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Whitman spends $76 per vote to win primary

June 10, 2010

Meg Whitman clinched the Republican nomination for California governor Tuesday night, but the victory came with a pretty steep price tag. [California Watch]

Whitman, the former eBay CEO, spent $76 per voter to claim the nomination from insurance commissioner Steve Poizner, who spent $63 per vote.

In contrast, Jerry Brown spent 50 cents per vote to get the Democratic nomination, though he faced only a minimal challenge. Brown spent a penny for every dollar Whitman pumped into the race.

Whitman spent nearly $80 million on her campaign through May 22, the last day figures are available–that translates into roughly $161,000 a day. Her total spending is expected to reach $84 million.

The three candidates combined spent $57,203,930.74 on TV and radio ads and another $11,085,653.21 on campaign consultants.

Whitman and Brown now face off in the November election.


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At least it was Meg Whitman’s money – out of her own pocket for the most part – that she ‘bought’ the primary with (I disagree with that premise, by the way; she wasn’t standing over the voters’ shoulders in the voting booth).


Jerry Brown didn’t need to spend all that ca$h to win his primary, so this article as ‘news’ is meaningless. Its called a ‘straw-dog’ argument, intended to cast a bad light on the ‘evil capitalist’ Meg Whitman. The comparison has no merit, the two primary races weren’t close to equal. For all practical purposes, Brown ran unopposed. Whitman ran against another well funded opponent (Poizner).


I will vote for a proven, successful CEO, who took a company best known for trading ‘beanie babies’ into a business that had made entrepreneurs out of millions, over a failed Jesuit seminary student who ruined this state the FIRST time he was governor.


Whitman has experience being a chief exec, Brown does as well. We need only look at history to make an educated choice. Brown has held every state public office he can legally run for, in order to avoid work in the private sector. Whitman was part of building one of the largest, most successful internet businesses in history. Simple choice in my humble opinion.


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Yeah well you might want to dig a little deeper than that story of the American Dream. Just to scratch the surface… she counts among her advisors the ex-DA of Kern County Ed Jagels. If you are not familiar with Mr. Jagels… he made a name for himself in the 80s when there was a lot of hyped of child molestation cases and also a lot of hype around satanic cults. He managed to combine the two and go on a mission to prosecute satanic child molesters. Of the 26 people he put in prison, 25 were later released and had their cases overturned. There is even a movie about it (Witch Hunt). By his second term he had tripled the number of prosecutorial misconduct complaints of his predecessor, and we’re talking about some EGREGIOUS misconduct. On Whitman’s site he is listed as public safety co-chair.


At one time Whitman was on the board of Goldman Sachs, which she left after being cited for a questionable action that resulted in a congressional investigation and investor lawsuits


Whitman is more of the same. She’s old money, NOT the American dream. You think she’s going to change the big spending and lead us in a new direction? Nah, she’s just going to pull of some more unsustainable debt financing for the state.


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I would be so much better off if politicians just bought my vote directly, cash money.


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Yeah, not a bad idea. Just give us the money, instead of the radio/tv stations and all those fat ‘consultants’.


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76 dollars, buy it now.


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Since Meg has almost never/never even voted before, being too busy making money on the backs of the masses it is always amazing how those masses love their rich oppressors. All that money to gain political power without a shred of prior experience doing anything for anyone but Number One, her. Oh well, life isn’t fair, the political process is a mess and the rabble are easily fooled by fancy color brochures.

The struggle leading up to November will be interesting-money vs integrity.


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hotdog, Here is (Moonface) Jerry Brown, is this mentality what you think will save us?


http://www.verumserum.com/?p=15182


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I read that link. The quote from Brown is 12 years old, but anyway the comment from Bob2313 reflects sensible thought. I suppose Cindy1000 is our dear Cindy. For a Dem to vote for a teabag neophyte is really stretching things. Read the Bob2313 comment. Anyway, the guv has much more to do than fiddle with immigration issues; voting because of a single issue is pretty short sighted. And the raging campaign has not even started yet so who knows what sort of stuff will come up?

Let’s see what Jerry says and does about all this as the campaign develops. If I remember right prop 187 was thrown out by the courts. And his nick name is Moonbeam.

