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"FacebookPinterestmeg-2.png\n\n Like a Michael Steele backpedal or a Joe Biden BFD, there's an inevitability to Meg Whitman's gubernatorial run. The gazillionaire California Republican and former eBay CEO had, by last month, spent $39 million of her own fortune on a campaign that crushed state spending records and drowned Californians in ads. A week ago, Whitman announced she was making another massive cash advance, er, \"incremental investment,\" as she put it\u2014about $20 million worth. So far, her carpet bombing has worked. She's 40 points ahead of her GOP rival, Steve Poizner, and 3 points ahead of Dem Jerry Brown. But despite the cash-and-ad blitz, chimps appear to be pulling the Whitman campaign levers.\n\nA few days after she announced her candidacy, for instance, The Sacramento Bee reported that\u2014oops!\u2014she'd forgotten to vote in, like, almost every election. In an interview with the Bee, Whitman said that she had indeed registered as a Republican prior to moving to California\u2014though she refused to say where such evidence might be found. \"Go find it,\" she said. The Bee looked, but The Bee did not find.\n\nThen came the Union Pacific incident. Whitman had announced an open-to-the-press campaign stop at the railroad's facility in Oakland. Naturally, reporters arrived en masse; when Whitman began the tour, however, the group was told that they couldn't accompany her around the site, nor would she answer questions once the tour was done. Instead, Whitman would deliver a prepared statement on \"how she could be helpful as governor.\" Not surprisingly, those reporters were a little annoyed. Apparently Whitman's handlers didn't understand that she'd just killed some easy publicity and changed the day's storyline from \"Whitman Talks Transportation in Oakland\" to \"Whitman's Campaign Runs Off the Rails in Oakland\" and \"Free Meg: Media Pushes Back When Meg Avoids Questions Again.\" According to the San Francisco Chronicle's account, when the group pressed Whitman's spokeswoman on why they'd changed the day's plans, she said the screw-up was Union Pacific's fault. When reporters asked a railroad spokesman about it, he said the exact opposite: UP had planned all along on having the press accompany Whitman on her tour.\n\nAnyway, back to incrementally investing and corporate blather\u2014something Whitman is good at. At a recent gathering of the California Taxpayers' Association, she talked about how swell it'd be to break up California's famously dysfunctional legislature into \"teams.\" \"Let's come together in teams,\" Whitman said. \"Who wants to be on the jobs team? Who wants to be on the government efficiency team?\" This got a tart response from LA Times columnist and dean of California's political press corps, George Skelton. \"As any high schooler knows\u2014or should\u2014a governor doesn't organize anything in the Legislature. It's a separate, equal branch of government. And, like the ecutive, it jealously guards its turf...The Legislature already has teams. They're called committees.\"\n\nMore recently, Whitman decided to showcase her policy proposals\u2014creating jobs, lowering tas, improving schools, etc.\u2014by sending two copies of a 48-page glossy to 1,400 of California's public libraries. \"I encourage the libraries to display my magazine in their periodicals section so voters can gain a clear understanding of how I will govern, if elected in November,\" Whitman said. Then came the news: \"GOP guv-hopeful Meg Whitman is offering up copies of her policy manuscript\u2014even to those who can't accept it.\" Turns out that Sacramento\u2014along with other with other libraries around the state\u2014have policies prohibiting partisan political material.\n\nDespite the civics 101 blunders\u2014and despite her media allergies\u2014Whitman is not only leading the race, she's even gotten some mildly positive press. \"True, [Whitman] occasionally shows her political naivete,\" Skelton wrote in the same column, which praises her wonkish approach to a water bond proposal. \"[But] give Meg Whitman some credit. She's listening and reading up\u2014trying to learn about being governor of California.\"\n\nSo what if she's not ready on day one?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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