Do you know that Meg Whitman wore a designer coat to a NASCAR race?
Or that Pete Wilson is a hypocrite on the question of tax returns?
What about the fact that Jerry Brown has worked to stymie job growth in California for 40 years?
Welcome to the political silly season, where no charge is too dumb to throw out and hope somebody writes about it.
This isn’t about the big stuff, the stories and charges that show up in the multi-million-dollar TV and radio ad campaigns. That stuff is vetted, focus-grouped and studied to a fare-thee-well before it ever makes the airwaves. Those are the hoped-for game-changers, stuff that can turn a campaign around, so they’re not taken lightly.
The attacks we’re talking about here are more snark than substance, the type of little gotcha jabs designed mostly to show the other side you’re paying attention.
Take the Great Burberry Faux Pas, for example.
Whitman was in Fontana Saturday night, building her conservative street cred by waving the green starting flag at a NASCAR race. But as a spokeswoman for Steve Poizner, the other GOP candidate for governor, pointed out in an e-mail to reporters, she was wearing, horror of horrors, an ever-so-posh Burberry coat, which apparently shows that she’s out of touch with real working people.
First off, let’s stipulate that gazillionaires like Whitman and Poizner, who rode in the pace car for a race on Sunday, aren’t exactly the typical NASCAR demographic.
Whitman was born in Cold Springs Harbor on Long Island, NY, went to Princeton and then spent most of her business career in Massachusetts and California.
Poizner gets a bit of a boost from being born in Texas, but he loses working-class-hero points for going to Stanford to get his MBA and then moving to Silicon Valley, where he – and Whitman – live today.
It’s a pretty good bet that neither Whitman nor Poizner spent their – likely brief – time at the Fontana track hanging out in the grandstands and pounding Buds with the race fans, so the good-ole-boy factor really doesn’t come into play for either of them.
The question of what someone wears on a chilly Southern California night probably doesn’t mean much to anyone but the most addicted of political junkies. But, hey, the piece got picked up by the L.A. Times, the Huffington Post and a few other places, so score a one-day wonder for the Poizner campaign.
Same with a Democratic group’s oppo research whack Monday at former Gov. Pete Wilson, Whitman’s campaign chairman. Since Wilson spent much of his political career demanding that his opponents release their income tax returns, the group asked in a letter, how in good conscience can he work for Whitman, who hasn’t released hers.
Does even the most partisan Democrat believe Wilson actually will resign from the campaign, as the good folk of Level the Playing Field 2010 demanded? Of course not, but it’s a nice tweak at both Wilson and Whitman’s campaign, even if no one will remember it by the end of the week.
As for the Whitman campaign’s salvo at Brown, yes, the current attorney general was first elected to political office in 1969 and, yes, he’s been mostly a Democrat since then, which is probably reason enough for Republicans to hang the “job-killer” tag on him.
But suggesting that Brown’s time as trustee of the Los Angeles Community College District torpedoed California’s economy takes partisan overkill to a new level.
The low-level back-and-forth sniping in a campaign is always a lot of fun and makes for some quick and easy stories and blog posts for political writers, so thanks to everyone involved and keep it up.
It doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t important things happening that could mean a lot more by election day.
Whitman, for example, received the endorsement of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association Monday, which is a major deal. The kind words from the anti-tax group, which called her “the only reliable fiscal conservative in the race,” could go a long way toward boosting Whitman’s standing with the grassroots conservatives who wield the power in the GOP primary.
Also on Monday, Poizner, wearing his insurance commissioner hat, charged that Anthem Blue Cross violated state law hundreds of times over the past three years by failing to pay medical claims on time.
There’s a bit of piling on in Poizner’s attack, since Anthem already is under attack in both California and Washington for its plan to boost rates 39 percent for many of its 800,000 individual customers in the state. But if Poizner can force the company to change its payment policies or hit it with heavy fines, his long-awaited campaign ads could cite that as another example of Poizner protecting the people of California.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.