Free Republic

Meg Whitman has been running up the score in her California GOP gubernatorial primary against Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner. To date, the former eBay CEO poured over $56 million into her campaign compared to Mr. Poizner's $17.5 million. Ms. Whitman has jammed the airwaves with ads attacking Mr. Poizner's conservative credentials. Mr. Poizner faces a nearly 50-point deficit in the polls with just two months to go until the primary. Rather than conceding, Mr. Poizner has launched an aggressive tit-for-tat campaign. His latest ad links Ms. Whitman to just about everything California conservatives disdain: amnesty, ObamaCare, Barbara Boxer, abortion, TARP...

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown on Saturday challenged his potential GOP rivals to an unprecedented bipartisan debate before the state's June primary,

This is a site that compares the three leading candidates for California governor by listing their positions on the issues.

No single mortal will be able to match Meg-a-millions Whitman's cash outflow in the in the California guv race, but another unions-and-pals independent expenditure group is gearing up to take her on in the general election. For starters, each of the three unions at the forefront of Working Families 2010 is kicking in $1 million each, Bob Balgenorth, president of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California (SBCTC), told us. "It will probably go more than that," he said. Plus there's another $1 million -- and more to come if needed, we hear -- from supermarket magnate and...

GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner, well behind in the polls, has begun airing an ad linking rival Meg Whitman to people and issues unpopular with state Republican voters. Following is the text of the ad and an analysis by Bee Political Editor Amy Chance:TEXT: "Is Meg Whitman your kind of Republican? She supports Obama's amnesty for illegal aliens. Like Schwarzenegger, will continue taxpayer-funded benefits to illegals. A skyrocketing cost under Obamacare. For 28 years Whitman refused to vote Republican. But she contributed to, and campaigned, for Barbara Boxer. Like Boxer, Whitman supports taxpayer-funded abortion. Whitman even supported the disastrous bank...

Clint Reilly, who ran Kathleen Brown's campaign for governor in 1994 -- and lost to Republican incumbent Pete Wilson -- says her brother, Jerry Brown, is in danger of suffering the same fate this year. The former two-term governor who's now California's attorney general is the presumed Democratic nominee for governor. He'll most likely will face Republican Meg Whitman in November. Whitman, the billionaire former head of eBay, has indicated she's willing to spend as much as $150 million of her own money. She is already approaching half that level with two months still remaining in the primary campaign. And...

Surprise! Billionaire Meg Whitman's campaign won't go broke after all. Whitman, the front-runner for the Republican nomination for governor, will announce today that she contributed $20 million more to her war chest late Monday, the Mercury News has learned. That means the former eBay chief executive has donated $59 million to her campaign so far, with two months to go before the primary and seven months left before the general election. The $39 million Whitman donated previously had already set a California political record for self-funding. But her ubiquitous radio and TV ad campaign led to her spending $27.2 million...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Legal Newsline)-Republican California gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman leads Democrat Jerry Brown in the race to be the Golden State's next chief executive, a poll released today indicates.

The two candidates vying for Republican support in the California governor’s race spoke today at a forum put on by San Diego’s Regional Economic Development Corporation. They differ sharply on how to deal with California's water problems. Water is a key issue for San Diego, which is at the end of the pipeline. Steve Poizner, currently California’s Insurance Commissioner, says he opposes the plan to issue an $11 billion water bond because, he says, the state already pays 10 cents of every taxpayer dollar to repay debt. Poizner proposes to challenge the judicial ruling that restricts water use to protect...

Arnold Schwarzenegger was a political newbie and Hollywood star who ran for governor in 2003 as the Sacramento outsider who could "give California back its future." Seven years later, voters are hearing some of the same ad campaign themes from political newcomer Meg Whitman, a Silicon Valley star who's casting herself as an agent of change but also facing criticism that she's "Arnold in a dress." It's one of the challenges for the former eBay CEO, a Republican who's marketed herself as a Sacramento outsider ready to deliver a "new California" as she seeks to succeed Schwarzenegger in the state's...

Ever See An Ad That Was So Irritating It Caused You To Change the Channel So You Did Not Have To Watch It? The negative circus ads Whitman is running about Poizner were horrible the first 300 times. Fingernails on a chalkboard, cover the ears time, reach for the remote and Somebody tell Whitman to....

