One Week before the Primary

Last Friday Steve Poizner held a town hall meeting at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos a few hours after Meg Whitman appeared for a campaign event in Redwood City. A mostly senior crowd packed into a small room to have San Mateo city council member Matt Grocott introduce the Republican candidate for governor of California. Steve Poizner gave his usual stump speech about the issues facing California in the election, and he tried to contrast his positions with those of his opponent Meg Whitman. He then took questions until the end of the hour. The Los Angeles Times provides a brief report on Poizner’s and Whitman’s appearances in the Bay Area here. Some people touting a press release from the local labor union arrived with their Brown campaign signs, but they left quietly before the town hall began.

As the LA Times article shows, Poizner’s backdrop has the words “Protect Prop 13.” Steve Poizner was asked to comment on his support of Proposition 13, the ballot initiative passed years ago that forces a two-thirds majority vote in both California legislative houses to raise property taxes. Whitman has been attacking Poizner for attempting to weaken Proposition 13 among other issues that would paint Poizner as too liberal for Republican voters. Thankfully the San Jose Mercury News the following day analyzed both candidates’ attacks for their validity.

The long primary is coming to a close on June 8, when California citizens will go to the polling booths, excluding the voters who sent in their absentee ballots. The substantive debates will hopefully occur when the winner of the Republican primary debates the Democratic primary victor, probably Jerry Brown. Then we can finally determine what Brown is planning to do as governor instead of hearing about what he has been doing as California attorney general. Poizner may be interesting to talk about, but he’s no Iron Man.

Today's Gubernatorial Debate

Today the second Republican primary debate between gubernatorial candidates Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner was held at the Tech Museum in downtown San Jose. Unlike the first debate, this event was televised and on the radio. If you want to catch it, Comcast is offering the full broadcast on demand, and it should be replayed on KTEH.

This debate was the second scheduled between the Republican primary candidates and may be the last debate before the vote in June. News articles have been published for the New York Times, the Associated Press, and the SF Chronicle, each with different spins on the story. Perhaps it was best to see it in person as I did.

Last Week in the Governor's Race

With April coming to an end, the state of California edges closer to the primary election. The San Jose Mercury News today ran an article about a program at Mount Pleasant High School for at-risk students. The following is a list of some notable news pieces in the last week concerning the California governor election as well as summaries of the articles.

Poizner climbs in the polls

Not too long ago, Whitman was beating Poizner in the polls by fifty points. Now a Survey USA poll shows Whitman with a 49 percent share beating Poizner’s 27 percent. The Poizner campaign cites the new data as proof that Whitman is losing momentum in her race for the primary nomination.

Brown agrees to post decade’s worth of tax returns on Web

The San Jose Mercury News demanded that the governor candidates release their tax returns for the past ten years. Jerry Brown is the only one of the three to respond to the request to post the returns online by May 5. Whitman suggested she would release her returns dating back 25 years if Brown released returns since he left the governor’s office. Poizner’s campaign promised to release returns around the time Whitman initially proposed a release of 25 years worth, but Poizner and Whitman did not respond to the Mercury News request.

Whitman says Brown’s debate proposal was a stunt

Jerry Brown recently challenged Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner to a debate before the June primary. Whitman and Poizner are debating this Sunday, and it’s unusual to suggest a three-way debate at this point. Whitman called Brown’s suggestion a stunt and refuses to participate.

Whitman calls for major changes in California worker pensions

To offset pension payments for California government employees, Whitman wants to raise the retirement age to 55 for public safety workers and to 65 for other workers, who would participate in 401(k) plans instead. Whitman also tried to blame Jerry Brown for giving collective bargaining rights to state workers when he was governor; the Brown campaign asserts that Whitman has her facts wrong.

California labor unions launch anti-Whitman campaign

California labor unions announced that they would campaign against Whitman and expose Whitman’s “Wall Street agenda.” Questions remain about Whitman’s connections to Goldman Sachs, and the Whitman campaign has pointed out that Jerry Brown had ties to Goldman Sachs as well. For more information about the campaign visit Wall Street Whitman.

Publicizing the Platforms

The San Jose Mercury news recently reported that Meg Whitman is sending her policy agenda to about 500,000 Republican households across California. Called Meg 2010: Building a New California, the magazine is forty-eight full-color glossy pages about Meg Whitman, the state of California, and her plans for it should she become governor. You can request a copy or read it online at this page.

When you visit Whitman’s campaign site, the platform section is the same as that found in the magazine. Steve Poizner does not have the same resources to distribute his platform as widely, so the best way to learn about his campaign is to browse the Solutions for California area. A good starting point is viewing the “Back From The Brink” video, as it is about eight minutes long.

Jerry Brown has yet to establish a proper campaign platform. The closest thing available is the following template for a message to send to any contacts:.

Jerry Brown has decades of experience fighting for Californians. As California's Attorney General, Jerry has fought mortgage fraud, real estate scams, political corruption, and crime. He's protected workers rights, the environment, and consumers.

