April 6, 2010 SACRAMENTO, Calif. â Former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman on Monday gave her campaign for the GOP gubernatorial nomination another $20 million, bringing her contributions from her personal fortune to $59 million in what is expected to be the most expensive governor's race in California history. Whitman has already spent more than $46 million in her quest to beat state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in the June Republican primary, paying tens of millions to blanket television and radio airwaves with ads introducing herself to California voters. Recent polls show her with a 40- to 50-percentage point lead over Poizner and neck-and-neck with presumed Democratic nominee Jerry Brown in a presumed matchup in next November's general election. The Poizner and Brown campaigns accused Whitman of trying to buy the election. "Meg Whitman laughs at the thought of running out of money, while people across California are struggling every day," Poizner spokesman Jarrod Agen said in a statement Monday night. Poizner is also a multimillionaire who has given his campaign $19 million to date, but had spent only about $3 million as of mid-March. He has said he is saving his resources to mount an aggressive attack against Whitman in the final weeks of the Republican contest. Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford said Whitman is spending unprecedented money "to fund simplistic sloganeering and attack ads. Her Wall Street money won't be enough to crown herself the Republican nominee or buy the governor's office this November." Whitman's campaign has said she is willing to spend as much as $150 million of her own money in the race for governor. Whitman campaign manager Jillian Hasner said that Whitman has also raised $11.8 million from outside contributors. "Whether it's facing down the powerful public employee unions who are propping up Jerry Brown or our well-financed primary opponent, Meg's campaign will have the resources to fight back," Hasner said in a statement released by the campaign.
Spending 150 million dollars to get a job that pays 200k per year? Something doesnt smell right about that. Somehow just with that little fact shows that this woman does not know how to budget successfully or know how to stretch a dollar especially if she has to spend 10 times as much to get the same results as someone else. I've seen her ads about how her experience running ebay proves she can run california. With that comment she is either not that bright, or hoping you are not that bright. In Ebay she gets to tell everyone what to do. As governor people tell her what to do and she is not in a "dictator-type" roll in government. In ebay, everyone has to do what you say. They dont in government. There is a lot of voting in government and in Ebay there was no voting.
How bad would it suck to live in California and have to choose between nutcase marxist Brown and corporate fatcat, options hog Whitman?
I live in CA now. We are bankrupt now so its not like they could do any worse. Now that i think about it, Meg is probably willing to spend so much to be govenor because she believes the US is going to split up in the next few years. If that happens, she just made herself president of the 8th largest economy in the world. Its pretty smart when you think about it.
yes -but ca will then balkanize. There is no way orange county and san diego would ever let itself be governed by the crazy spending liberals of north if they had another chance. And I suspect no one would be responsible for L.A. but L.A would not share its water with San Diego. It would get ugly.
No, of course not. Everyone knows that San Diego is the paragon of civic virtue. And it wasn't all that long ago when Orange County went BK by a controller who didn't know his ass from his elbow.
I said crazy spending liberals. I did not say that we do not have corrupt idiot politicians in the south. We clearly do. Willie brown once said - the problem with the politicians in san diego is that they can be purchased too cheaply.