Author: Joel Fox

"California doesn’t recover until small business recovers," declared Kevin Klowden, Managing Economist and Director of the California Center at the Milken Institute. Klowden took part in a panel discussing California small business at the Milken Institute’s annual State of the State conference this week.

Klowden stated that California is a small business mecca. Over fifty-percent of California employees work for small businesses defined as businesses with 500 employees or less.

The new Public Policy Institute poll was released showing Meg Whitman eight points behind Jerry Brown in the race for governor. While this is the largest deficit Whitman has faced against her rival, this race is not over.

Whitman shows weaknesses in a couple of areas that could be corrected over the next two weeks and strengths in a couple of areas that are important to the voters.

The poll shows that one in ten Republicans is supporting Jerry Brown. In addition, there is a 15-point gap with Brown leading among women voters. Whitman needs to and can shrink these numbers.

The political panel analyzing the coming California election at the annual Milken Institute State of the State Conference in Beverly Hills yesterday spent a good amount of time criticizing the Whitman gubernatorial campaign.

Playing off a recent poll that showed Jerry Brown leading Meg Whitman by seven points, Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, Republican consultant Don Sipple, pundit and former Democratic campaign manager Susan Estrich and panel moderator and Fox TV commentator Frank Luntz disparaged the campaign. Only Republican consultant Steve Schmidt argued that the race was not over and that Whitman was in striking distance of Brown.

One of the hot tax issues during Jerry Brown’s first turn as governor was indexing the state income tax. Brown has noted recently he supported indexing. That’s only part of the story.

Indexing the income tax is a process of widening the tax brackets to account for inflation. Without indexing, a taxpayer would be pushed into higher tax brackets when inflation increased his or her income despite the taxpayer gaining no "real" income gain. Government benefited from this "inflation tax."

Four times over the last three decades voters have offered their support for the right to vote on local taxes and for a two-thirds vote for legislative tax increases. Yet, the politicians have attempted to work their way around that mandate by calling taxes "fees." Fees only require a majority vote in the legislature, or a vote of the governing body at the local government level.

Proposition 26 will reaffirm the voters desires on the tax front.

The key word for this upcoming election is: TURNOUT. With Democrats holding a 13-point voter registration edge over Republicans in California it will take a strong Republican turnout and/or a correspondingly weak Democratic turnout to push Republican candidates across the finish line first.

National polls indicate that enthusiasm is on the Republicans side in this election. The USC/LA Times poll a few weeks ago indicated that Latinos, a core Democratic support group, were less than eager to vote when compared with other groups the poll tested.

I’m not sure how far away these absentee ballots come from, but if Howard Jarvis has one I think I know how he’d mark his ballot for governor.

In last night’s debate, Jarvis made a guest appearance on the back of a question on his prodigy, Proposition 13. Jerry Brown pointed out, accurately, that Jarvis voted for Brown for governor because Brown had worked at implementing Prop 13. Brown also said Jarvis did an ad for Brown. Also true; but at the same time, Jarvis was also cutting an ad for Brown’s opponent, Attorney General Evelle Younger, for defending Proposition 13 in court.

The last scheduled gubernatorial debate goes off tonight with Tom Brokaw as moderator and one wonders if there will be a surprise launched during the debate to topsy-turvy the race.

Meg Whitman needs to make voters believe she can solve the problems of California. That is all they care about. In the end, the vast majority of voters are not so interested in the battle over Whitman’s maid and Brown’s team’s language. Voters want to believe their vote will make a difference in their lives.

Californians following the governor’s race through the media think the choice is between one candidate who doesn’t read her mail and another who doesn’t know how to hang up the telephone.

If the candidates have generated no more light than that on who they are and what they will do once in office, whose fault is that?

Is it the media who revel in covering controversy? Is it the candidates who prefer to argue about these matters rather than the complexities of modern-day California government? Or is it the voters who would want to make their choices on character issues rather than trying to decide which candidate is right or wrong on policy?