes must now hope that his very effective ads hit the mark and make enough of an impression before the ballots drop in a week or two. But while few will watch this debate live, many will see a few take-away points around the web and on TV.  Poizner needs to bust out with some notable sound bites on Whitman’s background with Goldman Sachs as well as tossing some meat to the right-wing base.

You can watch live on CalChannel on the tube or online. In the Bay Area, it will be on KTVU-2 at 5 pm, as well as statewide on the Comcast “hometown” channel. (repeated ad nauseum, I’m sure). If you want to catch it sans smirks and harsh looks, it will be on KQED and public radio affiliates throughout the state.

If you didn’t see the new Poizner ad about Whitman and Goldman Sachs, go check it out right below this post.  You’ll know why Whitman is trying anything to get the glare off of her.  So much so that she will happily make up meaningless charges.

Her latest attack? That Jerry Brown got Oakland into a bad interest rate deal with Goldman Sachs. Except…the deal happened a year BEFORE Brown was in office:

The deal between Oakland and Goldman Sachs – a so-called “interest rate swap” intended to create stability in repaying some of its debts that’s now costing the city $5 million a year – occurred a year before Brown was in office and was a common practice for municipalities around the country to finance bond debts. …

Whitman said Brown showed a “failure of leadership” for failing to pull Oakland out of the deal, though Sterling Clifford, his spokesman, said that Brown had no vote on the issue and no veto power over a decision made by the City Council. Brown also served as president of the Joint Power Financing Authority, which negotiated the restructuring of the interest rate swap, though he had no voting power there, either.

Joe Yew, treasurer for Oakland, said canceling the deal would have cost the city $15 million to $20 million in termination fees.(MediaNews)

Now, I’ve heard once, or a million times, that Meg Whitman is a “business woman with common sense.” So, Ms. Whitman, let’s see if all that fancy business training says about this deal: would you have paid $15 million to cancel a deal that may (or may not) cost the city about $5 million?  A cheat sheet for you, that’s a $10 million loss right there.

But never you mind about that, because there’s a “failure of leadership” there. Not one that Jerry Brown had anything whatsoever to do with, but Whitman has to find something to deflect the glare from her dismal record with Goldman. Basically what she’s alleging is that he made a bad business deal. Of course, it wasn’t Brown at all, but I’m not sure if Whitman really wants to talk about bad business deals.  Tough luck for her, because she’s made many of them.  Take Skype:

Don’t call it a bust just yet, but it’s fair to say eBay executives aren’t thrilled with what they’re getting out of Skype, which the auction king bought for $2.6 billion two years ago.

On Monday, eBay said it would take a $900 million so-called impairment write-down against the value of Skype. This means that eBay has been forced to reassess the value of the Internet telephony company relative to its overall business today. By recording a charge, the company is essentially saying that it has taken a loss on its original investment.(Cnet)

Yeah, that’s right. Whitman was the one who made the ultimate decision to buy Skype for $2.6 Billion.  So, if they are going to point to a standard operating procedure deal with the City of Oakland for $5 million, what are they going to say about a deal that cost her company almost a billion dollars? Does that maker her 200 times more dangerous as the governor?  

But this is all about throwing stuff up at the wall and seeing what will stick.

So far no evidence of conflict has arisen between Brown and his sister. But Whitman continued to assert that because Brown hadn’t addressed the issue himself, there were unanswered questions over his relationship with Goldman Sachs.

“At least you have to explain what happened. As far as I know, he has been completely mum on this subject,” she told The Associated Press. (MediaNews)

Whenever you see that whole “it must be true because he hasn’t denied it” bull you know a candidate is desperate.  So, why doesn’t she address the rumors that I heard about her:

Meg Whitman is a sociopath who may possibly have eaten live puppies in Tijuana.

Meg Whitman exploited children in vicious labor camps.

Meg Whitman raised two sons who were kicked out of many schools, clubs, and Princeton University for hurling racial epithets.

Except, wait, those last two really happened, so it probably would be nice for Whitman to try to explain that to the California electorate.  Asking Brown to explain the Goldman charge is no better than asking Whitman why she eats the puppies.

So, let’s have more talk of Goldman Sachs, please. It’s getting to Team Whitman.

Ok, this is it. This is what we have been waiting for. The ad that hits at Meg Whitman, and ties her for all the world to see to Goldman Sachs.  And the ad comes courtesy of Steve Poizner.  

At this point, I feel like I should be giving money to Poizner’s campaign to get this ad up on the TV as much as possible.

See, the thing with Whitman is that there is just so much meat for an opposition researcher.  In addition to the Goldman Sachs stuff, there’s the child labor issue, her brilliant purchase of Skype (a nearly billion loss for eBay), and putting toxic glue in your kid’s Stride Rites.  Chris Kelly (no, not the AG candidate) went ahead and wrote your Meg Whitman bible.

