Whitman leads Brown in California governor's race
Meg Whitman, former Ebay CEO and California Republican candidate for Governor, gestures following a campaign appearance at a garlic farm in Gilroy, California July 22, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/Robert Galbraith
LOS ANGELES |
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Republican Meg Whitman has opened up a 7-point lead over Democrat Jerry Brown in their closely watched race for California governor, the latest poll of likely voters showed on Friday.
Whitman, a billionaire former eBay chief executive who has already poured more than $100 million into the campaign, leads Brown, a former governor, by 47 percent to 40 percent ahead of the November 2 election, according to the SurveyUSA sampling.
That reflects a 3-point gain by Whitman, who is making her first run for public office, from the last SurveyUSA poll conducted in August.
Whitman hopes to capitalize on her outsider status and deep pockets to beat Brown, currently state attorney general, in what is considered a reliably Democratic state.
The next governor will inherit a state struggling with double-digit unemployment, a budget deficit of tens of billions of dollars and an unpopular, often gridlocked Legislature.
California, the nation's most populous state, has a huge economy and is home to the Silicon Valley technology hub.
The SurveyUSA poll, which sampled 569 likely California voters on Tuesday and Wednesday, found incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer in a statistical dead heat with Republican Carly Fiorina, a former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, in their U.S. Senate race.
Boxer, a powerful liberal voice in Washington and strong supporter of President Obama's agenda, is seeking her fourth term in the Senate. She is in a tough re-election fight in a year when high unemployment and fears about the economy have left Democrats and incumbents vulnerable.
The survey, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points, also showed that opposition had grown among California voters to a ballot initiative that would legalize possession and sale of marijuana.
While previous SurveyUSA polls showed the measure, known as Proposition 19, passing by a margin of 10 percentage points, the September survey showed the split at 47 percent in favor, versus 43 percent opposed.
(Editing by Peter Cooney)
Brown was governor before and was not effective. I do not believe that another term as governor would change that!
Brown was so highly thought of in California and nationally, that as a presidential candidate, he defeated Carter in 7 out of the last 8 presidential primaries and defeated Clinton in 8 out of the last 10 presidential primaries too.
As governor, Brown was an advocate of green energy: solar,wind, electric etc… in the 1970’s long before it became cool to do so.
Brown helped create the Silicon Valley and million of new jobs with his policies.
Brown’s support of public education made California’s educational system the envy of the world.
Brown created the largest budget surplus in California history during his last time as Governor.
I lived in California when Brown was governor. He was a great deal more effective – and VASTLY more fiscally prudent – than he is given credit for today. In fact, Jerry Brown was the LAST California governor to leave office with the state in a fiscally sound condition.
Of the two, Brown is also the only one who in my opinion has a chance to make the fundamental political changes that need to be made to get the state’s processes functioning again. Why? Because he knows the players and knows the system, and more importantly because he has nothing to lose.
There’s no question in my mind, though, that Whitman will win the election. I’m glad to be gone from the state, although I deeply miss my hometown and my friends and family left behind. Alas, despite that she will have many screaming, raging tantrums in the Governor’s office, Meg won’t get anywhere near fixing the mess in Sacramento.
Brown was “tea party cheap”
before penny pinching in government became cool, again. Brown shunned the governor’s mansion and rented an apartment and slept on a mattress on the floor with a “boards and bricks” bookcase.
Brown shunned limos and went around in cheap government issued sedans.
Whitman is spending 100’s of millions of dollars for a job that pays around 150K aper year so I wonder what her true motivations are in doing that and if she can be trusted with California’s huge budget, bond market and huge CalPers public retiree funds.
Brown’s governorship helped create the booming silicon valley, the # 1 public eduation system in the world and was the forerunner of the green energy revolution 30 years ahead of everyone else.
Brown studied to be a Jesuit Priest and then left the seminary to graduate from Cal Berkeley and Yale Law school.
Chicago columnist Mike Royko, in the national fervor to criticize everything that comes out of California(and then copy it 1-2 decades later as “mainstream thought”) called Brown “Governor Moonbeam”
because Brown was so brilliant and ahead of his time. Mike Royko later profusely apologized for coining the term “Governor Moonbeam” when he studied Brown and his positions on various issues and decided, for himself, that Brown was far smarter than almost any other politician he had ever seen or met.
I am really concerned about what type a Governor Meg Whitman would be. I feel like it shows a lack of integrity to spend over $100 million of one’s own money to try to buy one’s way into office. Our campaign finance laws are clearly flawed allowing her to do this; but to have the arrogance and disrespect for the democratic process that her actions represent makes me feel very uneasy about what she would do as Governor.
Furthermore, she has a record of being disrespectful to her employees and now to the media. I don’t think she would be at all willing to listen to anyone who doesn’t see things exactly her way. I think that she would further dismantle the middle class and public education system in California.
Great. A woman whose political chops were developed running a virtual auction site will lead one of the most dysfuntional states in the world. We are the laughing stock…
