If people are wondering why Meg Whitman, leading the GOP race for governor by 30 or 40 percentage points in the polls, would bother slamming Steve Poizner with a batch of attack ads, there’s a simple answer:
Why not?
In most California campaigns, money drives strategy, especially when it comes to the millions that are spent on a TV ad campaign. The bank balance determines when a campaign starts its advertising, where the ads run and how often voters are going to see them.
While a campaign team may want to go on the attack immediately, finances typically require them to hold off until they finish their run of ads introducing the candidate to the voters.
But with Whitman talking about putting $150 million of her own money into her run for governor, her campaign team is like the fat guy choosing desserts at the buffet: “I believe I’ll have them all.”
Need to introduce Whitman and her plans to voters? No problem, we’ll keep those upbeat, vision-thing biography ads on the air.
Want to take a whack at an annoying opponent who just won’t take a hint a get out of the race? Let’s heat things up with some 15-second ads arguing that people – especially conservative, anti-tax Republican people – just can’t trust Poizner.
There’s no room for nuance in a 15-second spot, but that’s never been a problem in political advertising.
The ads argue that Poizner opposed tax cuts (“Poizner and Pelosi. On taxes they’re two of a kind”), gave $10,000 to Al Gore (“And you thought Poizner was a Republican”) and worked against Prop. 13 (“Poizner joined with liberal unions to weaken Prop. 13”).
Poizner’s campaign quickly fired back, pointing out that Whitman endorsed Gore in 2000 and gave the maximum $4,000 contribution to Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer’s 2004 re-election campaign.
And right alongside those “liberal unions” who worked to revise Prop. 13 by supporting a ballot measure to allow school bonds to pass with 55 percent of the vote was former Gov. Pete Wilson, Whitman’s current campaign chair.
Wilson, in fact, was honorary chair of 2000’s Prop. 39 campaign, which passed with 53 percent of the vote.
Of course, Poizner made his claims in a hotly worded press release sent out of dozens of writers across California.
Let’s see. Expensive television ad campaign aimed at voters across the state versus e-mails to political reporters. Any questions about what’s going to be more effective?
Poizner plans to officially file his nomination papers for governor this morning in San Jose, so Whitman’s ads aren’t forcing him out.
Then again, Poizner’s been attacking Whitman on the cheap for weeks in speeches, web videos and press releases, so it’s not likely the ads are going to provoke him into doing anything he wasn’t already planning to do when he finally gets around to spending the $17 million or so he had in the campaign treasury on Jan. 1.
So Whitman went on the attack first because she could afford to. And those ads playing out across the California airwaves also serve as the political equivalent of the horse’s headhttps://showhype.com/video/the_godfather_horse_head_scene/ on the bed, warning Poizner about just what he can expect from now until June.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.