Go Poizner, go! You just have to love a bloody Republican primary between two uber-rich techies, don’t you?

I’ve been warning about this on the blog and in every forum I come across, Prop 14 will result in more Dem-on-Dem fights.  It will be a drain on the Democratic party, and will result in a net loss for the party in terms of resources.  Don’t trust me?  Well, how about the Center for Govermental Studies. Goo-Goos seem to like them, anyway.  So, how will they like this:

CGS broke down the registration and voter-turnout figures for recent primary elections and found that more than one-third of general election races could end up being fought between two members of the same party. Most of those single-party contests would be between two Democrats (largely in Los Angeles County and the Bay Area). Just two of the races analyzed in the study would have resulted in a general election between two Republicans.

The report also found that campaigns would be “significantly more expensive” under Proposition 14, mainly because candidates would have to campaign to a broader base of voters, as opposed to just voters in their party, in the primary.(SacBee)

In other words, Dem primaries end up getting played out twice. But because there just aren’t that many Republicans left in the state, theirs end up as snoozers into the general. You can read the full report (PDF) here.

Prop 14 is bad for the Democratic Party, bad for third parties, and well, not so great even for the Republican Party.  It will make for much more expensive elections, and thus politicians that are even more susceptible to the sultry tones of the corporate lobbyist.

Yet somehow, St. Abel Maldonado is playing this out as a good government measure. As the results in Washington and Louisiana have shown, this is anything but good government.  

Sen. President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg has come out on the growing “boycott Arizona” movement:

California Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said today he has asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to work with him to review all state contracts with Arizona and possibly break them because of Arizona’s new immigration police law.

“That bill is a gross civil-rights violation. We hope it will be overturned by the courts quickly,” said the Sacramento Democrat, who sent a letter to Schwarzenegger today.

**** *** ****

“It’s a civil-rights issue whenever you set somebody aside because of the color of their skin or where they come from,” said Steinberg, who is a lawyer. “And that applies to both legal immigrants, citizens and undocumented immigrants. I mean, how do you define reasonable suspicion? There’s only one way under that law. And it’s somebody who looks Mexican. Period.”(Sac Bee)

Yesterday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors came out for a similar boycott Arizona resolution, as did City Attorney Dennis Herrera.  Today, Janice Hahn introduced a resolution at the LA City Council.

See, it’s not always the best business to tell a whole group of people that they aren’t welcome in your state. It’s not even about immigration status, because there is, quite frankly, no way that this doesn’t make “Driving while brown” a new offense in the state. If Arnold had any real courage, he’d sit down with Steinberg, and really put the pinch to Arizona.

One of my favorite radio programs is This American Life. It’s especially good when driving to Sacramento, it pulls your cares away from what’s going on there.

Except this week’s episode doesn’t do that at all. In fact, it goes into the lying sack of horse manure that is Steve Poizner’s book. In it, he criticizes Mt. Pleasant High School students for being “lazy” and “unmotivated.” But the facts are

Checking school records I learned that Poizner’s unmotivated, unambitious class included one of the school valedictorians, Charles Rudy, who graduated and went to college.

Could he be getting this so completely wrong? I wondered.   Could he have written an entire book misperceiving so thoroughly what was happening right in front of his eyes, and now is trying to use that book to run for governor?  It seemed too incredible. (TAL)

The program then goes on to document lie, half-truths and whole manners of rich white dude misinterpretation.  A tough neighborhood? Well, not really. High dropout rates? Again, not so much, graduation rates were actually substantially better than the state and national stats.

Rather than ruining the story for you, you can check it out here. Like Whitman, Poizner is entirely unqualified to run a modern, diverse state like California.

Party	2006 %	2010 %
Democratic	42.7	44.6
Republican	34.6	30.8
Decl. State	19.9	20.1

First, the good news on voter registration stats, in the 60 day registration report, there are more Dems, less Republicans, and a few more DTSers.  You can find all of the data in the stats at the SoS site, but here’s a quick summary to the right.

Now, here’s where the rose-colored glasses come in. When asked about the numbers, California GOP chair Ron Nehring had this to say:

California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring said the party has made slight gains since the start of the year, going from 30.75 percent of registered voters in January to 30.8 percent in April.

Nehring said more voters are identifying themselves as Republicans in the state and the rest of the nation.

“We’re climbing while the Democrats are falling,” he said. (SJ Merc)

First of all, 30.75 to 30.8 isn’t even a rounding error. It’s the same number rounded to the next place.  Furthemore, even if he was going to argue from the January position, the numbers are exactly the same for the two parties.  So instead of trying to help Nehring out with the numbers, I have a better idea.  I’ve come up with a few possible other big whoppers to tell when you are desperate. And, remember, no need to mess with reality with this.

Congratulations to the NCAA champion Cal basketball team!

President McCain is very fond of California Republicans, he said he’ll get the presidential phonograph spinning a tune just for us!

El Presidente Shwarzenegger is the best EVAH!