Meg Whitman just broke a record. She spent over $119 million dollars out of her own pocket to fund her campaign. (The total cost of her campaign so far is about $145 million while Jerry Brown has spent about $4 million + the $13 million mostly from unions)
But is it paying off?
Whitman is obvious facing a tough candidate: Jerry Brown, who has been in public office longer than she’s been voting (that might be an exaggeration, but you get my point). A few days ago, we found out that Whitman employed an illegal immigrant for nine years and let her go around the time when she announced that she was running for governor. She has publically denounced those who hire illegal immigrants and provided documentations proving that she thought her employee was legal. Even if Whitman is telling the truth…this will be yet another scandal on her resume…with only one month left until Election Day. Whitman has been working hard to steal the Latino vote from the Democrats and it seems like her hard work is about to go down the drain.
Record campaign expenses, political inactivity for almost 20 years, hiring illegal immigrants, and a somewhat weak debate……what’s in store for Whitman on November 2?
3 comments:
Based on everything that has come out in the last few months and in particular this past week, Whitman has a tough road ahead of her, If this issue of the illegal immigrant pans out against whitman, she is in deep trouble. Furthermore, after what I thought was a weak debate for Whitman, she is really going to have to prove herself. Last, like the saying goes "money doesn't buy everything."
~Emily Zelter
I read an article in TIME that summarizes this perfectly: "Meg Whitman says she's running for governor of California to bring a sense of fiscal responsibility to Sacramento. But Whitman's own campaign isn't exactly what you'd call frugal." But Whitman hasn't been spending money on advertising recklessly; she's used her money on technology that lets her figure out who her best target voters are and send things in the mail that talk about specific issues she knows you care about. So her advertising strategy, not just the amount of money she's spent on the campaign, is unprecedented, at least in California.
Despite all this, she doesn't have any sort of clear lead ahead of Brown in this race. She talks about changing the way things are done in the California government, but her own, different strategies in her campaign haven't really worked. Unless she tries something drastically different, "[w]ith the election still a month away, some estimate Whitman could spend another $30 million or more." (That's $1 million per day, everybody!) I'm finding it hard to believe that Meg Whitman will bring any sort of sense of "fiscal responsibility" to California if she becomes governor.
I thought I might thrown in that "queen" is an appropriate nickname for her, indeed; I found it humorous that "On Labor Day, Queen Meg [a figure created by labor unions that don't like her] hit parades across the state, passing out pink slips with white-gloved hands."
(I read the paper version of the article in TIME, but here is the abridged online version.)
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,2022523,00.html
@Sarah
Wow i was just reading that article today. LOL
Its ironic how she has spent the most amount of money from her personal fortune she spent for the presidential nominee and how she wants to cut government spending.
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