Whitman Wisdom

In the 2010 elections in California, two GOP candidates with considerable promise foundered on the immigration issue -- Senate candidate Carly Fiorina because she took a tone-deaf hard line, gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman after her carefully nuanced position was deftly if ruthlessly undermined by attorney Gloria Allred (shown here with the Whitmans' former housekeeper).

Whitman's attempt to find a better way to be in conversation with California's burgeoning Latino population was no doubt inspired by her senior adviser, former Gov. Pete Wilson, who was burned in 1994 by his support for Prop. 187. I also saw his fine hand in Whitman's comments yesterday in Dallas, as reported by Seema Mehta:

"My view is that the immigration discussion, the rhetoric the Republican Party uses, is not helpful; it's not helpful in a state with the Latino population we have," Whitman said during a brief interview following a speech at a George W. Bush Institute conference on the economy. "We as a party are going to have to make some changes, how we think about immigration, and how we talk about immigration."

Nixonite Grand Slam Eaten For Breakfast

Good year for Republicans nationwide. Bad year in California and New York for candidates advised or supported by Nixonites. Former California Gov. Pete Wilson, a Nixon advance man and perennial 37 favorite, starred in loser Meg Whitman's brain trust, and ex-speechwriter Ken Khachigian was one of loser Carly Fiorina's top advisors. In New York, Nixon son-in-law Ed Cox, the state Republican chairman, recruited and backed a moderate loser in the GOP primary contest for governor, softening up the presumptive nominee for a successful challenge from his right by angry man Carl Paladino, who was advised by Nixon political friend Roger Stone and buried tonight in an historic landslide.

Feeling A Little Snarky At The LA Times

Two political reporters make a comment reminiscent of being 12:

[Meg] Whitman is going out of her way to criticize as "bunk" a Sunday Los Angeles Times/USC poll that showed Brown leading by 13 points among likely voters.

Her criticism has not extended to other recent public polls, which have consistently shown Whitman trailing Brown by high single digits.

Whitman Endorses Brown

Oops. But isn't that Peter Coyote doing the narration?

Forever Blue?

Californians just aren't tea drinkers. A new poll suggests that the governor's mansion is well out of reach for Republican Meg Whitman, while the GOP's Carly Fiorina remains eight points behind in her bid for the Senate. The LA Times:

Most of the nation has seen pronounced enthusiasm by Republican voters as the midterm elections approach. In California, however, Democrats have gained strength and GOP motivation has ebbed slightly in the last month, the poll showed. The current standings represent a reassertion of a more typical profile for the state after an election year convulsed by a foundering economy, widespread discontent about the future and record-breaking spending by Whitman, who has dropped more than $141 million of her own money into her campaign.

The Times analysis says that Gloria Allred sank Whitman by holding press conferences featuring a woman who had lied about her immigration status to get a housekeeping job with Whitman and her husband. Nobody cares much for Allred and her tactics (excepting, of course, Mr. Allred and their pets), but if such an obvious setup was enough to upset a candidate's standing with a whole bloc of voters, then she was standing near quicksand already.

The fact is that Republicans have broken their picks with California's Latinos. Some blame former Gov. Pete Wilson. I remember (this was in my Nixon library days) taking a walk with him from his office to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and listening as he complained about the bad rap he said he'd received for supporting an anti-illegal immigrant measure, Prop. 187, when it and he were on the ballot together in 1994. It's true he won reelection. But the GOP has been in especially bad odor with Latino voters ever since.

I'd guess that Wilson, and others in his brain trust who have been advising Whitman, played a part in her shrewd if dangerous decision during the primary campaign to resist veering to the right on immigration by endorsing the Arizona law. Her more overt outreach to Latinos came next. That her housekeeper has evidently cleaned her clock so thoroughly means that if it wants to win, the GOP has a lot more hard work to do with voters who think, rightly or wrongly, they're being scapegoated.

Take It Like A Whitman

Joanna Weiss is surprised that Meg Whitman, California's GOP gubernatorial candidate, made such a big deal about a Jerry Brown aide's vulgarity:

The notion that the billionaire head of a Fortune 500 company would be crushed — or even surprised — at a little trash talk is absurd. And if she’s somehow deeply wounded by an aide on a cellphone, how would she handle a rambunctious State Assembly? The fact that she can slough off slurs should be a badge of honor — and a model for women who want to play the game.