Look forward to a comparison of the policy platforms available. With the primary about a month away, there’s plenty to talk about.

Mount Pleasant and Steve Poizner

Republican candidate for governor Steve Poizner released his new book yesterday. Titled Mount Pleasant: My Journey from Creating a Million-dollar Company to Teaching at a Struggling Public High School, the book chronicles the current state insurance commissioner’s time as a public school teacher in the east side of San Jose. The book release comes a month or two before the Republican primary and seems to be aimed at introducing Poizner to a wider audience. On the front page below Poizner’s name, it mentions that Poizner is the founder of a company responsible for “mobile phone GPS technology,” in case you might not know how Poizner became a millionaire.

In the interest of exploring the candidate more, I hope to read the book and post my review within a month. I also plan to read books from the other candidates running for California government offices and review them on the site.

A Brief Primer on the Current California Governor Race

The deadline for registering for the primary passed a while ago. Right now it’s a three way race. Former California governor and current state attorney general Jerry Brown officially announced his candidacy and is running unopposed in the democratic primary. You can find his campaign web site here.

The Republican primary is a two-way race, albeit one of them is far in front. Former CEO of eBay Meg Whitman is leading in the polls and is possibly more popular than Brown in a two-way race. Her website can be found here. The state insurance commissioner Steve Poizner is also running in the Republican primary. His website can be found here.

There has not been a lot of discussion between the candidates, but there are plenty of attacks to complement the advocacy pieces. Whitman’s campaign created Can’t Trust Steve to attack her opponent in the primary and cast Poizner as a career politician and not a conservative. Whitman has two attack websites devoted to her. Level the Playing Field attacks Whitman for not being forthright about her background and policy positions and is trying to pressure her to be more open to the public. Poizner’s campaign created Real Meg Whitman to attack her not only for dodging questions about her positions but also for not being a conservative candidate. Finally, the Republican Governors’ Association has a new site called What’s Brown Done? to analyze Brown’s political record and to petition that Brown release records of his time of governor to the public (Brown opted under a part of the Public Records Act to lock the gubernatorial records away for fifty years or his death, whichever comes later).

The attack sites as well as the campaign sites deserve analysis on their own. Until then, stay on top of the news.

State of the California Governor Race

Welcome to the site for the California Relief and Restoration Committee. This site is intended to identify and analyze the multiple crises that are facing the Golden State like when the Committee of Fifty was formed after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. I would like to talk more about the committee, but for now we begin with the state of the race for governor of California. While the San Jose Mercury News did a feature you can find here, I hope this introduction will be enough.

A few months ago a bunch of people formed exploratory committees to start raising money for the governor’s race. Among them were mayor of San Francisco Gavin Newsom, former House representative Tom Campbell, state attorney Jerry Brown, state insurance commissioner Steve Poizner, and former CEO of eBay Meg Whitman.

On the Democratic side, Newsom declared his candidacy and received an endorsement from former president Bill Clinton. After gaining little support from unions and other Democratic Party loyalists, Newsom dropped out of the race. Jerry Brown has not yet declared his candidacy.

On the Republican side, three candidates toured the state in preparation for the June primaries. Steve Poizner and Tom Campbell even had a debate. Campbell, having massive disadvantages in funding and popularity, bowed out of the governor race and switched to the U.S. Senate. He is leading in the polls against state senator Chuck DeVore and former CEO of Hewlett-Packard Carly Fiorina.

The two Republican candidates are noticeably different in campaign style. Billionaire Meg Whitman has been running radio advertisements for months and has been advertising herself on television, but she has been avoiding close scrutiny of her background and proposals for the most part. Multimillionaire Steve Poizner has spoken at length about his policy positions and qualifications, but as of now he has not been advertising on radio or TV. His campaign maintains that the advertising will start closer to the June primary when people are actually paying attention.

The deadline for filing for the governor’s race is March 12. Meg Whitman will not be attending the first California Republican Party Convention a few days prior to the deadline, but she will debate Poizner in Orange County a few days later and a second time to be determined. Poizner is trying to pressure Whitman to debate him at the convention and is accusing Whitman of threatening to use her sizable wealth to crush Poizner’s chances of election. Additionally a group called Level the Playing Field is attacking Whitman for refusing to disclose financial information relevant to her tenure at eBay.

About a hundred days remain before the California primaries begin. Whitman has responded to some of the attacks from Level the Playing Field and has launched a site to attack Poizner. Dan Schrur, director of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California (Unruh himself warrants plenty to talk about with respect to California politics), comments, “Poizner can take some encouragement from this because Whitman wouldn’t be doing this if she didn’t feel a little bit nervous.”

Jerry Brown, Steve Poizner, or Meg Whitman is expected to be elected the next governor of the state. More on this story will be available as it develops; watch the site for more in-depth analysis of the campaigns.