Whitman’s Primary Lead Bad News for Brown
Meg Whitman’s growing lead in the Republican primary for governor is worse news for Jerry Brown than it is for Steve Poizner.
The former eBay CEO has jumped out to a huge 41 percent to 11 percent lead over Poizner, the state insurance commissioner, in a poll released last night by the Public Policy Institute of California.
The survey gives Brown an increasingly narrow 41 percent to 36 percent lead over Whitman in a November match-up, but those numbers aren’t nearly as worrisome to the attorney general as Poizner’s weak showing.
Whitman has spent around $20 million, much of it going for months of radio advertising. She’s already put $39 million of her own money into the campaign and is primed to spend more.
Poll Indicates Some Education Funds Should be Spent on Voters
The newly released PPIC poll shows not only do respondents support education funding, but also some of that education money should be spent on voters.
Delving into the poll reveals the decision-making by the voters on education funding is made on false assumptions.
The poll reveals voters are willing by a two-to-one margin to raise taxes for the purpose of maintaining school funding at current levels. At the same time, by 56% to 40% voters said that they did not think taxes should be part of the budget plan. That seeming dichotomy is not as glaring as first supposed when you look at the questions that prompted the responses.
The question, which rejected taxes as part of the budget plan, was related to the governor’s proposals expressed in his State of the State address. In that speech, the governor said he would not cut education. If voters believe from the speech that education is to be maintained, then those same voters who said they would vote a tax increase to maintain education might not feel the need.
Impossible Task for Jobs Czar
Austin Beutner is probably doomed in his new high-profile task to make the city of Los Angeles business friendly.
For one thing, he’s got only three years before Antonio Villaraigosa is termed out as mayor and Beutner will likely lose his position. Three years? That’s barely enough time to get paddling in the molasses stream that is Los Angeles city government.
(By the way, why would Villaraigosa wait nearly five years into his mayoralty before he finally appointed someone to be a jobs czar? Does that tell you this new position is truly important for Villaraigosa, or is it just the usual window-dressing political answer to the uncomfortable question about what he plans to do to combat L.A.’s 13 percent unemployment rate?)
Putting Northrop in Perspective
On the
first business day of 2010, Los Angeles received its strongest wake-up call yet
that its days as a center of the corporate universe may be coming to a close. That’s
when new CEO Wesley G. Bush announced that Northrop Grumman would move its headquarters
to the Washington, D.C., area to be closer to the Pentagon.
Northrop was
one of the few top companies still headquartered in the city of Los Angeles. In
1985, Los Angeles was the headquarters for 16 Fortune 1000 companies. Today,
just nine call Los Angeles home. The nagging question is why?
In many
ways, the move seems logical: