Fundraising Like a Poll in Governor’s Race?
When a campaign starts warning that “The only poll that counts is the one on election day,” political writers know that means the numbers are bad and getting worse.
So when a spokesman for Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner said Thursday that the Republican primary for governor “is not going to be a fund-raising battle,’’ it’s a pretty good bet that the money race is not going well.
For Poizner, that’s an understatement. Since June 30, Poizner has reported receiving just two – as in one, two – contributions of more than $5,000, the amount that has to be immediately reported to California’s secretary of state.
The $50,000 he received is not only orders of magnitude less than the $2.5 million former eBay CEO Meg Whitman took in, but it’s also half as much as former Rep. Tom Campbell, typically the fiscal caboose in the governor’s race, collected over the same period.
Berkeley and Democracy
Protests at UC Berkeley and other UCs yesterday objected to budget cuts to the university system. The day before, at UC Berkeley, professors told an audience of students why the university was in such difficulties and why they should actively protest. Many speakers blamed Proposition 13, of course. But, according to the Daily Californian one political science professor said that the tax revolt was "rebellion against democracy; keep what you earn and no democracy can tell you otherwise."
Holocaust Denials from Iran, Again
I spoke over the weekend with a
94-year old woman, who just happens to be my Godmother, Elizabeth. She had just attended the funeral back
in Boston (where I grew up) of a woman that she had known for 91 years – her
97-year old friend, Jeanne. Both
Elizabeth and Jeanne’s families were wiped out in the Austria of the late
1930’s by the Nazi onslaught.
Elizabeth and her husband, Richard, had made it out by the skin of their
teeth. Richard was an anti-Nazi
activist, and the Gestapo was literally knocking on doors on his street when he
led his young wife-to-be, Elizabeth, on a wild journey to America, landing in
Portland, Maine in 1939, and making their way to Boston. My parents were their first American
friends.