Why $140 Million Isn’t Enough for Meg Whitman

By Joe Guzzardi
October 28, 2010

California’s political analysts can’t decide what to make of Meg Whitman’s $140 million personal investment in her own campaign.

On one hand, most pollsters felt early on that such massive spending would guarantee a Whitman win. But now that Whitman is trailing by more than 10 points with less than a week to go and doomed to defeat, the same analysts wonder why $140 million isn’t enough to buy victory.

Several factors weighed Whitman down. For one, the California electorate is 45 percent Democratic and only 31 percent Republican. For another Whitman’s opponent, the former governor Jerry Brown, and his family have been around the California state house for decades with friends in influential places, most notably the liberal press and the unions.

Whitman also endured the Arnold Schwarzenegger burden. Like Whitman, Schwarzenegger is a wealthy, famous Republican political neophyte. Since Schwarzenegger, whose approval rating hovers in the mid-20 percentage range, didn’t deliver the reforms he promised, voters are understandably skeptical about electing a clone.

In the end, however, what dragged Whitman down is Whitman, a bad candidate from the outset and the latest in a long line of inept Republican high office seekers.

Like two decades of the other California Republican Senate and gubernatorial candidates now on political the ash heap such as Bill Jones, Matt Fong, Bill Simon and Dan Lungren, Whitman refused to take an aggressive stand against illegal immigration.

If you assume Schwarzenegger was a celebrity candidate, the last true Republican to win a major California election was Pete Wilson in 1994 when, ironically, he buried Brown’s sister Kathleen, then the State Treasurer. What led to Wilson’s 15 point margin of victory was his opposition to giving social services to illegal immigrants which ultimately led to Proposition 187. Today, more than 25 years after Wilson’s overwhelming win and with tens of thousands more aliens in California adding to the $20 billion budget deficit, Republicans–specifically Whitman–refuse to seriously campaign against illegal immigration.

In retrospect, Whitman dug her own grave by first taking what she called a “tough as nails” anti-illegal immigration stance in the primary against her opponent Steve Poizner. Whitman hired Wilson as a consultant.

Once Whitman sewed up the primary with a 38 percentage point win, she pushed Wilson into the background and, to court the Hispanic vote, immediately shifted to left of center on illegal immigration. During the World Cup soccer matches, Whitman aired Spanish-language ads that announced her shift from pro- to anti- Arizona’s S.B. 1070.

As a result of Whitman’s immigration waffling, she lost her conservative Republican base without picking up the Hispanic vote she coveted.

What Republicans fatally refuse to understand is that on immigration, their candidates cannot out Democrat the Democrats. Hispanics overwhelmingly vote Democratic regardless of how much pandering Republicans do.

An interesting contrast to Whitman’s failure is Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s successful campaign based exclusively on strict immigration control. Brewer, the Republican incumbent, is cruising. According to latest polls, Brewer has a 55-39 percentage lead over her Democratic opponent, Attorney General Terry Goddard.

Until she signed S.B. 1070 in April, Brewer’s own party saw her as an underdog in the primary and, if she were lucky enough to survive it, gave her almost no chance against Goddard.

Brewer, despite heavy pressure from national ethnic interest groups and the Obama administration, not only refused to back down from S.B. 1070 but she petitioned the federal government to drop its law suit against Arizona.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Republican strategists always fall for the old saw that running on an immigration restrictionist platform offends Hispanics and puts off moderates.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Here’s the reality. Whitman will lose; Brewer will win.

Joe Guzzardi has written editorial columns—mostly about immigration and related social issues – since 1990. He is a senior writing fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) and his columns have frequently been syndicated in various U.S. newspapers and websites. He can be reached at [email protected].