The California primary is not that far away, yet the more I see and hear, the more convinced I am that
Steve Poizner should be the Republican nominee for governor.
First, a word or two about his opponent. One concern I've had about Meg Whitman from the very beginning was my understanding that this is her first venture into politics. Her first. She's neglected to even vote year after year. Now she wants to jump in at the top of the state ticket. This is a big negative against her. It does not endear her to her friends or her party and I can only imagine what the Democrats would do with this little tidbit. It portrays her as aloof and apathetic. Not attractive qualities.
Second, her pathetic attack ads on Steve Poizner didn't impress me. Poizner put up an ad that California was going over a cliff, Whitman responded that "Poizner didn't tell you he was behind the wheel at the time". Huh? Steve Poizner was the insurance commissioner at the time. He wasn't governor and he wasn't in the legislature, so by what strange stretch of the imagination was he "behind the wheel"?
Or the scare quotes they put around the fact that he increased his budget 14%. Fourteen per cent!!!!!!!!! Okay. Fourteen percent of
what? Was his office underfunded? Did he hire more staff to accomplish his mandated tasks? The ad doesn't say. I wonder if any of that money was spent on computers or technology? When Meg isn't running attack ads, she says she will cut spending but the state's computers and software are hopelessly outdated.
Would a 14% increase to modernize the insurance commissioner's computer system have been a bad thing? Her ads lack context. For example, I increased my car budget 100% over last year when I bought a new car. It was a very good move for me that will pay off monetarily and psychologically improve my working conditions and my life in general. (Just the pride in ownership has got me out on the driveway once a week with a bucket of suds...something I never did with my last company car.)
Which brings up another bogus attack. Whitman accuses Poizner of spend bundles of money on new cars, but never says how many. An early ad I think mentioned that they were Chevys. Not Beemers. Not Hummers. Chevys. This, too was supposed to be a "bad thing". But, I know a little bit about fleet management. There comes a time when it is optimum to get the most life out of the car and the highest resale price. The company I work for generally trades in their fleet vehicles every two years.
Quoting a dollar figure without telling us how many cars were purchased or the age and condition of the vehicles traded in is meaningless. Yet, Meg Whitman thinks that Californians are stupid enough to vote for her because she tosses out meaningless factoids. Maybe someone will. But not me. I believe the early ad, if I remember it correctly, said something about purchasing "street packages" for those Chevys, again, like it was automatically a bad thing. Sometimes adding options to your fleet vehicles results in a higher resale or trade in. Maybe it was just good fleet management. She didn't say.
An early Poizner ad pointed out that Whitman had campaigned for Barbara Boxer and had contributed to Gore. I supported
George McGovern when I was young and stupid, but that was long ago. I can't imagine supporting any candidate who has thought that electing Barbara Boxer to any office in the last thirty years was a good idea!
And today, in the true spirit of piling on, the Democrats have unleashed their initial barrage against Whitman, over her Goldman Sachs baggage. On the basis of her lifelong non-participation in politics, her unsavory associations with liberal Democrats and her ineffective ad campaign: Stick a fork in her.
Steve Poizner, on the other hand, has a Master's Degree from Stanford, is a successful entrepreneur, who understands enough about business to make a difference in Sacramento. He is proposing a freeze on spending, on hiring and on debt until the budget crisis is behind us.
He has been endorsed by Congressman Tom McClintock, among others, who has famously said that the party will not sell its principles on ebay.
I'm not a big fan of primary endorsements, since any negatives you put forth in the primaries could come back to haunt you should your chosen candidate not get the nod. And granted, I would vote for Meg Whitman in a New York minute over a retreaded Jerry "Governor Moonbeam" Brown. But, I honestly think that Poizner is a better candidate and has a better shot in the general election.
I'm voting for Steve Poizner.
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