The Most Devastating Ad Of The Year

"Echo"

Not-So-Poor Poor Meg

More from John Judis's Jerry Brown profile. First, a modern-day iteration of Harry Truman's famous "Poor Ike -- it won't be a bit like the Army" comment about the circumscribed civilian elected executive:

Daniel Zingale, who was deputy chief of staff for former governor Gray Davis and a senior adviser to Schwarzenegger, draws a sharp contrast between the two candidates. Brown, he says, “should know what he is getting into. He has always been someone who liked to rock the boat, and I think that fits the time.” Whitman, he says, “does not have any idea what the job is like ... For a CEOer like her, who is used to telling the comptroller what to do, it would be a rude awakening to discover that the comptroller is going to be running against you in the next election. She doesn’t know how powerless she is going to be.”

And Judis's conclusion:

If Whitman’s money prevails, the legislature will quickly disabuse her of her plans, and if she is smart, she will decide, as Schwarzenegger finally did, to govern from the center and not the right. But if Brown can win in spite of his shoestring campaign, he won’t have to endure a similar initiation—he knows how Sacramento works. He stands a much better chance than Whitman of breaking the fiscal deadlock, and his cleanenergy program could restore California’s place as a vanguard of American industry. And if that’s not enough, there’s another consideration: A Brown administration, whatever its faults, would be infinitely more entertaining.

"The War On Jobs"

Meg Whitman certainly mastered this moment in tonight's debate with Jerry Brown, as reported by the LA Times:

During a discussion of the candidates' prescriptions for curing the economy, Brown jumped on Whitman's proposal to cut the capital gains tax, saying the beneficiaries would largely be wealthy people, including those who have donated $30 million to her campaign.

"How much money will you save if the tax breaks were in effect this year or last year?" Brown asked Whitman.

Whitman demurred but said, "I'm an investor, and investors will benefit from this. So will job creators, and I was a job creator. We have got to get someone in office who knows what the conditions are for small businesses to grow and thrive," she said. "Your business is politics. You've been doing this 40 years and you have been part of the war on jobs in this state for 40 years."

Jerry Brown's Empty Blackboard

The Tea Party notwithstanding, Jerry Brown may be the year's true revolutionary. His moderate Republican opponent, Meg Whitman, is spending a large fortune on elaborate plans and advance men with ear plugs without offering any real hope of being able to do anything to fix California's broken government that wasn't available to the moderate Republican incumbent. According to this Joe Hagan account in "New York" magazine, Brown improvises, stumbles, and promises almost nothing. No more likely to fix the state, probably, but his no-plan plan is somehow refreshing:

Brown’s campaign strategy appears to be, let Whitman spend all her money while Brown leans back and declares her a spendthrift and a dilettante.

Kevin Starr, the USC historian, who went to high school with Brown, calls Brown’s non-efforts a “Zen campaign,” which seems to acknowledge that politics itself, the function and purpose of it, has “been erased in California.” Or, put another way, why have a plan if plans aren’t going to work?

“It’s an empty blackboard,” Starr says.

Still Bluish In California

In California, Republican Meg Whitman, running for governor, has glided to the center, while Carly Fiorina, running for the U.S. Senate, is knee-deep in tea. The LA Times:

"If Meg wins, that's not a big shock. She's kind of like Arnold [Schwarzenegger], and we've had mainly Republican governors" in recent decades, said Bruce Cain, a political science professor at UC Berkeley. "If Carly wins, that's a big deal.... We're going to have to stop and really think when we say California is a light blue state."

Speaking of which, polls show they're both running behind their Democratic opponents.

Ecclesiastes 1:6-7

And so the chill, just winds of politics blow. Last week, Jerry Brown supporter Gloria Allred manufactured a crisis for Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman to try to weaken her standing with Latino voters. Today, misogynist-sounding talk by Brown and his aides could weaken his standing with women.