One thing many of you probably don’t remember is how frugal Governor Jerry Brown was, drove his own car, stayed in low cost hotels when traveling. I imagine he saved us millions of dollars instead of sucking off the government tit, unlike the Imperial Ray gun who spent our money like water.


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Well the rich oppressors at least make jobs and give us a chance to make money to live. The career politician just trys to find a way to take our money through taxes. I think the people probably saw the lesser of the two evils. Maybe all the neo nazi, facist, right wing nut, jobs (your words not mine) you mentioned maybe understand it better than you think.


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I’m surprised you are just parroting palin’s idiot line, you are way smarter, and kinder. Where do you think taxes go? They go to hire cops, firemen, road workers, social welfare workers, public health workers. Research for health, technology and public advancement is funded, even that commie ‘public art’ is sometimes funded for the betterment of our souls. Stadiums are built, safety concerns and security issues are addressed. Regulators and regulation to control the evil corporations is funded to avoid massive oil well disasters, mine disasters, air and water pollution. The courts, traffic lights, roadways and other public facilities are funded. National security is maintained. All those things require humans and equipment to plan, create, build, and maintain.

This is just a short list, let your mind wander and it is almost endless, the varied things and issues the government supplies that must be funded through taxes. We may sometimes get shoddy work (regulation under the bushies of mining and oil well safety) and sometimes there are crummy people in government (well, the list is long) but that does not mean the system is wrong, it just needs constant monitoring and repair-like everything else in every sector.

But, if one wishes to be real and do the research one will discover more waste and fraud in the times of the righties. Look what Barack inherited-two wars without end, massive regulatory fraud, an economic disaster of historic proportions (remember Johhny McCain was one of the Keeting 5 scandal in the 80’s?), AND the never ending immigration ‘problem’ that all former Presidents either ignored or failed to fix.

It so easy and cheap to say, as slim whitman said two days ago, ‘those tax and spend’ liberals…..

What a crock of idiocy, but does appeal to the duped masses of fat (drug addled) limbo listeners.


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Boy you are a good liberal. Talk about your typical liberal play book. Try and discredit the messenger (as you have done with name calling in past of right) or trying to link message. Defense lawyers do the same in court.


First you are WAY off in your Palin comparison. I only heard her a few times in the begining after McCane opted for her. I liked some of her message but I don’t like her gee wheez high school mentality.


The point I made on business is one I have held going way back even before limbo. I know that you libs who think you are SO smart find it hard to believe that we on the right also read and form opinions to.


That is all I will say as I know from past with yourself, it is a back and forth with citing facts and I will not diswade yourself in your believes as you will not mine. I just encourage anybody reading to look long and hard at BIG GOV. At the end of the day they are no more your friend than Big business. So YOU decide which is enriching your life more and which is less intrusive.


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A prediction based upon recent (state) history suggests that voters can be fooled. They chose an aging Austrian weight-lifter-‘terrorist’-fighting-actor with no formal education or admin experience. over a Harvard Grad with extensive experience (Arnie vs. Phil Agelides).


Meg is just the kind of wealthy opportunist we need to permanently sink the state into 3rd world status.


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“3rd world status” State, I’d rather watch Meg sink us than watch all the illegals do it. Safe guard the boarder, start fining the Employers hiring the undocumented and stop with all the social welfare programs to people who invade us and deplete our tax payer funds for education and the needy Americans and maybe we will have a fighting chance.


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Is this the same Cindy we have grown to respect? Can’t be.

Hey, why don’t we get rid of those nuisance Jews, blacks, asians and Indians (even though they have been here forever they are still, ‘not white’? Let’s have a greater, whiter amerika where god fearing fascists will be comfortable walking down the street safe from foreign barbarians.


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It’s typical for liberals to pull up the race card when an American complains about illegal immigrants that are taxing our social system beyond all proportions. It’s easy to call someone a racist when they complain about elderly programs being cut, school programs being cut and 80% of the babies currently born in LA county are to illegal immigrants. It’s easy to call people racists when they complain about illegal immigrants attacking Americans on the 4th July or when they trample on our flag in our faces and tell us we owe them a free ride because they once owed this land for all of 28 years. Its easy to call Americans racist when we complain about our schools teaching Raza and the Nation of Aztlan in our Hispanic social studies classes which is about separatism, the hatred of all whites and the literal “take over” of the states of CA AZ NM TX +++.