Former Rep. Tom Campbell swears that former eBay CEO and gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman did not squeeze him out of the GOP primary for governor and prompt him to switch to the race to unseat Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. Whitman spokeswoman Sarah Pompei also denied that Whitman Inc. was involved in Campbell's decision. Politicos figure that Whitman was too smart to ever directly push Campbell out of the contest. But given that her political guru Mike Murphy sent that memo to Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner suggesting that Poizner instead run for Senate in 2012, it is evident that Whitman Inc....

Former Congressman Tom Campbell swears that former eBay CEO and gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman did not squeeze him out of the GOP primary for governor and prompt him to switch to the race to unseat Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. Whitman spokesperson Sarah Pompei also denied that Whitman Inc. was involved in Campbell's decision. Politicos figure that Whitman was too smart to ever directly push Campbell out of the contest. But given that her political guru Mike Murphy sent that memo to Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner suggesting that Poizner instead run for Senate in 2012, it is evident that Whitman Inc....

This concerns the candidate Meg Whitman, running for Governor of California. I haven't made my mind up yet about my vote. I think it will hinge on the answers I get to a lot of my questions about her. There are a lot of people on this forum with a lot of wisdom, so I would appreciate your answers. Meg Whitman was a guest on a local radio show in Fresno. When asked if she, as Governor, would turn on the water pumps to the west side valley farmers. She said yes. She was asked if she could bear the...

GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has swamped California with an unprecedented tsunami of ads, not only on radio and on TV shows like "American Idol" - but through a cable TV marketing gimmick that allows viewers to order her bumper stickers using their remote controls.Her campaign has spent $46 million so far, according to campaign finance reports filed this week, the most ever by a candidate for a statewide primary in California. The sheer volume of her efforts, which premiered with positive spots to introduce her "brand" but have lately been characterized by negative attacks on her GOP opponent, state...

The anti-Meg Whitman independent expenditure committee Level the Playing Field raised $228,681 between January 1 and March 17, well short of the $1 million that it said it had commitments for at its debut last month, according to a campaign finance report filed with the Secretary of State's office this afternoon. The committee, run by veteran Democratic strategists such as Chris Lehane and Sean Clegg, had spent $202,386 in that period. The group has run radio ads and launched a Web site targeting Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. The committee is not currently running any ads, although Clegg said it...

Meg Whitman's Republican rival calls her a liberal. He's not even close. Political writers often describe her as moderate. That misses the mark too. Supporting abortion rights -- even state funding of abortions for the poor -- doesn't automatically make her a moderate. Not when she's prepared to whack benefits for welfare moms -- slash almost any program -- to avoid raising taxes. She opposes same-sex marriage but supports recognizing those unions allowed before Proposition 8 passed. That doesn't make her a moderate either. Not when she insists on eliminating 40,000 state jobs. Whitman unquestionably is a fiscal conservative, despite...

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown ramped up his attacks on former eBay CEO Meg Whitman on Saturday, saying she has proposed policies to put California "in the loving embrace of Wall Street" while trying to "scapegoat" immigrants and silence working people with what he called an unprecedented effort to "buy the election." "When things get tough ... do we crush the poor even more, do we scapegoat the immigrants, do we make the enemy the public servants who serve us in all manner of capacity?" he said. "That's the temptation we have to fight. Now, more than ever, a sense...

When it comes to California's landmark global warming law, gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman is now at odds with the environmentally conscious company she helped run for nearly a decade. EBay has been a prominent business supporter of the carbon-reduction law signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as well as international efforts to curb greenhouse gases. The online auction house says California should "seize this precious opportunity" to enact the 2006 state law, while Whitman, the company's former CEO, wants the "dangerous job-killer" regulations suspended for a year. Whitman frequently cites eBay in her campaign advertising and speeches, even using the company's...

State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, who's being pummelled in the polls by his GOP gubernatorial opponent Meg Whitman, doesn't seem to be breaking a sweat about it. At the Commonwealth Club in Lafayette Thursday, the audience was reminded that Poizner is 1) a black belt in karate, 2) the guy who helped invent the GPS that's in their cell phones and 3) a politician with millions in his campaign warchest. Poizner doesn't sound like a guy who's done, down and out in the governor's race. And in an energetic speech before the Layfayette audience, and in an interview with the...