Meg Whitman's $150 Million Farce

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright Nov. 1, 2010
All Rights Reserved.                                

           Since announcing her campaign for governor Feb 9, 2009, 54-year-old former eBay CEO Meg Whitman has spent over $150 million out of her $1.4 billion dot-com fortune spinning more yarn than Fruit-of-the-Loom.  She packaged herself as a savvy businesswoman capable to turning around a grossly mismanaged state, the exact same message delivered by bodybuilder turned Hollywood actor Arnold Schwarzenegger who toppled former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in a historic recall election Oct. 7, 2003.  Like Arnold, Whitman sold herself as a political outsider needed to clean up Sacramento’s hopeless mess.  After alienating just about everyone in state government on both sides of the aisle, Arnold leaves office with the lowest approval ratings in state history, sabotaging his political career.  Whitman asks voters to believe she’d somehow do things differently. 

            Both Arnold and Meg like to define “insanity” as “doing the same old things and expecting different results,” offering a new fix for a set of old problems.  No one has spent more cash than Meg trying to sell herself as a tough-minded former CEO, needing to crack heads in Sacramento.  Arnold promised the same thing, selling his Hollywood credentials as proof of his competence.  California’s seven-year experiment with a political neophyte ended in disaster.  When Whitman debated former governor and current Atty. Gen. Gerry Brown in their first debate Sept. 28, she insisted she’d crack heads on employers hiring illegal aliens.  One day later, celebrity attorney Gloria Allred announced that Meg employed illegal alien Nicky Diaz for nine years before firing her after “learning” that she provided Whitman, and her husband Stanford neurosurgeon Dr. Griffith Harsh, fake immigration papers.

            Whitman antagonized the Latino community admitting that she terminated Diaz immediately after learning she was an undocumented worker.  While calling her part of her extended family, Whitman insisted it “broke her heart” to fire Diaz for lying about her immigration status.  Most believe that Meg fired Diaz in June 2009 to protect the ever-real possibility that Nicky’s story would leak to the media.  Meg blasted Allred and the Brown campaign for dropping the bombshell less than 24 hours after their first debate.  Whitman’s campaign has done everything possible to paint the incident as a cheap political shot, without producing a shred of proof that Allred was connected with the Brown campaign.  Meg asked voters to suspend all disbelief and believe she was duped by her former housekeeper.  She now insists that Diaz was manipulated by Allred and the Brown campaign.

            Since the story broke Sept. 29, Meg’s poll numbers took a nearly 20-point slide, leading by 10 prior to the bombshell and losing by 10 afterwards.  Her responses to the Diaz story has grown more surly as the campaign rolled on, now rudely dismissing the event as a dirty political trick.  “Well, the answer is:  It breaks my heart, but she should be deported, because she forged documents and she lied about her immigration status,” Whitman told reporters in Salinas, California.  Her heartless final resolution about the Diaz mess adds insult-to-injury to a campaign in a rapid descent.  Meg also dislikes questions about her lifelong voting record, voting for the first time for herself June 8 in the California primary.  She dismisses questions about her lack of civic responsibility, explaining she’s “sorry” for not participating in the voting process but insisting she’s fit to run the state..

            Whitman is getting a rude awakening about the rough-and-tumble of politics where slick public relations can’t gloss-over real questions about a candidate’s track record and character.  Since launching his campaign after Labor Day, Brown watched his opponent self-destruct, landing a deadly prick to a media-inflated balloon, created by a $150 million of cleverly constructed political ads.  “I think he wants to be appointed to this office, not elected,” Meg told supporters in Stockton, California, in a bizarre paradox since, she, not Brown, has spent lavishly out of her own pocket to get elected.  Whitman insists, like Arnold did in 2003, that she’s beholden to no one since s\he financed the lion’s share of her own campaign.  “We’re going to win this thing,” Whittman told an outdoor rally in Salinas, insisting her campaign’s  polls showed she’s in a dead heat with Brown.

              Whitman’s freefall in the polls stems from her exposure as a charlatan.  Her carefully honed attack ads did a masterful job as long as the public didn’t see her in person during the Sept. 28 debate at UC Davis’ Mondavi Center.  Voters saw first hand the Grand Canyon-like chasm between her campaign ads and the tired looking, inarticulate answers to journalists’ questions.  Instead of answering directly, she recited talking points from her debate briefings and campaign ads.  Less than 24 hours later, she was forced to explain her nine-year employment of an illegal alien.  While mistakes do happen, she’s had a hard time finding the right answers, blaming the mess on attorney Gloria Allred and the nefarious Brown campaign.  When voters give the final verdict Nov. 2, Meg will get her due:  A rude awakening to arrogant billionaires that you can’t dupe an informed electorate.

.About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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