Meg Whitman: Are Her Millions Enough?

13 September 2010 |permalink | email article

NBC’s David Gregory asked Mike Murphy, Whitman’s senior Republican gubernatorial consultant, Sunday on “Meet the Press” why having spent over 100 million dollars the billionaire has been unable to destroy Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown, seeking a third term as governor, in a race that remains too close to call.

Murphy responded that the former eBay chairman, who has no political experience and a virtual non-existent record of voting in California, knows how to create jobs based on her contacts in the business centric Silicon Valley.

It was not a very persuasive answer considering that Whitman has a $1 million investment in Murphy’s film production company, and according to a New York Times report, convinced the savvy strategist to become her top strategist. Aside from their financial relationship, Murphy had been paid $861,474 in salary as of June 30. (The Contra Costa Times reported that since June 30, Whitman has paid 50 consultants $9.7 million.)

In an interesting sidebar to the campaign a post that Brooks Jackson reported 18 years ago for CNN has recently become an issue in the California governor’s race. Meg Whitman quoted it on her website on Sept. 6.

Jerry Brown says she got it wrong. Jackson, at FactCheck.org, said Saturday “Brown is right; I made a mistake in my 1992 report.”

The issue, Jackson said, is whether taxes went up or down during Brown’s previous time as governor, starring in January 1975 and ending in January 1983. “Most of what I said back in 1992 remains true. I was critiquing Brown’s claim – in a TV spot during his presidential primary campaign – that he had cut taxes for working people. But I was wrong when I said that “state taxes were still higher” during his last year than when he began. In fact, they were a bit lower.”

Brown’s campaign has demanded Whitman take down the false TV ad featuring an old videotape of former President Bill Clinton citing the CNN report and calling Brown a liar. Clinton was then running against Brown in the Democratic presidential primary. Whitman has refused to remove it.

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