Well, Steve Poizner’s in the governor’s race to stay.
The state insurance commissioner said Sunday that he’s putting $15 million of his own cash into his GOP campaign for governor, upping his personal contribution to about $19 million or roughly the same former eBay CEO Meg Whitman has given to her effort.
The money puts paid to the rumors that:
1. Poizner really didn’t really have millions to spend on his campaign.
2. Even if he had the money, the insurance commissioner really wasn’t serious about a 2010 run for governor.
Poizner said in a statement to supporters that he’s going to use the money to tell voters about his plan to close the state’s budget problems by slashing taxes, making the supply-side economic argument that lower taxes will stimulate growth and bring in even more tax revenue.
While it’s going to be interesting to see Poizner put that counter-intuitive argument into a 30-second TV or radio spot, it does mean that he plans to go on the attack against Whitman, who’s been running her own radio ads since September.
Having the airwaves to herself has helped Whitman leap into an early lead for the June GOP primary. A Los Angeles Times-University of Southern California poll last month showed her with 35 percent of the vote, followed by former San Jose Rep. Tom Campbell with 27 percent and Poizner trailing with a dismal 10 percent.
Poizner had little choice but to write that $15 million check. While his argument that the early poll numbers represented little more than Whitman’s spending-driven name identification makes cold intellectual sense, that has little to do with the politics of the governor’s race.
Whitman’s omni-present radio ads, her continuing and growing lead in fund-raising and the poll numbers were making her look like a winner, a perception that threatened to snowball into reality if Poizner didn’t make a major move – and soon.
He and his team could talk about delaying any serious campaign push until the months closer to the June election, but it was becoming increasingly clear that unless Poizner did something to prove to his backers just how serious he was, the race could be over well before election day.
Of course, just because Poizner writes a $15 million check for his campaign doesn’t mean that he has to spend it, at least not now.
The timing of the contribution is important. While Poizner announced his contribution Sunday, before the holiday media crush that virtually drowns out any political news, a campaign spokesman told the Associated Press that it could be the end of the month before all the money went into the campaign account.
That’s an important deadline, since Dec. 31 is the closing date for the next campaign financial report, due Feb. 1. So any money moved to the campaign by the end of the month shows up on the next set of reports.
Dec. 31 also is the cutoff date for campaign expenses, which allows a little political game playing.
If Poizner sticks that $15 million in his campaign account now, but doesn’t spend any of it before month’s end, his next public financial report will show that $15 million as cash-on-hand, ready and available for the final five-plus months of the campaign.
While Whitman has raised far more than Poizner, she’s been burning through that cash for the radio ad effort and a very large nut of campaign expenses, including around $250,000 a month for a battalion of political consultants.
Those costs have probably eaten deeply into the $15 million Whitman put into her own campaign in July, which means she’s in danger of showing far less cash-on-hand than Poizner when those financial statements are released.
There’s that whole perception thing again, only this time it would be Poizner looking like the candidate set for a push to victory.
Don’t expect Team Whitman to let that happen. Whitman already has said she might spend as much as $150 million of her own money for the governor’s race. Don’t be surprised to see some of those millions moved into her campaign war chest before the Dec. 31 cutoff date for the next financial reports.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.