Hey, have you seen Meg Whitman’s ads, and thought to yourself, she wouldn’t really be all that bad. Well, it’s always good to judge a leader by the company she keeps. And how about this company:

Republican heavyweights such as former presidential candidates Sen. John McCain and Mitt Romney and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush are scheduled to hit the campaign trail this month for GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, according to the Whitman campaign.(SacBee)

Top that off with Condi Rice, and you have an All-Star George W Bush era cast. Is that really what Californians want or need right now? More enormous blunders and right-wing ideology?  I think Californians would be far more comfortable with the sort of guests Jerry Brown will invite.

 Need video footage of Meg Whitman events for your local news broadcast? Well, she’ll be happy to send it to you, free of charge:

Are you concerned about the decline in quality of the political media? Well, fear not. Meg Whitman has offered to fill in the gaps where the old-fashioned free press has faltered.

Whitman’s campaign has put television stations around the state on notice that it will be sending daily video images of the candidate on the campaign trail, just in case a station wants to put any of them on the air.

“We are starting something brand new at the Whitman campaign … so you can more easily provide your viewers with breaking news from California’s gubernatorial campaign,” the campaign wrote in a statement.(LA Times)

That’s it, no need to send a reporter to “ask questions” when you can just roll Meg Whitman’s video press release.

You know who else did this? Well, George W Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger, that’s who.  Conveniently enough, you can even cut out the credits and roll them like they were real news! So, the White House just literally provided news footage to some small news programs.  How very Politburo of the Whitman campaign (and the Bush White House…but we really need not say that, do we?).  

Think about this for a second, and think of the resources that must have been dedicated to such a project:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s campaign is sending out about half a million copies of her 48-page policy booklet to households across California, most of them Republican, said Whitman press secretary Sarah Pompei.(SacBee)

That’s half a million copies. The postage alone costs several hundred thousand dollars. And then there’s the fact that publication of this thing probably costs quite a bit to print. It’s 48 pages in stunning color. That kind of print run plus postage is going to run you about a buck per copy (perhaps more).

But, don’t worry, the profligacy ends the day she becomes governor.  Then, she’ll really show how spending massive amounts of campaign cash can turn into a recipe for spending controls!

Meg Whitman is a billionaire. Everybody knows that.  But one of the cool things about being a billionaire is that it just sort of feeds on itself. Once you are that rich, people like to give you stuff to make you happy. Like say eBay’s board even as her company’s shares are sliding and Goldman Sachs during her (very short) tenure as a director. It must be nice:

Meg Whitman is already getting off to being a third term of Arnold Schwarzenegger. She says one thing and then does the complete opposite.  She plays for the middle now on the flood of TV ads, but you can bet she’ll head hard right when she gets the chance to finish the shock doctrine job that Arnold has been working on for 7 years.

In the 2007-08 campaign cycle, 14 states elected a new governor (and lt. governor).  146 candidates ran for those positions, and 60 of them self-financed. But none of them were Meg Whitman.

In a new report by CalWatch, the numbers for those 60 candidates are compared to eMeg.  And the numbers aren’t all that shocking.

60 spent a combined total of $47 million financing their own campaigns.

With her most recent “incremental investment” of $20 million this week, Whitman has now pumped $59 million into her own campaign, and there are still seven months to go before Election Day. (CalWatch)

Of course, compared to Mike Bloomberg’s $109 million to win the Mayor’s race last year, it’s still a relatively small amount. However, Meg still has several months to go, never underestimate her ambition…or her bank account.

Calitics Friends:

Over 43 days ago, we at Level the Playing Field, a coalition of nurses, teachers, and other working Californians, called on Meg Whitman to do the right thing and make her tax returns public.

Whitman agreed to release those tax returns – even saying she would release 25 years of her tax returns if other candidates did too.

Two weeks later, she flip-flopped. She broke her promise and now refuses to release her tax returns.

Since then, the San Jose Mercury News, Monterey County Herald, Vallejo Times Herald, and Marin Independent Journal have all called on Meg Whitman to keep her promise and release her tax returns.

Why is Meg Whitman flip-flopping on releasing her taxes? We don’t know, but we aim to find out, and you can help.

Sign our letter to Meg Whitman requesting that she stop flip-flopping and release her taxes.



Tax Day is one week away and regular Californians who work hard and play by the rules will be filing their tax returns on that day – so we need you to sign this letter now!

Whitman has committed to spending $150 million to convince voters that it’s time for leaders in California to “mean what they say, and say what they mean.”

How can she break such a basic promise as the one she made to release her tax returns?

A person’s tax returns reveal core truths about the content of their character: what their values are, whether they play by the rules, and in Meg’s case, what type of leader she would be.

We need your help to make sure Meg Whitman does not get away with flip-flopping on simple promises that she makes to voters. We need your help to make sure that she doesn’t get away with winning the Governor’s office without ever releasing her records.

Sign our letter demanding she release her tax returns. We need your help to keep the pressure on.

The clock is still ticking…43 days and counting since we asked for her to do what every major candidate for office has done and release her tax returns.

California needs your help – sign our letter today.

Help us keep up the pressure. Hold Meg Whitman accountable for her public promises.

Sincerely,

Team Level the Playing Field

P.S. We may not know the details of Meg Whitman’s tax returns yet, but we do know that her tax plan would spell disaster for California. That’s why it’s essential that we hold Meg accountable. Sign our letter calling on her to release her tax returns today.  

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.