Free Republic

The California Nurses Association has taken on powerful people before, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators from both major parties, and has scored resounding wins. In each showdown, the 86,000-person union made full use of its key advantage – the appeal of its members' professions – while pressing hard for policies that benefited nurses. This election year, the union is putting its powers to the test as it challenges its most well-funded opponent to date, billionaire Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who is wasting no time fighting back. That the union is leading the anti-Whitman front so far speaks volumes...

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman received high-profile support in appearances in Escondido and Fullerton Saturday, with former Gov. Pete Wilson and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney stumping for her. In Fullerton, Whitman appeared in the courtyard of the mission-style Villa Del Sol complex where she made her candidacy official in September. Like that event, several hundred people stood under the baking sun to listen to the candidate. Wilson preceded Romney and called Whitman a threat to public employee unions, warning, "They have a very good reason to be scared to death of Meg Whitman." Whitman has pledged to cut state...

WESTMINSTER – After spending more than $80 million and building a major lead in public opinion polls, Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman may finally have met her match Tuesday in the parking lot of the Asian Garden Mall. The billionaire candidate was delivering her stump speech to about 150 people at an open-air rally when about 50 protesters from the California Nurses Association and its schoolteacher allies interrupted by chanting and blowing whistles just a few dozen yards away. Flanked by banners reading "Take Back Sac," Whitman finished her speech without acknowledging the protesters and later said she wouldn't let...

The Republican Meg Whitman, running for governor in California said Arizona is taking the wrong approach....

"As a band of noisy nurses derided her as "Queen Meg," Republican gubernatorial front-runner Meg Whitman brought a quartet of GOP heavy-hitters to the Peninsula on Friday night to raise a half-million dollars for her candidacy. U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Secretary of State George Shultz praised the former eBay CEO as a smart and pragmatic woman who would keep California from plunging over a cliff. "She can get the job done," said Shultz, now a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution."