The Republican primary for governor just got a lot more interesting.
For weeks, Meg Whitman’s been running statewide radio ads at high levels, and not coincidentally has been building herself a solid lead in early polls. Because Steve Poizner has not been spending for advertising as well, rumors have been circulating that he was not committed to the race and might even be looking for an early exit rather than try to compete with what’s likely to be huge levels of Whitman spending.
But earlier tonight, Poizner sent an email to supporters announcing that he had contributed $15 million of his own money to the campaign. That’s more than enough to finance an ad blitz that could pull him even with the frontrunners by early next year. More immediately, though, it puts the rumors to rest. Steve Poizner is definitely running for governor.
The next question is when his ads start running. Assuming that both Poizner and Whitman are willing to stay on the air all the way until June, it’s also safe to assume that every man, woman and child in California will have both candidates’ ads memorized long before the primary.
December 14th, 2009 at 12:00 am
sigh, keep finding more of these stories “Meg’s Blue green money”:
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2009/nov/24/under-radar-1/
December 14th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Also found a good article on self funders, which is something we need to be aware of:
http://www.thenextright.com/patrick-ruffini/self-funders-the-next-front-in-the-war-on-the-gop-establishment?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PatrickRuffini+%28Patrick+Ruffini%29&utm_content=Twitter
we’ve lost plenty of elections with these types and we need to stop responding solely to the money and get to the heart of the matter; what’s the message and is it strong enough.
December 14th, 2009 at 12:00 am
I had the opportunity to meet both both Poizner and Whitman two months ago. I really liked both of them. Meg said it would be a good idea for the legislature to take a one year “time out” from introducing any new bills and she would like to interview them to find out what areas they are knowledgeable in and then put them into groups to come up with new ways to slash spending and reduce the size of the State government. As funny as that sounds, it would be more fun watching those guys punch each other in their new small group assignments. Meg could then come into the room and collect the reports from the ones with the most black eyes and ignore the rest.
Poizner seemed like he had a good plan with his 10/10/10 thing. But somehow the prospects of eliminating 40,000 state workers sounded better. Steve should say he will get rid of 50,000 State workers to show Meg up. And then Meg could raise the pot to 60k and so on until by June we will be at just the right number!