Republicans should note well, however, that the gist of the inadvertently taped conversation among Brown and his boys is that he may be tougher on public employee unions that Whitman.

The Illogical Twins

An LA Times editorial lets California's GOP gubernatorial candidate, Meg Whitman, off the hook for employing an undocumented worker but chides her for her illogical immigration position.

And yet as Cathleen Decker's recent Times analysis demonstrated, almost nobody's immigration position is logical, especially Republicans'. The party's whipsawed between those who want to militarize the borders and a Main St. cohort whose members depend on undocumented workers. The former seem to predominate among party elites, which is why it's a miracle Whitman got nominated after coming out against Arizona's relatively draconian law. That move may prove to the smartest of the year, since Whitman still seems to be doing far better among Latinos than Sheriff Fiorina in her U.S. Senate race against Barbara Boxer.

As for Whitman's opponent, Democrat Jerry Brown's policy on the budget is just as illogical as Whitman's on immigration. He says he wouldn't raise taxes without voter approval. Gov. Schwarzenegger tried that and got schooled. What magic formula does Brown have in mind for fixing the state's structural deficit, except breaking his promise?

Can't Live With 'Em, Can't Live Without 'Em

The LA Times' Cathleen Decker has written a thoughtful article that presents the controversy over Meg Whitman's housekeeper in the light of Californians' deep ambivalence about immigration. The whole article's great. As for the political risk to Whitman, Decker writes:

The biggest danger, many said, was that voters might accept that she was duped by her housekeeper but also object to how Whitman treated the woman. That too would be completely in line with a populace that can love the illegal immigrant but disdain illegal immigration.

Air Ken

In the second-day story in the LA Times on California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's housekeeper, Nixon White House aide Ken Khachigian says:

They've got to take the oxygen away from the fire in terms of the follow-up.

In terms of the metaphor, that's a durable one for Khachigian. He was the Cox family's tactician (see the "secret maneuvers" file) when it differed with the Eisenhowers over the ownership and structure of the Nixon library and with me over how much money family members would get from Nixon's estate. Strike a match under the aide, he advised. In May 2002, "Time" reported:

Khachigian...calls Taylor "oxygen on this fire..."

Enough, Allredy

It takes some doing to evoke sympathy for a billionaire who's trying to buy California's governorship. Way to go, Gloria Allred!

Nine years ago her client, Nicandra Diaz Santillan, falsely told an employment agency and Meg Whitman that she was a permanent resident alien and got a $23 an hour job. She made her assertion under penalty of perjury. After Whitman announced for governor last year, Diaz Santillan told Whitman and her husband that she was undocumented. They immediately fired her.

In the thick of Whitman's campaign against Democratic opponent Jerry Brown, the ex-employee turned up with Allred at a press conference today, saying she'd been mistreated. Seen that movie before? I knew that you had. Brown supporter Allred and other Whitman critics say she should've known about Diaz Santillan's status. But you have to wonder about Whitman's motive for sticking her head in the sand, since she wouldn't have had much trouble getting a documented worker or U.S. citizen to work for $23 an hour.

The LA Times thoughtfully lists three "potential threats to Whitman's campaign":

Whitman has made a point in her campaign that employers should be held responsible if they hire illegal workers....

Pitting Whitman against a Latina who says she was badly treated could undermine the candidate's extensive outreach efforts to Latino voters, a segment of the electorate critical to winning.

The issue also could hurt Whitman among conservative Republicans, some of whom have criticized her for being insufficiently tough on immigration.

Let's take those one by one.

Diaz Santillan reliably claimed to be documented, so it's hard to accuse Whitman of hypocrisy.

As for Latino voters, like other voters, they're just as likely to conclude that Diaz Santillan treated Whitman badly by misleading her about her status.

No. 3 sounds like wishful thinking by reporters Michael J. Mishak and Phil Willon. It's hard to imagine this story prompting a rush to Brown among conservative Republicans, who, notwithstanding their varying positions on undocumented workers, hire plenty of them themselves.

Besides, the reporters have just predicted that the scandal will hurt Whitman with Latino voters. Was she too tough on Diaz Santillan or too soft on illegal immigration?