I have been a registered NP for the last 25 years . In those 20 years I have “primarily” always identified with the Democrats and if one more Dem calls me a racist for complaining about people invading my country and disrespecting everything that we stand for, I will vote for every Republican on the block that say’s they will start deporting.

I will have you know that I of all people have NEVER been a racist, not even back when using the N word was common or when telling black jokes was common in grade school. Not even back then, when it was considered cool.


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Wow, cindy is so so important that no one better challenge her or she will vote for the selfish and greedy repos, what a fright that would be! Well, that is her party according to her comments so might at well vote more of the vermin in so we can have a nice white society unencumbered with immigrants of a different color than her immigrant ancestors. The comments above are wildly inflammatory (sounds like the Klan worrying their little butts off about black people).

The petty threats won’t work, everyone will vote whoever they want to vote for, or are cheated into thinking they want by more campaign fraud, such as we just had here.


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hotdog, Your getting off the wall IMO and if the illegal immigrants were white, what then? I guess you would call me an xenophobic. Stop the name calling and listen to the concerns, then maybe we can talk. Like I said, I have always been a predominate (as in 95%) Democratic voter, and yes, I voted for Obama, Gore and Clinton. I have very real concerns and I don’t think we can fix anything until we patch the leak causing the flood that is drowning our states resources.

Certainly there are other concerns, like the pig corporations who are hiring the illegals and don’t pay their share of taxes which was condoned by the Bush administration. IMO both parties have a serious downside. I’m tired of listening to people like you who call names rather than deal with facts and issues. Right now I like the Republicans better. You sound like a complete nut, sorry we are having this disagreement because apart form this issue ,I have always respected you.


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I came back to see if you had replied to my post and I noticed that I need to make an “OOP” correction.”hotdog, Your getting off the wall IMO” – should read, “hotdog , You’re getting off the wall :)


I


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Hmmm, I don’t know what IMO means.

I was going to bring up the non colored immigrants too, since they are never mentioned in the stampede to condemn the brown ones. My big problem with all this is that I feel the mostly Mexican immigrants (so called illegal aliens) are unfairly singled out as such a huge problem.

Here is one issue. Some time back the issue of flooded emergency rooms with illegals was brought up. The director of Sierra Vista called into the show to say ‘NO Way’, denying there is any problem at all in that regard. I don’t know where everyone gets the idea these people are such a huge problem, but I liken it to Hitler’s condemnation of the jews which gave everyone something convenient to hate to take their minds off the real problems confronting them (such as him). Its an old story of human behavior, most cultures have done it for thousands of years. Its a power thing with the lowest elements of our society to gain prestige and herd the masses around by fear and hate. Apparently it has even taken root here in Camelot, too bad. I thought our citizens were smarter, and nicer. Wrong again…


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Yup, I came back again just for you. IMO means In my opinion. You could have goggled that.


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[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by SLO News, CalCoastNews. CalCoastNews said: Whitman spends $76 per vote to win primary – http://tinyurl.com/2exlzhs […]


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Not saying right or wrong but lets put this in some perspective. You have Brown that has been in the public eye for 35 years. If you add his father for family name reconigition you have about 45 years.

You have Meg on the other side that most people haven’t heard of till last 12-18 months. So what other options are there, to get your name out to the masses.


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She wasn’t even running against Brown yet. She bought the nomination, against Steve who was trying to buy it. Hideous amounts of money hurling charges back in forth, trying to out fascist each other. Shameful they got any votes at all. I never heard one word about what they would specifically do to help our state prosper without robbing the poor to help the rich. Robber barons….


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WELL DUH! I was commenting on the article. If you read what I wrote it is appropreiate comment to the article. They were comparing money spent by the two of them. I think my comment was right to said article.


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We ought to just put the governorship on ebay. Looks like it’s going to go to the highest bidder anyways.


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